Opening a Frozen Yogurt Store: The Financials – The Typical Overhead Expenses
Are you interested in learning about the financials of opening a frozen yogurt store? The article below is an excerpt from our FREE Soft Serve Frozen Yogurt Business Guide – CLICK THIS LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL FROZEN YOGURT STORE EBOOK.
Please understand that these figures are designed primarily to give you something of a framework for which to work from, but are in no way a specific example of what you will make from the venture.
Overhead Examples:
- Labor Costs – These are really tough to nail down and are subject to a wide range of factors. For the purposes of this guide, figure anywhere from $7,500 to $15k per month in labor. About $7,300 a month for an average store doing about $350,000 a year. A good rule of thumb for labor is about 25-30% of sales.
- Figure 3 total employees at one time in store, store open 70 hours a week. This can be trimmed down if sales are really weak on certain days or times.
Breakdown: One employee working register, one manning machine back room and keeping toppings full, one on floor as “info” person, keeping machines, floor and tables clean. Floor employee explains process to new customers, controls customer “over sampling” and generally keeps things running smoothly. Reduced to 2 employees during slower hours of the day or slower day of the week. Figure you need 3 employees on the floor for 6 of the 10 hours per day. Figure 2 employees for the other 4 of the 10 hours. Total man hours per day as noted below: 3 employees for 6 hours = 18 hours 2 employees for 4 hours = 8 hours 26 hours at a blended hourly rate of $12/hr = $312 per day or $2184 per week. Possible pay breakout below:
- Manager (@$15/hr)
- Supervisor (@$12/hr)
- Full time customer servers (@10/hr
- Part timers (@ $9/hr)
*Estimates – not a perfect science. Per hour pay includes FICA costs A first year profit and loss statement could potentially look like this (basic model):
| Annual Sales ($1000/day for 350 days)* : | $350,000 |
| Cost of Goods (Yogurt and Toppings) : | $87,500 (about 25% of sales) |
| Gross Profit: | $262,500 |
| Labor (about 25% of sales): | $87,500 |
| Rent ($3500/mo): | $42,000 |
| Bank Loan/Interest ($3000/mo): | $36,000 |
| Utilities ($1500/mo): | $18,000 |
| Miscellaneous: | $5,000 |
| TOTAL EXPENSES: | ($188,500) |
These are all very rough numbers, but to do $1000 in a 10 hour day, you would need to sell 2,200 ounces, at $.45 per ounce. At an average of 8 ounces per customer, you would need about 275 customers, or about 27 customers per hour. Again, these are rough numbers and can be tweaked by adding more hours to the day, etc. Keep in mind that as an owner/operator, your net pay would be higher since you would be paying yourself the manager salary as well as the profit. We’ve heard that there are stores out there doing $500k, $750k and up to 1 million per year. We chose to use $350,000 as an example to keep it as real as possible. The stores doing the bigger numbers are paying more rent and labor and are in very high traffic, more affluent locations.
- Rent/Location
- All over the place of course. Dependent on a ton of different factors. Can range from $10 a sq ft. to $50 a sq ft.
- Typical space requires a minimum of 600 sq ft. maximum of 2000 sq ft. Average store about 1200 sq ft.
- If a store is 1000 sq ft at $30/sq ft, then the monthly rent is $1000 X $30 = $30,000 divide by 12 months = $2500/mo
- Utilities – Again, tough to say because it depends on how many machines, etc. But an average store’s power bill will run around $1,000.
- An average store will need a 300 amp panel
