Running a street food business is hard work, and regardless of how much planning you do, until you actually start you won’t know what the day-to-day running of the business looks like.
You will need to develop systems for how to get everything you need in one place ready to trade. You need to keep working to make this system as simple as possible. If you are driving all over London to trade for a day that is really tough to be sustainable long term. You will need to find a base for your business this will help and where you can prepare your food, take deliveries and store your equipment.
Trading in London has a particular issue when it comes to the fact that your business maybe operating across a very busy city. Don’t get stuck in traffic and be late for the market, always aim to arrive early then you are ready for the obstacles in your way.
These two started with a great passion for smoked fish. Their idea was great and tasted fantastic. It was original and got KERB’s attention but operationally it was unsustainable. If you look at the below slides you can see an example day in the life of this business Allihopa.
Eventually, they moved to doing a completely different product, flatbreads and called in Luxury Flats. This game changed their working day drastically. Now they had a sustainable lifestyle and a profit business.
The logistics of your supply chain can be the difference between a viable business and a completely misguided one. You need to work out simple ways in which you can cook your product and cost your time into the process.
If you need to get going and your first days resemble Allihopa’s at least know what you are doing and how you will develop out of this process. If you were to try and employ someone to take your place how would you do it?
As you can see from the case study the amount the founder needs to do in an average day can be very different depending on the product. You need to be very careful with your time as you have many roles to fulfil in the business.
You are the product master and your dishes and menu are something that you will be testing and playing with constantly. Once you have defined this product you need to make sure everyone is making it correctly and the customer gets the same thing every time.
Duties include: