Hi board, I am starting to think about the years down the road. My building is being put on the market and we will no longer be interested in staying there after our lease runs out in 7 years. I have two years remaining on my current option, with a five year option after that. I have been approached by another landlord about moving into their space but I would be resposible for the buildout. He is willing to finance the buildout up to $60,000 over the first five years built into the lease for that time.
My question to the board is…has anyone relocated? how did it go? what unforeseen expenses did you occur? Is it a good idea in general? aand I am sure I could think of 100 more questions, but maybe someone knows exactly what is involved.
Hi wicked, i am new member looking for same answer as you.Have current pizzeria for last 7 years but shop is too small(6mx6m) to grow and i am seriously thinking about relocating about 1 klm away to bigger premises. My question is to anyone who has done this is, did you lose your regular customers? i have a chance of keeping this current little shop running but is that a waste of money or a smart move to avoid competition moving into this shop, We definatly need bigger shop with more space to work in and more space for customers,4 customers fills the waiting area,not good.Only negative about moving is the cost of about $70,000. If anyone has done this successfully,i would love some advice ,cheers
Whether a landlord pays for the buildout has to do with leasing conditions where you are. I do even know where that is let alone what the conditions are… but it occurs to me that a landlord who is recruiting you two years out might be a bit flexible in the discussion. A proven operator as a tenant is a desirable thing.
Another option you should look at is owning. Go talk to your bank about what they would need to see two years out to put together an SBA loan for you to buy a location. Over time you can’t beat the math.
Thank you Bod,
The purchase of the building is not in play. They want prime price plus the building needs to come down. The front signage, seal coating and HVAC alone that needs to be updated is $75,000.
I am not talking about buying the building you are in. I am saying with a move likely and comfortable timeline, moving to a location you own is an option you should be looking at.
I am also looking at relocating. My options are to move about 100 yards from my current location (being able to buy the building) or moving a mile closer to the central of the city and buying the building. My existing landlord will not sell the place I am in.
my restaurant is 2 years old and i opened 4 blocks from my fathers old place (he retired and sold the property) where i worked for the last 12 years. so, it was kind of a relocation…my place has a different name(we didn’t own the name).
Number one!!! make sure the new place is ready to go before you shut down the old place…i can not stress that enough! We didn’t have the ability to get the new place ready before hand and had to shut down for almost 6 months. now we are running at about 50% of what the old place did.
I was lucky enough to find a old restaurant that had shut down so getting it ready was a sinch. if you do, make sure to get all the hvac checked out. Ours sucks! it doesn’t warm up in the winter and its hot in here in the summer also the exhaust hood isn’t balanced so om sure it just sucks all the conditioned air out the hood. those were the two biggest hurdles i have faced.
My family has this convo a lot and we have heard a lot of stories of pizza places moving locations and doing 5x the amount of business they were doing before and we have heard stories of places that do really well and open a second location only for it to fail miserably. i really think it is location, location, location.