Is This a Good Idea?

[girlwithanidea]

Just wanted to start by saying I'm not a parent, but I have a business idea with parents of babies, toddlers and younger children (i.e. 0-5) as the target market, and the idea is as follows lol:

Imagine something that's a cross between a nursery and a play area that is located in, or very close to your town centre. It's filled with staff who are all qualified childcare workers, and thoroughly checked for criminal convictions, etc too.
The main purpose of this place is to provide a safe, clean space in which parents can leave a baby or small child for some time while they do anything from shopping with a friend in peace to going to a doctor's appointment without worrying about the kid, in lieu of a small fee and signing a few papers beforehand (confirming that you're agreeing to leave the child here in our care for a given amount of time, notifying us of any allergies/conditions).

What makes it different from a typical nursery, however is that you don't require a membership as such, and this place is open all seven days of the week, from 9 am - 5pm (as opposed to only Monday - Friday like most nurseries). You also wouldn't have to worry about your child being bored, as there would be some fun activities for them to take part in on the lines of what you'd find at a soft play centre (ball pools, slides, etc.)

So my question is, mums of Mumsnet- do you feel like this could potentially be a good idea? Like would you be interested in a place like this if it opened near you (or would you have been when your children were younger, if they are older now)? If not, why not? Any questions/suggestions?

Thanks for taking the time out to read all this if you got this far, and looking forward to hear what you guys have to say!

I think the advice you get will depend on different kids needs. I know some kids who'd be happy to be dropped randomly, but many others needs a key person, adaptations, settling in days etc. etc. I think even doggy daycare is more mindful now of the needs of pets to feel comfortable in their environment.

I don't think it's a bad idea as such... but I can see loads of issues

It's just a crèche. I would never use one but lots of people do.

Again it's actually a plus point imo if it already exists/has existed in the past because that means some people would be open to the idea.

Also my local town centre is still full of people, and you always see mums with young children there as well, which is what partly lead to me getting this idea.

IKEA do these and I've used them for my ds aged 3+ it worked well and was a Godsend when I was trying to wrestle a wardrobe into the back of my car.

Other shopping centres and even one ASDA used to do them but have closed down more recently. It would be interesting to research why there are less of these around.

It's not a bad idea and I would use it in the right circumstances but you'd need to think very carefully about who your target market are.
EG I'd say people are more likely to leave older toddlers/pre-schoolers than babies.

Good luck.

Tbf it's reassuring that it has been done in the past as that shows that it can be done, and there would be a market for it...

Legislation, and peoples attitudes to childcare have changed a lot. When the Swindon Woolworths had a facility such as you describe it would have been pre DBS checks for instance. My SIL used to use it but it was before my DCs were born.

I think it's a great idea, but as other people have said, it would be difficult to make it work financially, particularly with the minimum staffing ratios and your proposal of making it a drop in centre rather than requiring people to book in advance.

Topshop on Oxford Street had a 'bored boyfriend area' with loads of computer games stations where you could park your fella.

I think the problem you’ve got is you need hefty subsidy by the businesses to make it work. Childcare operating at full capacity in this country barely breaks even. If you’re hoping to operate without pre booking, you’ll need very generous staff ratios, which will be either unsustainable for the business or unaffordable for the customers.
It’s a different business model for IKEA, who own their premises and typically have customers spending a lot in each visit.

They would still have to adhere to ratios and if was a drop in, they wouldn't know how many kids were going to be there on what day.They either might not have enough staff or have to turn children away. And you couldn't have older kids in the same room as smaller kids/ babies. The thing about a nursery is that they build up a relationship with their key workers so they feel safe and happy going to nursery. This would be full of screaming kids who wouldn't know if they're coming or going and I think it would have too many safeguarding issues.

Yes I imagine it works for ikea etc because they don’t need the childcare aspect to break even - for them it facilitates parents spending more money on their products. But for you, the childcare itself would have to be profitable, and I’m not sure it would be…

I used to work in a shopping centre that had such a crèche back around 2003 - 2006
i didn’t work in the crèche but I was part of the centre management team so had a good insight into how it operated.
At that time it was the main shopping centre and would be extremely busy with shoppers, it’s very quiet now. The centre set up the crèche, quite a lot of capital outlay and it took up a shop unit as really a loss leader to encourage parents to stay longer and increase spend in the centre. They then handed the contract to a private company to run it day to day.
You didn’t have to pre book just take your chance on the day, staffing levels were a huge issue some days there would huge demand and they had to turn children away other days the staff would be sitting around waiting ( still needed to be paid) as PP’s pointed out staff ratios also had to be factored in could only have so many babies or so many toddlers at a time. They struggled even at that time to get trained staff, they weren’t really able to train staff themselves so relied on poaching some trained staff from other early years setting and putting them in charge of barely trained staff. There was no staff progression so there was a big staff turnover. Also there were issues around nappy changing and toileting some parents didn’t want virtual strangers doing this for their children so inevitably parents would have to be called back at times.
They did offer snack but you had to pay a little extra for that and many parents chose not to so their kids would see the other children getting a snack while they weren’t.
it wasn’t really set up with the need to make money but it struggled to cover costs, they tried restricting the opening hours just to busy times, started taking older children only, to reduce staffing need, when it needed to have a big spend on it to update the facilities the centre took the decision to close it down.
Also what majorly affected it was when another shopping centre opened, without a crèche, and parents seemed reluctant to leave their children in a crèche in one shopping centre and travel to another shopping centre to shop, running the risk of being called back at any time, then to have to drive back to the first shopping centre to pick up their child.

It's a creche. The main issue being that you are likely to be overstaffed much of the time in order to maintain ratios for potential capacity by age group while numbers attending are unreliable. Most childcare employees want regular hours and income. Also you would need h and s and safeguarding policies to avoid ill children attending, parents disappearing from immediate vicinity etc . Rentals in locations where this might be useful are likely to be excessive and Ofsted look for specific facilities such as dedicated toilet and changing areas.

I think they are called cafes and pubs.

There was one in Lewisham shopping centre in the late nineties :)

Childminders will do this if they have z space it's called adhoc care so worth a parent building a relationship with one.