My dad has a franchise of 5 months that is already starting to fail. He has 250k+ put into it, and thats with a shared business partner (500k+ total.) It is located in a great plaza of food and grocery, BUT there is another boba shop 2 minutes from it. I dont know why they chose to build one so close to it. By the end of the second month things started to go downhill and getting worse and worse, only making average of $100-170 dollars a day with $135 dollars needed to pay workers hours for that day. Is there really any way to save this business? Sell the business? Bankrupcy? Any advice helpful
The days of successful and lucrative Bobo shops are long gone. The cost of employees and insurance alone can be overwhelming and that’s not including rent price and product. Energy and cost of doing business has gone up drastically too. There’s way too many boba shops on every street corner in every shopping And there’s only so much but you can sell one drink for. I’ve seen it as high as $8 for a drink and that’s just crazy. You would have to sell hundreds of drinks every single day in order to just break even and of course this all depends on what city you’re in. It’s over.
What is the other boba shop doing? Is it busy? What are they offering? In my small business I have a decent idea what my competitors are doing. What they offer. How do I fit in with my product, price and service compared to others.
I read this book when I was in high school. 2008. I thought about opening a subway, and after reading this book, the franchise was a hard pass for me.
This guy nails it. I think most people just jump into the dream of a business owner and pour in loans and savings and end up doomed.
Half million for a boba franchise sure sounds like a scam. I was researching a similar franchise and the cost was 100k + add location/rent and furniture.
There are several factors to consider:
- Are your drinks taste good? Be honest to yourself or you can bring as many people to taste and listen to them. You can see if most of your customers are new and not many of them are return customers, then you need to fix the quality first.
- What is your reserve budget? If you can last on loosing money for a while, then take a deep breath and try with all marketing methods and solutions, otherwise you have to cut lost.
- Talk to the franchiser, they will help with their marketing tools, you have to pay for it. Back to #2
- What is your Unique Selling Point? The taste of the drinks are equally good between two Boba teas, why Customers like yours, not the other? You have to determine that and focus on it.
Work with schools, do fundraisers. Make signs to place on the road. Make sure you’re on delivery platforms
Happy hour, offering finger foods, and most importantly social media marketing. Doesn’t have to be paid. Put a sign up front that says 20% off your next order for following us, share our page for a discount, tag us for a chance to win a free drink. Word of mouth has been the best (but slowest) type of marketing from what I’ve seen. Getting people talking on social media is easier because of how easy it is to post content. Good luck! Sorry to hear they’re struggling.
500k to sell boba is absolutely fucking insane. And bubble tea is cheap af. It’s mostly water which is basically free. And your labor is all minimum wage.
You need to talk to the franchiser immediately. There’s serious problems if they don’t have a marketing plan for you.