What are your plans for expanding in the next 12 months?

[maxpete]

ICYMI: Square recently released the Future of Commerce 2024 report. This report will give you inspiration, tactics, and tools to future-proof your business. Make sure to download your copy here.

According to FOC 2024, restaurant expansion will be a strong industry driver in 2024. All restaurant owners surveyed plan to expand in the next 12 months.

In the report, it's mentioned that 77% of restaurants plan to expand in the coming year by adding non-core offerings like meal kits, subscriptions, events, or merchandise. 99% of retailers plan to invest in additional revenue streams, such as in-store events or advertising offerings, with the primary goal of keeping up with industry trends.

In what ways, if any, are you planning to expand in the next 12 months?

If you haven't downloaded the Future of Commerce 2024 report, get your copy here.

[maxpete]

Interested in hearing from @TCSlaguna, @Twiggy, @rtfulk, @Waterfall & @CarrieCheese! 

[rtfulk]

@maxpete Our plans is to add wholesale to our business. It may not be completely implemented this year.  We are in the early stages of making sure everything is compliant and testing is in place. Children's clothing has to go through a process.

[maxpete]

Cool to hear! Had no idea about the compliance process for this.

My wife's business recently went wholesale last year and definitely has been a good move. 

[rtfulk]

If we have any zippers or buttons, they have to be tested for lead, pajamas have to be tested for fire retardant just to name aa few.

Glad to hear your wife's wholesale business is doing good, at our at (59) it's the next logical step, we aren't getting any younger and can't expect to be on the road forever.

[TCSlaguna]

We are planning on increasing the number of services we offer and subscriptions. We think the new subscription features Square offers will help us greatly in increasing our revenue stream. 

[maxpete]

Exciting! Keep us posted on how this evolves 🙂 

[Minion]

After a year and half of trying to figure out how to import/manage thousands of aftermarket parts I have finally achieved that on my website.   Expansion is my next goal for this year. More bays, showroom , and potentially a couple different services to incorporate without over reaching and sacrificing quality of my current services.

[maxpete]

I love it! Always a good reminder to keep growth/expansion in line with quality too.

[ReneeV]

2023 was a record-breaking year for us.  We did open a second kitchen location last year to handle our growing volume. 

Pre-covid we had plans to build an event venue to support our catering company.  We are thrilled to say we are dusting off those plans and hope to start the planning process for that this year.  

Waterfall Catering

[maxpete]

This is so exciting and congrats on all of the success! Hopefully this trend continues this year!

[Ethellovesme]

We are planning to open at least one more store this year and already have one in the pipeline to open in April, maybe we will manage two. We have to be positive about our futures. 

[maxpete]

Love hearing about the growth!

[VanKalkerFarms]

On our Garden center side we just added 46,000sq ft to our main warehouse in winter 2023 and have an additional 26,000 in the pipeline for this coming winter.

On our Bakery side we are in the planning stages for a 2025 expansion of 2 more locations, we have the locations scouted and in preliminary talks with upcoming strip mall buildouts  Doing this will add brining on a full time manager to help oversee the stores and take some of the burden of my wife who currently does all the owner/managing of our 2 locations.  So that in and of itself will be a huge job to find someone to trust to take over many of the aspects of the day to day.

[maxpete]

This is awesome! Sounds like a lot of big plans coming up!

[Bronze_Palms]

Love this question! Over the last few years, I have really grown foundationally - adding in retail, merch, services. Then, growing those up and making sure we are earning in every category. My only next way to grow is to get a second location and duplicate it. Looking forward to that in 2024.

[maxpete]

Love this growth!