Great Businesses I Love # 2: Hotel Des Arts Montmatre

So I got back from my wee voyage to Paris yesterday evening, and it was a wonderful wee trip, made all the better by the hotel we stayed in. I hate spending too much on accomodation, but got an absolutely cracking deal on the hotel in the montmatre area of Paris. It helps that it was January, but £220 for 3 nights in a central Paris hotel inc. breakfast is brilliant.

The 'Hotel Des Arts' is a 3 star hotel that feels like a 5 star! The staff were just as they should be, friendly without being too intrusive, helpful and happy. The hotel itself has recently been renovated, the rooms were small'ish but beautifully decorated, the lobby was beautiful, and it was in a fantastic location, only 2 minutes walk from the famous Moulin Rouge. I've stayed in Paris twice previously, paid roughly the same for a room in a 2/3 star hotel and felt robbed. This hotel was simply a breath of fresh air. The breakfast was great in comparison to other 'continental' breakfasts I've had elsewhere; the place was immaculately clean, and quite simply, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone visiting Paris who doesn't fancy spending the likes of £300 a night for a hotel room.

Businesses like this who pay attention to detail and put the customer first won't struggle as much as others during a recession, and if ever I'm in Paris again, I know where I'm staying. Check out their reviews on Tripadvisor, that tells you everything you need to know.

Thinking outside the box...

Myself and Mike (my business partner for the mexican takeaway) have been getting very frustrated in trying to find a restaurant to let in our target area. We visited a friend who runs a milkshake bar yesterday to get some advice on shopfitting-type costs and various bits and bobs. He runs his business from a retail unit, which is perfectly legal as he doesn't 'make' hot food on the premises, but he does 'reheat' things such as paninis and the sort. This got the wee cogs turning in our brain, and we started chatting...

We know how difficult it has been getting a property with the right planning consent (Class A3), but one thing that is in abundance at the moment due to the credit crunch is quality retail property (Class A1). We thought about how we could utilise this to our advantage, and so we sat and talked about what we were trying to do, and what menu items we are going to sell.

We realised that the only thing that was holding us back on our menu was the cooking of meat. We don't plan on deep-frying anything and everything we serve is heated or steamed rather than cooked. Rice and beans aren't really classed as 'cooking' as such, and so it's fine to make these on your premises without restaurant consent. Serving drinks and tortillas with salsa or guacamole is obviously fine, it's just the cooking of the meat that is holding us back. So, that set our minds racing.

Is there a way we can cook the meat elsewhere (such as an industrial kitchen), refrigerate and deliver it then reheat it without losing the quality or taste of the finished product?

Well apparently there is. 'Sous Vide'. Sous-vide, French for "under vacuum", is a method of cooking that is intended to maintain the integrity of ingredients by heating them for an extended period at relatively low temperatures. Food is cooked for a long time, sometimes well over 24 hours. Unlike cooking in a slow cooker, sous-vide cooking uses airtight plastic bags placed in hot water well below boiling point (usually around 60°C). There's a picture of one in action below;



The beauty of Sous-vide is that you cannot overcook meats, and that it's done almost automatically in a water-bath. Being vacuum-packed, none of the flavour or freshness can escape, and assuming it's refrigerated, you can store it for up to ten days safely. You csn use the same method to quickly reheat a cooked meat product, which produces fabulous results. Groundbreaking Superchef Heston Blumenthal is known to use the method, and it's rumoured that some of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants do this in an industrial kitchen and simply deliver the products for use in his restaurants afterward. If it's good enough for those guys, it's good enough for me!

Needless to say; we need to do more digging on the subject, but it's a start and it may provide a simple, cheap, automatic cooking method that allows us to reheat food in store without any loss of flavour or freshness. That would allow us to use a retail unit instead of a restaurant one, and would save us tens of thousands of £. We could also get a retail unit in a fabulous area for buttons at the moment. Watch this space, with interest...



p.s. I'm off to France until Friday; won't be posting again until I'm back, full of croissants, snails and frog's legs, yum!

Big News on Biz 2!...

I have some pretty big news on the tour company business. I've bought a bus. Or put down a £500 non-refundable deposit on it anyways. Things seem to happen a lot quicker in the real world when 'the opportunity' comes along.

I incorporated my second company last week, but didn't really see the point in boring you with the details of that as it's exactly the same process as before. I've been casually looking at buses over the last couple of months and was searching some websites for a used bus in good condition. I went onto Ebay of all places and just did a random search in the commercial vehicles section to see what it came up with. Our preferred bus is a Mercedes Vario 24-seater conversion, but we hadn't seen any in good enough condition to convince us to bite. We weren't going to buy a bus for another month or so, but I saw this beautifully kept coach and just HAD to go and see it with my business partner, David. It was just 25 miles away from Edinburgh, so we felt we owed ourselves the opportunity to actually go and view it.

David, as I said previously, has the necessary qualifications to run a transport firm and knows a lot more about buses than me. So the following day we arranged to view it and visited the coach company who had owned and operated the coach for the last 9 years (always a good sign). The bus is almost 12 years old, but this isn't necessarily a good guide to it's valuation or reliability. In the coach business, it's all about maintenance and how well it's been looked after. Both David and myself have driven coaches in the past that were 2/3 years old and what we would call 'dogs', and we've both driven immaculate 15 year-old buses. So when we went to meet the owner of this firm who has a 20-strong fleet and he was underneath one of his buses in overalls with his hands covered in oil and grease at 8am on a Saturday morning, we knew it was a good sign that the bus had been taken care of.

Sure enough, David went for a wee test drive and remarked about how well the bus drove and how solid it looked. I looked around it and made a few generic bus remarks to make it look as though I knew what I was talking about, but generally I kept out of the way as I trust David's judgment. I have to admit, it felt very solid from my seat at the very back of the bus and when we returned we asked the obligatory questions you ask when buying a used vehicle. It's coming with a full years' MOT and nearly-new tyres which is excellent, the bodywork is incredible (for it's age) and it suits our needs perfectly.

We asked him for his lowest price, and he told us. We were pleasantly surprised, but I think the fact we're 'bus' people and fairly local meant he knew we weren't there to mess him about. So we discussed it on the way back to the city, and we both agreed we wanted THIS bus. It's not the cheapest, it's a bit of gamble (indeed I might just tag this with 'Daft things I've done'), and it's not exactly the right time for us, but we've bought it. "Seize the moment," as they say. Here she is; albeit with the company name blurred to conceal identity of seller;



We're going to get a de-liveried silver Mercedes Vario coach, and I need to get my arse in gear and organise the balance by next week. The seller won't be getting a replacement for 4-6 weeks, so has said we can leave the bus there during this time, which is perfect for us as it means we don't have to pay for storage space. I wrote up a quick contract of sale to affirm both of our positions, as the seller is going to replace the silencer on the bus as the agreed price, and we have no interest in the private registration number plate he has on it, so he retains the mark and will put the original back on. I also forfeit the deposit if I don't come up with the cleared balance with 14 days, but this shouldn't be a problem. All of this, AND I'm heading to Paris on Monday for 3 nights with my girlfriend. It's going to be a hectic couple of weeks!

We're going to try and get a quote to get her painted for launch sometime over Easter, and if I get my way, she'll look like this:



GINGER BUS!

A Little Tale...

So, yesterday was my girlfriend's birthday. I'm not here to tell you about what sort of cake she had, rather something curious that happened to me due to my (in)action.

I hadn't seen my girlfriend in three days as she had been away at a work conference, so when she returned to Edinburgh I had to get ready to surprise her (cake, balloons, presents all that sort of thing). I had to rush out and get some final things, but once I'd returned home I realised I hadn't any wrapping paper! "DAMMIT!" I shouted as I cursed my luck, she was returning home in 20 mins and I had no time to go and buy some gift-wrap.

The sheen of a gift is lost when you present it in the plastic carrier bag labelled with the name of the emporium whence it was purchased, so I had to think fast. HMMM, as far as I knew there was no christmas paper left over, so that was out.

I sat and thought for about 5 minutes. What should I do?! The first (and only) thing that came to me was to use the only abundant source of paper in the house (no, not toilet roll!), takeaway menus. Yes, you read right. I live in the city of Edinburgh, where takeaways are in abundance, hence I am constantly having their menus shoved through my letterbox. I'd gathered them in a pile in the kitchen rather than throw them away, so I started sifting through them for the ideal 'wrapping paper' for my gifts. I settled on my local Chinese takeaway for the larger gift, and a pizza hut menu for the smaller one. See results below;



As I sat admiring my work; I thought, "Hey, I actually quite like this, but she'll probably think I'm just a cheapskate." I thought the whole thing was so ridiculous, I actually asked people via my Facebook status what they thought of the idea, posted the picture, and waited for the onslaught from angry lady-friends. The response I got was rather different than I thought.

I got replies such as the plain, "You're an idiot" and complaints from girls about their own boyfriends wrapping exploits, or lack of. Things were definitely weighted in an 80:20 ratio to the negative comments, but there was a surprising number of positive ones too! Stuff about the originality of the idea to the environmentally-friendly aspect of re-using paper.

But the biggest surprise was that of my girlfriend herself! She liked it! So much so, she actually PREFERRED IT to regular wrapping paper. Is there a moral to this story? I'm not sure, maybe there is. If there is; it's certainly to stay original, keep true to yourself, and no matter how original/wacky/ridiculous an idea might be, you will still have a niche set of 'fans' who will love what you do. Remember this when starting YOUR business, keep it real.

Oh; and whilst I had that gushing feeling of happiness/relief/pride wash over me when my girlfriend told me she loved it, she then announced, "There's regular wrapping paper in the cupboard in the bedroom." DOH!

Tune in tomorrow when I have REALLY big news re: Business no.2, the Highland Tour Company.

Logical fallacies that cost you money...

I have nothing at all to blog on the above heading, but I was reading an article on the above @ cracked.com which had me laughing out loud in recognition of the fallacies of the human condition. Written from an americana-perspective, but still well worth a read.

Go see, laugh and learn.

Great Businesses I Love #1: Shiply.com

I've decided I'm going to run a feature on the blog called 'Great Businesses I Love' whenever I find them. Businesses that have inspired me in some way, or are doing things differently and shaping the world. I'll present it in a simple 'case study' sort of way, then I'm going to tell you why I love this particular business.

So, to start us off, I want to tell you about a fantastic business I came across just today! Like I said before, I love the constant efficiencies entrepreneurs find in the market and how they lower the overall cost of living, or improve the standard of it (same thing really!), and this business is no different. It's called 'Shiply.com' and it involves couriers and delivery firms bidding for your business when you need something delivered! You list the item you need moved and up to 4,000+ firms bid on it for you. It's done completely online and in real time. This is a FANTASTIC business, because it utilises the empty space on trucks returning home from a delivery they were doing anyways, and thus they don't want much money to deliver something for you, it's a bonus to them. Shiply says this process could save you 'up to 75%' of courier costs, which is nothing short of miraculous. This is all about mobility of goods, and bringing down the transport costs brings down the overall cost of goods in general, making this one efficient business! This will benefit all individuals (apart from haulage firms and couriers long-term obviously!), as goods that might have previously been uneconomical to ship are now economical to do so, and goods that were going to be shipped anyway will now come down in cost. This means we'll either move more or new stuff around at almost the same cost, or we'll move the same amount of stuff around at a lesser cost, therefore either saving moving or providing extra trade/goods/services. Isn't the free market wonderful?

This of course could have a negative effect on haulage firms (assuming we move around the same quantity of goods, but this is 'creative destruction' at it's best). If we move around the same quantity of goods at a lower cost and make haulage firms more efficient as they then fill their empty spaces, this inevitably means we have more disposable cash in our pockets to spend on other stuff, thereby making us 'richer'! Now, this also means there will be fewer lorries on the road as some haulage firms will go out of business and some people will lose their jobs, but the extra efficiencies created and money saved will mean that is put to a more productive use. The fewer lorries on the road means less steel will have to be used manufacturing lorries bringing down the cost of steel, and the labour used to do that can be directed elsewhere. It means fewer mechanics working on and servicing the lorry, and less oil being burned to ship goods, thereby bringing down the cost (albeit ever, ever, ever so slightly!) of both servicing AND the price of oil. Now, I'm not suggesting for one moment that 'Shiply.com' is going to do all this by itself, but the cumulative effect of businesses finding extra efficiency in the economy and the market makes us ALL better off, even if it's only by pennies. And that's what I love about business...

Business # 3 - 2Four7 Vending...

Hopping straight onto business no. 3, one I'm a little less confident in than the previous two, but nonetheless I'm willing to give it a crack due to the low start-up costs, low barriers to entry and thus low risk. Now, some might say that this approach will inevitably yield low profits, but it's the yield % on investment that I'm interested in.

The idea is thus; to have 24 hour access to vending machines for snacks in city centre locations. Now, you might think that 24 hour stores would be rife in 21st century Britain, but it ain't so in my experience. A city as cosmopolitan as Edinburgh doesn't have one newsagents that is open 24 hours, in the city centre anyway. A lot of the little stores far away from the supermarkets charge a premium for absolutely everything, and folk seem willing to pay. But these little stores close overnight, normally around 10pm due to it being uneconomical to pay wages during this time. Even at minimum wage, 1 person sitting in a wee shop themselves for 8 hours (10pm to 6am) would cost the best part of £50. That means that even at the prices these wee shops charge, they might need to take £100 to break-even on the cost of goods and their overheads/restocking. Plus, the security of opening late at night with one person in a shop by themselves. You can see why they don't do it, it just wouldn't be profitable and wouldn't be worth the hassle.

But a vending machine would be viable. You can pick up a good vending machine for around £500-1000, and this may last you a few years with very little in servicing charges. The only labour involved is to buy stock, stock it up and empty the cash. Now, obviously there would be a bit of a security risk with there being an unmanned area with a vending machine full of cash. So, there are a couple of proposals to this problem. 1. Credit/Debit Card Vending Machines - new wireless technology allows vending machines to take plastic, which obviously takes away the risk of the machine being raided for cash, but then you may have to add extra onto your prices in order to negate the card charges, plus these machines would need to be brand new and would cost £thousands. 2. Find a secure location - This could be an area like a railway station, or somewhere that people have limited access to (obviously this might lower your overall sales, but I have a theory on this and a particular location in mind which I'm not willing to share yet.). Empty your machines of cash daily, or get someone to do it for you. Well, who would do that, and who would you trust to do that? Someone with a vested interest in the business doing well, of course. Maybe someone who takes a profit share for putting the vending machine on their premises? That's my thoughts anyway. You may be a bit confused as to where would be open at night that couldn't just sell this stuff themselves and/or be a workplace that doesn't already have a vending machine, but I'll get to that another time if it ever comes to pass.

For now, all you guys need to know is that I've found a fantastic location for this sort of business and that I think it could work. If not, all I need to do is sell the vending machine and recoup whatever it cost to experiment, which I reckon could be in the £200-300 bracket, nothing in business terms! So I'm willing to give it a pop to see if it succeeds, and if not, no big deal. If it does, I'll be into a nice little earner. Selling impulse buy snacks such as chocolate, crisps, drinks and sweets, the location could break even with profit-sharing at £300 revenues A MONTH, make £200 profit @ £600 revenues a month, and £350 profit @ £900 revenues a month. OK, so hardly likely to make a me a million, but if one machine does well in one location you expand confidently. It also requires very little time or involvement to run, so is perfect for my needs given the challenge. I've estimated that there is a market for about 4/5 24-hour access vending machines in Edinburgh alone throughout the various burbs, so who knows what sort of revenues are currently being missed out on throughout the UK as a whole?!?!

I know people don't have a particular want of sweets/crisps in the middle of the night, but this location will inspire impulse purchases both day AND night. Trust me on the location. And for the avoidance of doubt, I plan on setting up and running this whole little operation by myself, whether as a sole trader or as a ltd. company, I'm not sure. For ease of startup, I'm thinking about sole propreitorship just now...