Researching Business Ideas

THE FINAL QUESTIONS
The key questions here are:

Will anybody want to buy my product / service?
Who?
Why? (and Why from me?)
When? (and How often?)
Where?

However, even at this early stage, it is a good idea to estimate (even crudely) the minimum size or capacity at which you will make a profit – the break-even point – as well as the maximum operating capacity that you can afford to establish.

As part of your business planning, you will prepare financial projections for inclusion in your business plan.

CALCULATING COSTS AND PROFIT MARGINS

It’s important to break down sales to the lowest level of product / service that you can manage without overwhelming yourself in detail.

Your requirements on each of these will vary depending on the sales volumes and values that you expect.

forecasting sales makes them look like child’s play.

You need to have a good idea of likely sales (with some evidence to underpin your figures) in order to:

Build your financial projections.
Estimate the production capacity you require.
Arrange for supply of materials.
Hire staff.

but against a variety of other cheap frozen food products, including fish fingers, vegetable burgers, pies and so on.

You need to find out:

When looking at your competition, you may need to consider products / services that compete indirectly with yours, as well as those that compete directly.

fast food, your business needs to be structured very differently, with more emphasis on volume production, warehousing, constancy of supply and a good distribution network.