How to Prepare a Cafe For Sale – Rob’s Vlog from Paul Leach on Vimeo.
Hi guys, Rob from GSE business consultants here and welcome to my video blog. In these blogs I am going to be sharing with you my advice, insights and tips on the best ways to buy a café, how to professionally manage and run a cafe and how to effectively sell a cafe.
In this first sequence of videos I am going to be talking to you about the most important things you need to consider when you are selling your café. Please feel free to leave comments below and do share this video with your friends.
Ok the first thing that to think about when you have made the decision to sell your café is preparation, you need to create a portfolio of documents that a buyer is likely to ask for during the sale process.
Documents such as your last 3 years financials, your lease which is a crucial document which you probably haven’t thought about much but can cause problems during the sale process, in fact I’ll pick up a more detailed discussion about your lease in a future video You will also need a list of your plant and equipment. A recent stocktake and other documents are also useful. You really can’t give too much detail at this stage.
If you are selling on your own without the help of a broker, you should also consider a privacy document that potential buyers need to sign before you share your commercially sensitive information.
What we want to do is give the potential buyer a clear and detailed picture of how the business performs financially and how it operates on a day to day basis, so they can identify potential areas for development and growth and make a clear decision about whether it suits their needs.
If you skip this step as so many businesses do, then you are either going to slow down the sales process while you run around trying to get the buyer the documents they ask for or even worse they lose interest and walk away.
Quick story, When I was selling my café I was in a situation where my buyer was quite far down the track in negotiations with another café but because I had a much more detailed portfolio that person felt more confident in buying my business and I was able to complete the sale.
So, to summarise, good preparation in the form of a portfolio of relevant documents is going to give an accurate picture of the business which will give the buyer confidence and speed the sale process along.
OK Look out for my next video where we will be talking about how to work out how much to sell your café for, how to create a marketing strategy and where to advertise. Remember If you need any help in buying, running or selling your café then hit the contact me button below and we will be in touch. otherwise thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.
