Client: Confidential

Working at a country park based visitor attraction, Planning Solutions Consulting Limited was commissioned to carry out an options appraisal and feasibility study to evaluate the opportunity to develop a new catering operation within the country park. This included assessing opportunities for supporting conference, corporate and social functions uses. A key objective focussed on building financial resilience and improving the business performance of the café and catering operation. Our work focussed on:

• Carrying out a baseline review of the existing catering operation – helping to identify key constraints and future opportunities
• Stakeholder consultation, including frontline café staff
• Review of a benchmarked example of a café within a country park which had been through a positive transformational change
• Market review of existing visitors and the wider demographic profile, living within specific drivetime contours of the country park and a review of the key trends within the visitor attractions and country parks catering marketplace
• Competitive review of the catering offers available in the wider area including the provision of venues which could host wedding receptions and conferences along with social and corporate functions
• Identifying and evaluating the development options in terms of size, scale and form of the new café and supporting facilities
• Setting out headline capital costs
• Reviewing different delivery models from being operated in-house through to being outsourced to a third-party operator. The key constraints / weaknesses and pros / benefits associated with each option were also set out
• Testing the financial viability of the proposed development scenario by producing a supporting trading profile
• Preparing an indicative delivery programme

The study was further reinforced by our sister company’s direct operational experience of managing over ten cafes and other catering outlets at the visitor centres and hotel they operate.

How can we help?
If you operate or are thinking about developing a new a café or restaurant within a country park or visitor attraction and would like to identify approaches to improving the financial performance or developing a supporting business case please don’t hesitate to call or email Richard Linington on 023 9248 1999 or richard@pslplan.co.uk