We're Approved - Yay

Outstanding, the bank has emailed an approval for the loan, so we’re rocking and rolling. It’s difficult talking to landlords and business brokers when at the end of the day we’re unable to take any real action. We could be spending our own money in anticipation of the bank coming through, but if there’s any problem with the loan we’d be left hanging in the breeze without enough capital to finish the job, but all our money tied up, and probably lost or significantly devalued.

Off to the inspection of the St Kilda café this afternoon. We arrived a little early (we’d come straight from a consulting job out of town) so stopped at Mr Wolf, around the corner on Inkerman Street for lunch pizza. Mr Wolf good and busy with funky people doing business and catching up. Inker7 next door also busy. The crowd is clearly there, providing you have an offering they like.

Trooped off to inspect the café in question. Pretty much as I remember from February, although F’s first time through. Equipment is ok – there’s a sandwich bar/under bench fridge we could use, and some smaller equipment. But we’d need to essentially pull everything out while we redecorate, which leads to some interesting logistics issues. It’s not a big space, but the size should be ok.

Desperately need to do something about the façade and the way the café presents to the street. It’s almost anonymous, and just not a good funnel drawing people in – indeed, it’s almost the reverse – it’s a narrow entrance and a big room. Few down at heel characters munching their all day breakfast highlight how in its current state it doesn’t have a hope to capture the affluent market downing gourmet pizza up the road at Mr Wolf.

The agent suggests we go for a chattels contract – so instead of buying the business and goodwill, we buy the assets – which includes permits etc. Have to pay GST (albeit we just get that back as a credit on the first BAS), and it saves the vendor coughing accountant/solicitor fees.

After a couple of phone calls, received fax from owner of the laundry building in Hampton that we like the look of, with barebones run down of potential lease arrangements. Rent’s a bit on the high side – I’ll do a survey of rentals in the area to try and peg a reasonable per square metre rate.