Are you thinking of expanding your Food & Beverage Business? Expanding your business is both an exciting and challenging experience. Before your business takes off on your expansion plans, there are a few things you need to consider first.
Here’s what you need you need to consider before expanding your Food & Beverage Business.
1. Is it Scalable
The first and most important thing that your business needs to consider before expanding is if expanding is scalable for your business. Do you have the resources to sustain an expansion? Do you have the money for expansion? Do you have the staff needed to sustain the expansion?
These are some of the things that you need to consider before planning any expansion. You need to be sure that an expansion is something your business sustain today and into the future. The last thing that your business wants is to impact your current operations and customers during an expansion.
2. Do you have the Money to Cater for the Expansion
Expanding your business doesn’t come cheap. To expand your business, you need to have the funds behind you. Often, many businesses don’t fully understand how much of a financial investment is required in order to expand operations successfully – this is why planning is critical.
Before your business considers expanding, it is important that you get together with your accountant and put together a Cost Analysis. A cost analysis is a formal document which outlines the costs involved with your expansion plans.
The benefit of putting together a cost analysis is it will give your business a realistic idea of how much money you will need to spend to expand. Your business will also need to include a buffer in any cost projections as you need to factor in unforeseen events which may and can occur throughout an expansion rollout.
3. Staff & Resources
Do you have the staff and resources required to expand? Expanding your business, whether it be location, product offering, or anything in between will have a major impact on your staff. It is important that you understand the staff and resources required prior to beginning your expansion.
If you are planning to expand locations, you may need to bring on new staff, which is a whole job in itself. On the flip side if it is a new product offering that you are looking to expand into, you will need to invest time and resources into training staff on the new processes. Both options will cost your business time and money.
It is important that your business puts a clear plan in place to minimise the impacts an expansion will have on staff, resources, and customers.
Related Article: How Australian Food & Beverage Businesses Can Minimise the Impacts of a Staff Shortage.
4. Impact on Customers
This is a big one! Your business also needs to consider the impacts your expansion plans will have on your current customers. Will you need to close your business down for a short time? Are you going to work as skeleton staff throughout the expansion rollout? These are questions that need to be answered.
If you are looking to expand your business, you need to make it as seamless as possible for your customers. There should be no change to your customer service or order turnaround times. Your current customers shouldn’t even realise that you are going through an expansion.
Related Article: What Australian Customers Look For in a F&B Distribution Business.
5. Quality
On the topic of customer satisfaction, you need to also consider your product and service quality. An expansion will take your focus away from buying and selling products. It is important that your business implements a plan that establishes and maintains high quality and service for your customers.
Final Word,
Expanding your business is a rollercoaster experience. To streamline your expansion, it is important to plan and implement clear strategies and processes. The five things mentioned above need to be considered before undertaking any type of expansion.
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About EasyVend,
For food and beverage businesses, EasyVend supports and automates every part of your business, freeing you up to grow your sales simply, unlike other ERP systems.
EasyVend features include Stock Management, Online Ordering, Invoicing, Receipting, Automatic Credit Card Payments, Xero Accounting Integration, Route Management, Business reporting and more.
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