Soft play cafe

[Hudhud31]

Hey guys so I'm 22 with 2 kids under 3 basically there isn't anything to do around here and I drive to my nearest soft play which is a 20mins drive and it really isn't special so I thought I should look into opening up a small soft play for 0-6year olds in my local market square. My family think it's a wicked idea as I also get to have my dream cafe too (I'm a awesome baker and make all bday cakes for friends and family) basically I have no idea what I'm doing or where to start.
I've registered for the princes trust to help me write my business plan. But sitting here I'm trying to work out all the costs of things I'm going to need and I can't figure out what else so far I have

Insurance
Kitchen appliances
Soft play equipment
Seating and tables
Utilities
But other then that I don't know.
If anyone can help please do I'm so out of my depth it's unreal

Just off the top of my head without even thinking about it...

Rent
Staff
Advertising
Stamp duty (I think you may have to pay stamp duty on renting commercial property in some areas)
Solicitors fees

I reckon soft play is a hugely expensive start up cost, especially with a cafe too - you'll be looking at tens of thousands, if not £100k+ for a decent set up.

Accountant.

You'll also need childcare for your children.

Appropriate Food Handling training (prob called something else nowadays).

What about planning permission?

Thanks for your help really appreciate it.

My 3year old is going to school full time in Sep so don't have to worry about her and nan is going to have my little boy. Accountant is going to be dh.
Food hygiene course is free around here yay
Planning permission is only if I change the use of a building which I'm going to try my hardest not to have to do.
Staff wise I have a huge family and they are all getting ropped in until I am stable enough to hire.
Advertisement wise Im going to put little signs up in the local schools and cafes (if I'm allowed) if not I'm going to basically stop every mum walking down the street and give flyers.

I'm so scared it's going to cost a lot more then I think. I heard too that 100k is for a really good one.
I was looking to just have it basic for now large floor soft play and two storied very small area for the bigger kids.
I went on soft play sellers website and the price is ridiculous!!! But on eBay there are companies from china selling massive structures for only £6000 so I don't understand why the English ones are charging so much

There is a reason why goods in China are so much cheaper- basically they are full of tat and rubbish quality. Most likely not even certified to EU or UK safety standards

Yep you will need to ensure that you meet safety standards.

My 3year old is going to school full time in Sep so don't have to worry about her

You're going to be working from very early to very late - of course you're going to need some kind of childcare. You'll want to be open from at least 9am to catch the clients who have just dropped older kids off at school and will stop in on their way home - so you'll need to be in from 8am to get ready.

Family getting roped in seems a great idea but if you're not paying them the going rate then in reality it's not going to work as it's a casual commitment from them. Please don't write your business plan and staffing around free/cheap labour from family, the bank will laugh you out of the office.

And for Christ sake don't buy your equipment from China, there will be very stringent British safety standards that you'll have to adhere to.

You'll need public liability insurance
IKEA do business orders so you can order fifteen tables, fourty chairs and twenty high chairs and get them delivered. I think there's a lot of customer reassurance in those Antilop highchairs! Very easy to keep clean too.

Best of luck to you

I think you should do very rough costs, but then before you go much further, work out how many customers buying two drink and a piece of cake (or whatever you think is realistic) you need to make it profitable.
If at this point the number comes out as 200 per day then you can see, without putting too much more time into it, that the model just doesn't work.

flyers in cafes and stopping parents won't be enough for advertising. you will need to be social media savvy and do a lot of advertising on there. we've had two soft play cafes open up around where I live recently and this is what they've done.

Rospa advice

What about childcare on weekends? Arguably the busiest days for soft play.

Also do staff in soft plays have to be DBS checked? Obviously only a small cost but one to bare in mind.

Definitely agree with pp not to build a business plan around family good will. You need to factor in staff costs from day one.

You will need DBS checks for all staff, even if they are family members.
Do not buy cheap materials from China.

Starting a business takes a lot of effort and quite often you pull no wage for the first few years so you'll need to consider that.

Insurance is costly, staffing is costly, you'll have food wastage to write off, electrical appliance checks will be required, you'll need a first aider on site at all times so you'll need a couple of staff to do the courses, you'll need to consider covering the staff ratio during holidays - 28 days a year inc bank holidays is the current minimum for full time staff. You need to report wages in real-time so if you pay staff weekly, you'll have to make the time to do this every week. You also need to factor in NI contributions, although I believe there is still a £2k relief for small businesses. Rent and council tax can also be high - although again I think there is a relief for SMEs. Utility bills can also sky rocket out of control - I now pay £145 a month for one of my premises on electric only.

I can't imagine a cafe letting you advertise your cafe either so you may want to rethink your strategy there.

Sit down with a pen and paper, write out all expenses, do your research, properly calculate what you will need to turnover a week to cover your overheads. I have to turnover £4k a week before I make a penny of profit. Fine when I'm busy - less so when I'm not.

All that info is very much Appreciated.
I'm very blessed and lucky to have a extremely large family and I don't have to ever worry about childcare. So weekends mornings, evenings and holidays it's all fine thank god.

Not saying I'm going to buy from china but I'm just trying to understand the very huge price diffrence.

My entire family will be dbs checked and first aid trained.
I won't be paying my family until we make a profit and then I will pay them before I pay myself.
Also right now I'm not going to the bank for a loan.
The cafes around here are really lovely and have little notice boards for small businesses and have already agreed to me putting flyers up. Also that's for the social media advice I will defo be doing that!

Thanks for the ikea furniture idea will be looking into that.

X

I won't be paying my family until we make a profit and then I will pay them before I pay myself.
Also right now I'm not going to the bank for a loan.

I won't pretend to know anything about business but surely this is a really bad idea. You won't start paying people until you're in profit but then surely that means you aren't in profit.

Fair enough I understand many small business owners don't pay themselves for a few years but your employees will be an ongoing business expense so should presumably be factored in from the moment you start, it's not like you can rely on free labour from family members forever.

I'm unsure if it's the right way to think but from where I stand I just see them as an extension of me. I may be super wrong I have no idea lol .but my sister is going to be my business partner and she will probably be the one that's mostly there but at busy times I may get some more family to help.

We used to go to a soft play run in a church hall. The lady who owned it had it all day in the week but not for evenings or weekends. She had a small bouncy castle at one end. The main play area was covered in those interlocking foam mats with a wall around made from proper soft play foam wall things! This left a wide path around the edge of the hall which was used for ride ons. The far end of the hall next to the kitchen was the cafe area and she had a smaller side room for quieter activities like books and jigsaws with softer seating (cushions). In the main area were lots of children's toys like a wendy house, a kitchen, a tool table and dolls/baby bouncers/musical instruments/small slide etc.

It was much more 'low key' than the ones with massive purpose built climbing frames but it was more special than a mother and toddler group. My kids loved it. It didn't attract the school age kids so much so was much nicer for the 0-4 crowd.

Oh, and there was only ever her and one other adult to run it which was enough.

Don't forget that parents of small children don't often spend a lot. So you may get 3 mums come in and order X1 coffee each and if your lucky a cake. Each parent has brought a pushchair and probably brought there own snacks for the kids. They might buy the kids a soft drink (squash). They may pay £3 to play and £2 for a coffee. They will probably stay for a few hours. It's unlikely they will keep buying coffee and cakes, but will nurse one coffee each. They have all brought pushchairs and probably used up all available space for anyone. Else wanting to come. So you've earnt £15 for 3 people to hog the entire cafe space.
A small space won't work. You need a good sized place otherwise you won't be able to fit in a decent soft play and a cafe.
You'll want multiple spaces for changing babies children, and pushchair space. Either a space outside that's dry and secure or somewhere inside.
Read any thread on here about running a cafe, it's a small profit and low turnover. Most business go bust within a year and it's easy to see why. People are attracted to the chain restaurants.
Marketing will need to be direct and targeted at parents. A flyer in a cafe won't cut it. They also won't want to advertise another cafe.
I'm not trying to be negative, but realistic. It's unlikely you will make a profit within the first year.
Don't buy from China, you'll need good quality stuff that conforms to current British safety. Don't forget with us leaving the EU rules may change on safety etc.
Family are saying now they will work for free but that will probably change after a few months. Can you afford to not take a wage for a year, possibly more?
You'll need a strong business plan and account for every possibility.

You're going to ask people to work for free until you can pay them? Do they not have jobs at the moment? What hours are you expecting your cafe to be open?

How are you funding the start up?

Are you registering as a limited company? Will you be VAT registered? Once you start paying your staff (and you really should do this from the word go, regardless as to whether or not they are family) you realise you have to offer a pension scheme once they are over 21?

I'm really not trying to be negative but I've been running my business since I was 19 and I'm now 31. My business is doing ok but I still have months where we're quieter than normal and that has a massive impact on cashflow - which is ultimately more important that profit on a day to day basis. I do a cashflow forecast every fortnight and send management accounts and company reports to my management team and shareholders. I now have a nice house, nice car, earn a good wage...but I have had times where I've had to inject £10k of cash and ask my shareholders to do the same. I also have a massive fear that one day it's going to go wrong and I'm going to lose everything.

Running a business is not easy. Good luck to you but I would absolutely do a bucketful of research before you venture down the path.

How about opening a child friendly cafe instead? We used to visit a lovely cafe that had a play area for young kids where the kids could play for free. It was just Ikea toys in there, but it was really nice. They also ran activities for parents and kids during the week. It had loads of high chairs and a child-friendly menu.

I think that would be a less ambitious project. A soft play would need so much investment to buy the equipment. A cafe, less so.

A business that needs staff but cannot pay them is not a business, it's a fairytale. I wonder if your family are indulging you for now as they know this won't come to fruition.

If you are relying on bank loans to start up, nobody will loan you the money based on free staff being part of your plan.

If you have the cash ready to start up then I'd hope your husband being an accountant will strongly advise against it.

Either do it properly or don't do it at all.

If baking cakes is what you love then do that, from home. Far less likely that you're going to haemorrhage 40k plus doing that.

I second a kids cafe, with lots of lovely toys.

Op you need to buy the best soft play equipment you can find. Equipment from.China is cheap.for a reason_,it is crap.

As you will be working with children.even indirectly you and any staff you employ will need enhanced DBS checks, a 12 hour paediatric approved first aid course and to have undergone basic safeguarding training.

You need a reasonably sized space for the soft play and a really good nutritious kids menu including gluten free/dairy free options.

Family working for you paid or unpaid not great.

I agree I wouldn't do a softplay cafe - who are your target customers? Would you take your kids to a tiny softplay more than a handful of times before it comes boring? I'd happily go out of my way to go to a nice child friendly cafe: a gated area with toys (that could be rotated so it stays interesting for the kids) or a role play type place (stations around the room, few dress up bits etc.