Hello everyone,
I’m starting Juice online bar for now, and when bussines gets going will open a bar. There is no competition in Croatia, most people prefer fast food. Please help me from where to start, I’m a bit afraid because of the fact mentioned earlier. Shall I start online first and then see the revenue? From where to start. Any suggestion is welcome. Thank you.
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Hello Martina, welcome to the community. I can only speak for myself. I opened a juice bar in Las Vegas just over a year ago. From a cost perspective, it is many times more expensive to open a physical location (construction costs, permitting costs, labor costs, rent, insurance, etc) than an online operation. The amount of initial capital needed for a physical location (I can only guess, as I do not do e-commerce ) is so much more than an online operation.
With a websites you can start taking orders and generating revenue much quicker that starting a store. Creating an online store can be done in days, versus a physical location which takes months.
From a risk assessment, you can always expand to the physical location if the online store is doing well, but if you start with a physical location you may have invested too much money to transition to a website.
I’m sure the rest of the community will have more to add.
Best of luck!
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Hi, firstly if you are selling juice online now you must have a workshop or ‘your kitchen’?
That will certainly keep your overheads low.
May I ask what was mentioned earlier you were afraid of? (I’m new to the forum)
I’m also in europe and understand the legalities here so I would suggest first step is jump onto the food safety government site for business in Croatia and you may have to register with your health and safety officer as a business, complete a food safety course (health officer can direct you with that - normally can be done online in a couple of hours) and public and product liability insurance.
There are so many avenues you can take regarding making ‘juice to order’ online - business, residential, studios, parties. It will give you the experience to learn the industry and if ultimately opening a bar would suit.
Being in Croatia though you have plenty of tourists and sunny weather so a bar could be a winner along the coastline if you found a spot on those hot months. Again regulations are always our obstacle but sometimes they aren’t as bad as we think.
I started my juice business back in 2012 and one of the first things I did was download a business plan template (boring I know) and then re-jigged it to suit the juice industry and honestly it made me question myself in a positive way why I was doing what I was ready to take on. How much time and money are you willing to invest or have you other responsibilities. Can you visualise your clients? Is there a basic return you need monthly? Is there a season issue for juice and tourism etc? These are just some of the questions I made myself answer. I still ask myself some of these questions from time to time so I don’t lose my way.
You could always jump in the deep end but it sounds like you need to feel the need for juice in Croatia. Is there a market - which I am sure there is. Another thought is you could offer to rent space in a cafe/restaurant already set up and prepare juice on their location.
Overall best word I can give you is chat with your health officer and understand what you can and can’t do because you don’t want to put all your effort in to be shut down if you’re noncompliant.
Best of luck with the adventure!
Fiona
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