The humble convenience store has never gone out of style. If anything, over the past year they have been the lifeline of many local communities.
Perhaps you’ve never considered owning one, but would quite like to be your own boss and make your own rules. This could be the venture for you! Here are five reasons why you should consider buying your own convenience store.
You’ll get customers just because of the location
It’s called a ‘convenience’ store for a reason! The very fact that you’re on people’s doorsteps is reason enough for them to pop in if they run out of bread, milk or something else. You’ll probably get a lot of the same people coming in all the time, so it’s a great chance to become friendly with your neighbours. If anyone is visiting the area and needs something quickly, you’re there to help them too.
You’ll keep customers through personal connections
As we just mentioned, you’ll start to build relationships with the locals, who may end up choosing your shop over a larger franchise where they don’t know the rotating staff as well as they know you. Keeping customers is just as important as acquiring new ones!
Consider advertising that you can order specific products if there is a demand for them. Locals may suddenly be interested in a certain brand, or perhaps different seasonal vegetables that you don’t yet stock. This can bring in more business and repeat purchases of well-liked products.
There is a huge push to buy local
Experts predict that nipping into local shops more regularly, compared to one big weekly shop, is going to increase, especially after the past year. When the pandemic first hit, many were relying on convenience stores for essentials such as toilet paper and bread as bigger supermarkets completely ran out.
There has also been a huge rise of the idea to ‘support small and local’, as these sorts of businesses really struggled over the past year, so it’s expected that these values will continue to strengthen even beyond the pandemic.
It can be a place to live
Many convenience stores are actually self-contained residential flats, or come with opportunities for development, which could be your new place to live – no more commute! Or, you could earn even more money on top of owning the business by renting it out.
It’s quite easy to get started
As long as you are not selling petrol or dangerous items, you only need quite basic licences to get started, for example a food hygiene certificate, a food seller’s licence, retail licence and a health and safety inspection. It should only take a few days to a week to fill out all the necessary paperwork and send it off.
You can essentially determine your income
As well as renting any residential space out, setting your own prices is another way you can seriously boost your income. You’ll be purchasing the products sold in your shop at wholesale rates, so you can dictate how much your profit margin is.
Of course, you’ll have to make sure your prices aren’t so high that they turn people away, especially if there are competitors nearby, but you can definitely make a decent income.
As you will be seeing stable levels of revenue from locals and passersby, you do have economic stability, even when there are economic downturns which we have seen over the past year. If you want a stable job and to be your own boss, owning a convenience store could be a great option for you. We highly recommend checking out Hilton Smythe’s database of Convenience stores available to buy in the UK.
