By industry
Business plans by industry
The structure of a business plan barely changes between industries. What changes is which assumptions are load-bearing, which costs get forgotten, and which risk actually ends businesses in that trade. These pages cover the parts specific to each.
Food and drink
Business plan for a coffee shop
A coffee shop plan lives or dies on two numbers: how many customers come through the door each day, and what they spend. Everything else is arithmetic around those. The lease is the decision that locks in most of your fixed costs for years, so it deserves more of the plan than the menu does.
Services
Business plan for a cleaning business
Cleaning is one of the cheapest businesses to start and one of the easiest to run unprofitably. The plan needs to be honest about two things most are not: how much of the day is unpaid travel, and what happens to margins the moment you employ someone rather than doing the work yourself.
Retail and ecommerce
Business plan for an online shop
Online retail looks capital-light and frequently is not, because stock is paid for long before it sells. The plan has to get two things right: what a sale actually earns you once shipping, packaging, fees and returns are taken off, and what it costs to find the customer who made it.
Professional services
Business plan for a consultancy
A consultancy has almost no startup cost and one genuine constraint: how many days you can actually bill. The plan needs to be honest that selling, admin and holiday consume a large share of the year, and that revenue concentrated in one client is the risk that ends most independent practices.
Personal services
Business plan for a salon or barbershop
A salon is a fixed-cost business in a variable-revenue trade. Rent and rates run whether the chairs are full or empty, so the plan turns on utilisation: how many appointments each chair takes each week, and how you keep them booked through the quiet parts of the year.
Food and drink
Business plan for a food truck or street food business
A food truck trades lower rent for lower certainty. You are not committed to a lease, but you are exposed to weather, pitch availability and events that under-deliver. The plan should be built around where you are actually allowed to trade, because that constraint decides the revenue line.
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