Have you ever considered selling your cafe or restaurant? Most business owners find this to be a tough decision to make – especially if you’ve built your café or restaurant up from scratch. With so much time and effort put into starting and running your eatery, it might help to keep an open mind when considering whether you’ll benefit more from selling or by staying put.
If you’ve already received an offer to sell, it could be difficult to entertain the feeling of having to let go of all your hard work. But just ask anyone who’s ever sold his or her first business. They’ll be sure to tell you that feelings should hardly come in the way when opportunity comes knocking on the front door of your café or restaurant.
In a nutshell, it pays to keep an open mind when the right opportunity presents itself. It takes time to successfully sell your business. Buyers won’t just appear out of the blue the moment you’ve resolved to sell your café. Most business owners have a year on average between the time they list their business, and get it successfully sold. That’s a lot of time on your hands to spend auditing your business to figure out how else you could increase its value.
So is there anything else on your to-do list, when it comes to improving the value of your business? Are there any assets, fixtures, or machinery in your business premises that might need fixing or replacing before you list your café to potential buyers? How about making improvements to your business processes? A year could provide lots of time and opportunity for you to create additional value for a potential sale. Running a café or restaurant might help lots of business owners get by financially – but in the business world, real rewards are always reaped from increasing the value of your café.
Raise the Value of Your Café Before You Sell It
It’s common sense to make the most from the sale of your hard work, and investment of resources. If you are looking for ways to prepare your business for sale, then you’re already thinking in the right direction. Businesses that are prepared for sale generally sell in a shorter amount of time, and for more money. With a well-planned exit strategy, your café or restaurant could value at up to 50 – 100 % more than any other business sold without preparation.
If you want your café to sell well, your accountant should probably be the first person you consult. Discuss any potential tax implications, and the timeline of your potential sale. Could either of these types of factors influence your financial standing during the process of a potential sale? Are you financially prepared to go through with the sale?
Selling your cafe business could make for a very emotional decision. Especially for first time business owners, and those who have developed an attachment to their café or restaurant from all their hard work. Plenty of these types of businesses can start off as pet projects, built from their owners’ passions. However, times can get bad for any business owner, and this leaves many of them inclined to sell their business based on emotional decisions. Needless to say, you should reconsider selling if your reason for doing so is built around wanting to be rid of the pain points you experience from running your café. When it comes to selling a cafe, it’s always better to focus on your entrepreneurial motivations, and not your emotional perspectives.
Consulting with a professional broker could also grant you an advantage not often considered by many entrepreneurs. A professional broker could help you determine an accurate valuation of your business, so you’ll be prepared to enter any potential negotiation with a buyer. Professional business brokers also have access to industry information, and can provide an accurate idea of what businesses actually sell for.
When it comes to selling a cafe, most of the work goes into preparation. Start by getting your documents in order. By this, we mean everything from your expenditure to payroll, to provide potential buyers with proof of accountability. The point of all this preparation is to reduce any perspective of risk that may appear in the mind of your potential buyer. In our experience, buyers often react to risk through either of two ways. By questioning the opportunity, thus slowing down the sale process, or by seeing an opportunity to further negotiate your asking price.
It might surprise you to know that there are people who go through the entire process of preparing their business for sale, only to realise much later that they would rather not sell. The benefit to this is that you’ll find your business much easier to run, especially after you’ve taken stock of your café’s different operational aspects.
We can Help You Achieve Real Results whether You are Buying or Selling Your Business
Professional business brokers look to achieve a smooth outcome, no matter what the objective of your transaction is. At Selling Your Business, our team of professional brokers brings over 20 years’ experience, and an extensive network of contacts and resources to bring immediate benefit to your search for a buyer or seller.
Regardless your specific preferences, working with a professional business brokerage like ours can grant the degree of confidentiality you may seek in a private sale. We are also able to provide our network with an updated listing of businesses available on the market. Keeping a current inventory is just one way we help our clients attract more buyers, and your business’ marketability is something we keep as a top priority.
If you are looking to close a deal on your café or restaurant business, Selling Your Business provides the expert counsel and execution to help you achieve maximum profitability on your sale or purchase.
