opening a gelato shop

piggity · #1 07-21-2006, 06:32 PM

A close friend of mine would like to open up his own gelato shop in San Francisco. He knows he likes gelato, but he knows next to nothing about how to actually open or operate such a business. Knowing nothing about this myself, I thought I'd ask a few basic questions here. I realize there are a bazillion undefined variables, but I'm just looking for some ballpark numbers to get a sense for this type of business:

1. Assuming there is a source of captial, how much of an up-front investment would be required? I assume this depends heavily on the real estate portion of the costs, but what would the other one-time-ish costs look like?

2. How much revenue can a single ice cream shop generate? Again, just looking for a ballpark range. Maybe some of you have owned a simlilar franchise of some sort.

3. I assume the big recurring costs would be: employees, real estate, and the materials for gelato (whatever that is). Are there any other big costs to be aware of when operating a shop of this sort?

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

El Diablo · #2 07-21-2006, 06:41 PM

p,

"A close friend of mine would like to open up his own gelato shop in San Francisco. He knows he likes gelato, but he knows next to nothing about how to actually open or operate such a business."

Awesome.

piggity · #3 07-21-2006, 07:38 PM

[ QUOTE ]
p,

"A close friend of mine would like to open up his own gelato shop in San Francisco. He knows he likes gelato, but he knows next to nothing about how to actually open or operate such a business."

Awesome.

[/ QUOTE ]

No guts, no glory!

Thremp · #4 07-21-2006, 08:15 PM

Buy a small shop.

Make sure you have a fat advertising budget.

eastbay · #5 07-22-2006, 12:50 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Buy a small shop.

Make sure you have a fat advertising budget.

[/ QUOTE ]

Advertising? I would guess location is everything for gelato.

eastbay

zoobird · #6 07-23-2006, 06:27 AM

Seriously. I can't think of a business where advertising would be more of a waste of money. When you start a business, think about how people make their buying decisions. Here are the thought processes when I buy ice cream:
1. "Hey there's an ice cream shop. Let's get some".
2. "I feel like having some ice cream. What shops are within 10 minutes my my house?"

Advertising won't help with either of these.

Baulucky · #7 07-23-2006, 06:39 PM

I think amazon sells cheap gelato machines.

For the best gelato in the world, look at the italian setups/machines/etc. They invented the concept.

El Diablo · #8 07-23-2006, 07:05 PM

pig,

One good idea is to have a frequent visitor card where you stamp the card each time people buy gelato and then once they get a certain number of stamps, they get a free gelato.

Your Mom · #9 07-24-2006, 02:15 PM

[ QUOTE ]
pig,

One good idea is to have a frequent visitor card where you stamp the card each time people buy gelato and then once they get a certain number of stamps, they get a free gelato.

[/ QUOTE ]

genius. sandwich shops should have thought of this.

Slider · #10 07-24-2006, 09:48 PM

Your friend needs to determine if this is really what he wants to do. Does he have a passion for the industry and serving other people? If he doesn't, then he's stepping into a big clusterfuck.

Especially given his non-existent background in managing businesses. I don't think this will hinder him from starting his own business if he has the drive to work hard at it.

Location is the biggest factor.

You also have to take into account seasonality of the product. I don't know much about San Fransico Weather but what kind of demand will there be in the winter?

Other concerns in starting a place like this include theft. Not by customers but by your own employees. Definitely get an integrated POS system and have some sort of safe that counts the money like at convenience stores. Some sort of trigger when the register has over X amount of dollars in the POS machine that freezes the machines until the money is removed would be nice too.