Finding the right premises doesn’t have to be hard

If you’re considering opening your own food or retail business, the first step is finding a strong business model with an excellent product line. That part isn’t difficult – you’ve already found one with the Eggless Cake Shop franchise.

Where most people struggle is the next part: finding the right premises.

It’s a topic that’s coming up time and time again in conversations I’m having, and it’s a big problem. Most restaurants, coffee shops or food outlets need a prime spot with serious footfall to make the numbers work, which usually means premium rents and a scramble for the very same units every other operator wants. The location, for that kind of franchise, is often the single biggest thing standing between someone and the business they’re after.

Here’s why the Eggless Cake Shop is different

You still need a good location, of course. You want cake lovers passing by, spotting you and popping in. But there’s a world of difference between a location with decent footfall and the prime, high-street, pay-through-the-nose sort.

An Eggless Cake Shop sits very happily in the first camp.

You’re not looking to hide yourself away off the beaten track, but nor are you fighting for the same handful of premium units that every café and restaurant in town has its eye on. That means less competition for the sites you actually want, lower rents in many cases, and far more options to choose from.

So what should you actually be looking for?

The basic requirements are surprisingly simple:

• Around 800–1,100 sq ft of space — nothing enormous.
• Nearby parking, so customers can get their cakes home without a juggling act.
• Decent local footfall. It really doesn’t need to be a costly high-street location.

And knowing what you don’t need makes the search even easier.

With Eggless, there’s no need for:

• Commercial ovens or baking equipment — every cake is baked off-site.
• Expensive extraction or ventilation systems.
• A specialist kitchen or complicated restaurant fit-out.
• A large seating area and all the overheads that come with running one.
• A café or restaurant-style operation to build around the cakes.

In other words, the Eggless Cake Shop was designed to be easier to find a home for than many F&B businesses.

Perhaps you’ve even got somewhere in mind already, a unit in a decent spot that you reckon has potential? If so, the Eggless team and I would be glad to help you weigh up whether it really does. They’ve opened enough shops across the UK and Canada to know exactly what to look for and, just as importantly, what to steer well clear of.

Don’t let the property search be the thing that stops you before you’ve started, because more often than not it’s a far smaller hurdle than people expect.

If you’d like to talk through what you should be looking for, or ask anything at all about the Eggless Cake Shop franchise, let’s have a chat.