BusinessHABHow to Open Hospital Food café : Food is an important part of patient care.
Patients who stay in hospital are happier with hot delicious food and get better if fed well.
Food can be part of the treatment, too, for patients on special diets.
So food has to be nutritious, inviting and served on time.
Hospital staff need to eat as well, so many hospitals have a staff restaurant.
Some also have a café where visitors can get hot drinks and snacks.
Are you thinking of starting a cafe?
If so, here are some ideas and hints to help you out and save you money.
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How to Open Hospital Food café
1. Create a business plan.
A business plan helps to define what you think you need to launch your business, large or small. It summarizes the sense of your business in a single document. It also creates a map for investors, bankers, and other interested parties to use when determining how they can best help you and to help them decide whether or not your business is viable.
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2. Define your goals.
Do you want financial independence, eventually selling your business to the highest bidder? Do you want something small and sustainable, that you love doing and from which you want to derive a steady income? These are the things that are good to know very early on.
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How to Open Hospital Food café
3. Create a working name.
You could even do this before you have an idea for the business, and if the name is good, you may find it helps you define your business idea. As your plan grows, and things begin to take shape, the perfect name may come to you, but don’t let that hinder you in the early phases. Create a name that you can use while you plan and don’t hesitate to change it later.
- Always check to see if the name is being used by somebody else before selecting it. Try to create a name that is simple and memorable.
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4. Secure start-up costs.
Most businesses require capital to start. Money is typically required to purchase supplies and equipment, as well as keep the business operational for the period before your business becomes profitable. The first place to look for financing is yourself.
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How to Open Hospital Food café
5. Secure space.
Whether it’s an office, or a warehouse, if you need more space than your garage or your spare bedroom, now’s the time to get that.
- If you don’t generally need an office beyond your home, but may occasionally need meeting space, there are often places that can address those needs. A quick Google search on “business meeting rentals [your city/state]” will deliver plenty of rental options in your area.
- Be sure to contact your local municipality about zoning laws. Some types of small businesses cannot be ran out of a home, and it is important to ensure your business is operating within its proper zone.
6. Define your team.
Will you do this alone, or will you bring in one or two trusted friends to join you? This brings a lot of synergy to the table, as people bounce ideas off each other. Two people together can often create something that is greater than the sum of the two separate parts.
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How to Open Hospital Food café
7. Choose your partners wisely.
When choosing the person or people you’re going to build the business with, be careful. Even if someone is your best friend, it doesn’t mean that you will partner well in a business operation. Start it with a reliable person.
8. Think of the kind of cafe you are planning to open, is it a place where a group of friends can hang out for a long time?
Is it for a quick morning coffee and maybe a small sandwich? Is it for guys to hangout, watch a Football game? Is it a long term project so others would come after 20 years and remember their first date in your Cafe’? Think about this, knowing the exact target market and the kind of Cafe you want to have would help you reduce huge amounts.
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9. Picture yourself in the cafe.
After you decide which kind of Cafe you are going to start with, Imagine yourself in your Cafe as a customer, what are you looking for? What kind of food or drinks you would like to have? Deciding that would make you decrease the amount/types of machines you want in your small kitchen, the Machines in any Cafe’ can be a major cost as a start-up cost is calculated.
How to Open Hospital Food café
10. Decide how big it should be.
What is the number of people I can handle at a time? deciding this would definitely help you decide on the decoration type in your cafe, numbers of seats, tables, kitchen tools, Cafe size, if you think you can’t handle many customers at a time, start small and good looking, better than big and lose quality, customers do not look at how big your cafe is, they want good service, nice place, cozy, a place where they feel like home.
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11. Ask for help!
This is one of the most important thing in starting your own small budget Cafe , if you know a guy who is smart at marketing ask him for ideas, many ideas are really effective and does not cost much, depends on your location, size, city, If you happen to know someone who likes decorations, make them feel the power you give them when asking for their own private opinion about how to decorate it with a low budget, they would give you many ideas for free. Be Smart and creative! You are starting a private business.
How to Open Hospital Food café
12. Be a leader.
think, imagine and decide, never waste your money on something you are not convinced about, always use your heart and mind, people can sit anywhere where they feel comfortable.
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13. Offer a loyalty program.
This is used to be expensive and time consuming to offer one. But now there are a couple of loyalty platform using QR code that allows you to offer a loyalty program in no time.
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How to Open Hospital Food café
14. Write the marketing plan.
Your operational plan describes how you will produce your product, and your marketing plan describes how you will sell your product. When you create your marketing plan, try to answer the question of how you will make your product known to potential customers.
- You will want to include the type of marketing you will use. For example, will you use radio ads, social media, promotions, billboards, attend networking events, or all of the above?
- You will also want to define your marketing message. In other words, what will you say to convince customers to choose your product? Here, you want to focus on your Unique Selling Point (also known as USP). This is the unique advantage your product has to solve your customers problem. For example, you may be lower cost, faster, or higher quality than your peers.
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15. Come up with a pricing model.
Start by checking out your competitors. Know how much are they selling a similar product for. Can you add something to it (add value) to make yours different and hence make it a more enticing price?
How to Open Hospital Food café
16. Cover the financials.
The financial statements translate your marketing and operational plans into numbers — profits and cash flow. They identify how much money you will need and how much you might make. Since this is the most dynamic part of your plan, and perhaps the most important for long-term stability, you should update this monthly for the first year, quarterly for the second year, and then annually after that.
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How to Open Hospital Food café
17. Cover your startup costs.
How are you going to finance your business initially? The bank, venture capitalists, angel investors, Small Business Administration (SBA), your own savings: these are all viable options. When you start a business, be realistic. You will probably not roll out of the gate making 100 percent of whatever you project, so you need to have enough ready reserve to fund things until you are really up and running. One of the surest roads to failure is under-capitalization.
18. What price do you intend to sell your product or service for?
How much will it cost you to produce? Work out a rough estimate for net profit—factoring in fixed costs like rent, energy, employees, etc.
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How to Open Hospital Food café
19. Build your product or develop your service.
Once you have the business all planned, financed, and have your basic level of staffing, get going. Whether that’s sitting down with the engineers and getting the software coded and tested, or getting materials sourced and shipped to your fabrication room (aka “garage”), or purchasing in bulk and marking up the price, the building process is the time during which you prepare for market.
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20. Manage your running costs.
Keep a close eye on your running costs and keep them in line with your projections. Whenever you see something spent wastefully—like electricity, phone plans, stationery, packaging—look around and estimate how much you really need, and minimize or remove the cost in every way possible. Think frugally when you start up, including renting items instead of purchasing them and using pre-paid plans for services your business needs instead of locking yourself into long-term contracts.
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How to Open Hospital Food café
21. Spend time developing an excellent social media presence.
This can be done well before the business is ready, increasing anticipation. Use Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, and any other social media you participate in to build excitement and spread the word. You want to build a buzz so that people will begin following your progress. (Be sure to choose business accounts for your business and keep your personal accounts separate. The messages you send should be tailored differently, depending on which account you’re sending from.)
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22. Implement your marketing and distribution plans.
With your product being built or services developed, and a reasonable expectation on when either is ready for selling, begin marketing.
- If you will be advertising in periodicals, they will need copy or images at least two months in advance of publication.
- If you will be selling in stores, get pre-orders sold, and shelf space allocated. If you will be selling online, get that e-commerce site ready to sell.
- If you’re offering a service, advertise in appropriate trade and professional journals, newspapers and online.
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How to Open Hospital Food café
23. Launch your product or your service.
When the product is all built, packaged, coded, online, and ready to sell, or when your services are fully worked out and ready to go, hold a special event to launch your business. Send out a press release, announce it to the world. Tweet it, Facebook it, let the word resound to all corners of your market—you have a new business!
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24. How to Open Hospital Food café
Always provide value and service to those who may be your customers, even if they are not currently. When they do need your product, you want them to think of you first.
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25. Keep learning, and be adaptable to change.
Find buddies, mentors, local business-related organizations, Internet forums, and BusinessHAB to discuss the daily details of running a small business.
It’s much easier for everyone to perform their core businesses well and prosper when they don’t waste time and energy “reinventing the wheel” on housekeeping.
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It is ok to start small with one or two products and then add more and more great ideas as you go!
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Don’t be afraid to experiment with prices. You should determine the minimum price for your product or service to break even, but experiment with low-price or premium-price variations.
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Always believe in yourself even when financial money is down hill.
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Take risks. Nothing is get without any risk. So, whenever there are chances of risk, do not fear.
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Be confident and have a good mind about everything you do. Also, be prepared for all the unsuccessful times that may occur.
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