How to Open a Financially Successful Specialty Retail & Gourmet Foods Shop 
This is the A-to-Z guide to making it in your own store. Learn the expert tips, tricks, and a vast gold mine of crucial how-to information you just can't find anywhere else. This is a perfect book for entrepreneurs, schools, colleges and technical training centers. This detailed text contains all the information you will ever need to needed to start, operate, and manage a highly profitable specialty store.
While providing detailed instruction and examples, the author leads you through finding a location that will bring success, learn how to draw up a winning business plan (The Companion Cd Rom has the actual business plan you can use in MS Word tm.), how to buy and (sell) a store, basic cost control systems, profitable product planning, sample floor plans & diagrams, successful kitchen management, equipment layout and planning, food safety & HACCP, successful food & beverage management, legal concerns, sales and marketing techniques, pricing formulas, learn how to set up computer systems to save time and money, learn how to hire & keep a qualified professional staff, brand new IRS tip reporting requirements, managing and training employees, generate high profile public relations and publicity, learn low cost internal marketing ideas, low and no cost ways to satisfy customers and build sales, learn how to keep bringing customers back, accounting & bookkeeping procedures, auditing, successful budgeting and profit planning development, as well as thousands of great tips and useful guidelines. Never before has so much practical information about the specialty store business been offered in one book.
This is an ideal guide new for comers to the business as well as experienced operators. In addition to basic operational practices this book will demonstrate show how to: increase impulse sales and improve presentation, utilize merchandising fixtures and techniques, cross merchandising, point of purchase materials, how to develop a product sampling program.
Reviews
Starting your own business can be extremely scary, it doesn't matter what type of business it is. If you are interested in starting a specialty foods shop it can be even scarier because of the lack of competent information available. "How to Open a Financially Successful Specialty retail & gourmet foods shop" is one of the most comprehensive books of its kind in the market place.
The authors are great at introducing the reader to all aspects of starting their own shop. The book is written in an easy to understand conversational tone. With sections specifically on goal setting this book is geared toward the new entrepreneur that does not have past business start up experience.
Read this book before going even considering opening a specialty retail or gourmet foods shop. Many aspects of operating a specialty business can be overlooking in the heat of your ambitions. This book will guide you in identifying all the major areas of concern before you put up all your money and invest months of your time.
The book also comes with a CD that contains pre-written documents that will be very useful in starting and operating your business. This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to know more about the gourmet foods industry and of course to people interested in starting their own specialty foods shop.
It goes into great details of the initial costs and strategies that will be needed at start up. There is even a special section on franchising and writing a business plan. Other areas include taxes, laws, licenses, and insurances that will be needed. There are also skillfully crafted chapters which focus two main areas employee relations and customers including marketing and public relations.
There are chapters that center on the equipment that may be needed and the types of product that can be used in the store. A CD-ROM completes the book, with many forms that can help anyone who goes into business. There are even sections that deal with cash flow and financial management as well as purchasing.
This book offers a comprehensive overview on many of how to start a Specialty Retail business and with the step by step process, anyone can be successful.
The authors take readers through a number of get ready steps. They include, among other things, picking location, deciding what merchandise to carry, identifying the target audience, writing a business plan, filing the loan application, and getting the necessities (such as company name, licenses, insurance, etc.).
I love that the book details every thing I would need to know about opening a specialty business. It even discusses decorating tips, hiring a staff, marketing the business, and creating a press kit. Because the book covers so much, it tends to cover only the basics of all the topics. It does not go really in-depth on most items, so if you are looking for some exact how-to guide, this book probably is not for you.
The book also comes with a handy cd-rom that provides sample business plans and other worksheets that I found very helpful. You can easily take the business plan and modify it to suit your start-up business. In addition, there are a number of great resources listed within the pages of the book that any new business owner would find beneficial.
found on the first couple of pages: make sure your heart is in before you take the leap. They offer nuggets of advice to test your mettle; such as coming up with a short "elevator pitch" to capture the essence of your dream and how valuable careful research becomes if you want to discover your true "niche" market. Information on buying a franchise or starting from scratch, financial avenues to consider and a good outline for a business plan quickly follows. Other chapters present the importance of customer service, successful marketing tips and how to deliver a top-notch public relation campaign that attracts repeat business. You will also discover that the basic mechanics of running a business are not ignored; with sections devoted to purchasing, buying appropriate equipment, staffing, finding user-friendly software, monitoring inventory, managing cash flow and creating ambience in the public areas of the shop. The CD-ROM contains much of the same information found in the book, but does included printable business forms for home and office use, a supply list, as well as a more detailed business plan to use as your own template. Overall this book is very user-friendly, offers quality advice and presents up-to-date information. An important resource you will be able to refer to for many years