The Ideal Location for a Gelato Business

While the age old maxim of, "location, location, location," works to heighten the awareness of how important location is to starting a gelato shop, or galeteria, it is also a strategically useless bit of advice. There are various factors that should be considered in deciding on a location for a gelato shop which facilitate the decision of where to actually locate the shop at. The decision about location can be divided into two broad dimensions: geographic location and site location and each comes with its own set of criteria.

Any retail and food service business depends more heavily on location than other businesses in other industries because these types of operations must be both visible and accessible to the general public. Typically, the type of background research in identifying an ideal location for a gelato shop is referred to as due diligence and it must be done. Due diligence involves either purchasing the data oneself and performing traffic analysis, demographic analysis, and a review of existing businesses in the targeted area or just purchasing or commissioning the analyses outright.

Business owners look for locations with high traffic (car & people) generators such as existing large retailing operations, industrial or office complexes, or colleges and hospitals, for example. Although opening a gelato shop in less densely trafficked and populated areas may be a legitimate consideration, the business owner must recognize in advance that marketing spend will increase in order to attract customers to such locations.

Traditional business wisdom has always proposed that a new business should enter an area where it has no existing competition but this, in fact, may not be the best approach. There is a school of thought that says a potential gelato business owner should find the location of its largest potential competitor and locate a site as close as possible to that competitor.

The advantage is that because this large competitor has most certainly spent vast financial resources on developing their own market-based research on location and site analysis, then the new gelato entrepreneur can piggyback in a sense on this competitor's extensive market analysis.

Also, because the competitor is committing vast sums towards generating its own foot-traffic, the new gelato shop benefits indirectly from this advertising as well. If the gelato business owner has faith in the quality and service delivery of his or her products, then the rest will take care of itself.

The other dimension for determination of location is the actual location site analysis. If an area and building has been located for the potential gelato business then it must also be examined according to certain criteria. The first and most important question to ask is, of course, if the building is in an area appropriately zoned for a retail food business.

Following this, it must be determined if the building can meet the gelato layout requirements both in terms of current business projections as well as future growth. Also, do the building's utilities meet the business' requirements such as heating, cooling, and plumbing needs to operate a gelato shop?

And finally, another important consideration is determining if the location is accessible not only to customers but also to employees who might not otherwise visit the area where the business owner may want to be in.

Using these guidelines as a template to build the analysis strategy to source the optimum gelato business location can mean the difference between success and failure. Location is everything but the methodology in how one identifies a location is actually much more important than just getting out a map and pointing to an area as far from competitors as possible. Due diligence is paramount to long-term success.

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