Social Business Plans

Profit margins in the restaurant business

There was a really good programme on Radio 4 at the weekend about profit margins in the restaurant business. It's well worth a listen particularly if you're thinking of setting up a restaurant, cafe or other food business, but it will give you a good insight into costs, and how to predict and control them, whatever kind of business you're in.

You can listen to the programme here. If it doesn't go directly to the programme, click on the previous editions link - it's the programme from 1 July.

Action Plan from Be Cause

I came across an interesting tookit to help you develop your social business idea on Be Cause - a partnership between the social networking site Bebo and Unltd, the Foundation for Social Entepreneurs.

I've only read it through quickly, but it looks pretty good.

How to run a focus group

Running a focus group is one way to do market research. I'll write more about focus groups some time soon, but in the meantime here's a useful document from West Berkshire Council which gives guidelines on how to run a focus group.