Is your restaurant, catering or grocery business thriving in the New Year? Are you considering plans for growth?
The costs associated with growth can be expensive. And, accessing capital to fuel growth is a challenge for many small business owners. Fortunately, if you need to buy equipment, increase your staff, or expand your location, there is potential capital available. Are you facing any of these five items associated with growing a foodservice business?
Hiring and Training New Employees: Growth typically requires additional employees. But adding on training programs and salaries can cost a pretty penny. Investing in a solid staff can be a huge factor in ensuring the success of your company moving forward. Since it can be a challenge to maintain a stable workforce in the restaurant industry given high turnover, think about retention as well as recruitment. Cooking certificates or restaurant seminars can be great educational opportunities for your employees, but of course they’ll come with a price tag.
Equipment: New supplies can be costly, but if they augment your quality, efficiency, or yield, they are likely an excellent investment. A new convection oven that can cook at higher temperatures or a new truck for your catering company that will get better gas mileage will help your business and may save you more in the long run. Sit down and calculate how much money you will make incrementally or that you’ll save over time with these investments, to help yourself see how long it would take the loan to pay for itself.
Inventory: The costs of purchasing inventory will rise as your business grows. If you’re a catering company that’s looking to begin catering larger events, which may mean inventory costs will escalate quickly as you stock up. If you’re a grocery store with a booming business that you hope booms even more, you don’t want to run out of key foods, which would jeopardize customer satisfaction and loyalty. Making sure you’re properly stocking inventory will keep customers trusting your company and returning for more, making a loan a potentially smart choice.
Space: Location is essential to a successful business, whether you’re accommodating restaurant customers or prep kitchen workers. If you’ve outgrown your space, investing in or expanding real estate that can fit your growing company could be a very worthwhile investment. The area a restaurant resides in is important—a diner in the middle of nowhere will struggle to turn a profit much more than one in an area with lots of shops and residential life. A wholesale food operation needs a clean, well-lit, spacious kitchen to produce the best-quality product. Improving your existing space or expanding could be a good use of a short-term loan; for larger projects, you might want to consider a longer-term loan or maybe even an SBA loan to fund the expansion.
Customer Acquisition: Smart marketing can be another investment with a high rate of return. Hiring a marketing agency or investing in an advertisement campaign can enhance your and increase your foodservice business.
Many restaurant owners choose to finance growth. If you’d like to learn more about the financing options available through OnDeck, and apply, click HERE.