Looking for new business/franchise ideas to bring to the gulf coast?

trying to find some ideas from other areas cities or small towns that i can bring down to the mobile, daphne, penscacola, georgia or just the south in general. it usually takes the trends so long to get here. also trying to find business ideas that work in sm.towns that might work in mine. or at least a website where i can bounce some ideas around.

Looking for new business/franchise ideas to bring to the gulf coast?
My first answer would be opening a unique restaurant. I live in Upstate NY, where plenty of independent restaurants can compete with the chains because customers get food that isn't "cookie cutter" and the service is more attentive and personalized. There are a lot of good independent restaurants around here, and sometimes people "religiously" align themselves with certain restaurants that are "just that good" for them. We have tons of Italian restaurants, for example, with each one doing things a little differently, which isn't unusual since that's the way it is in the various regions of Italy anyway. We also have a large number of pizzerias that differ from one another. Domino's, Pizza Hut, and Little Ceasar's have a hard time competing for customers who want "real" pizza.



To keep costs down, it helps to use a minimal subset of ingredients across your menu items. It's amazing how many different items you can offer with a very small subset of ingredients. Also, some of the ingredients are incredibly inexpensive, like your own special sauce, pasta, pizza crust, etc. Trying to diversify so much that it results in the need for ingredients that might not be used frequently can take away from the bottom line,



Clearly, I'm talking mostly about Italian stuff because that is what I'm the most familiar with. For Mexican/Hispanic stuff, look at how Taco Bell uses a certain subset of ingredients to offer a large menu. If you want to have a Mexican restaurant, make it different enough that it doesn't taste like a "cookie cutter" franchise. Super-sized burritos don't cost much to make, but offer a lot more value than Taco Bell.



Forget about chicken in the south, unless you have a special spice blend that will lure people away from the existing chicken franchises.



Forget about a restaurant that has a wide range of choices that require a wide range of ingredients. Shoney's, Denny's, and similar places have you beat there due to economies of scale.



Burger/hot dog/BBQ joints might work if you can stand out. Large menu variety, small number of ingredients. Again, people are loyal to such places so you would need to stand out.



Forget Chinese restaurants. To a lesser extent, same for Indian, Japanese, and some lesser-known ethnicities, except maybe Greek. I don't know about Spanish, French, or some of the others.



Seafood probably wouldn't work unless you can do something different. Crab shacks or crawfish shacks might work in the south. New Orleans might be a reference point.



When in the south, do as the southerners do. Collard greens, corn bread, black eyed peas, sweetened iced tea, RC cola, pork, chicken, etc. Southern family-style restaurants.



Buffets are hit and miss. Some survive a long time, while others fold quickly. One of my most memorable buffets in the Nashville area (Madison, to be specific) served what appeared to be pans of frozen food, like mashed potatoes, baked fish, salisbury steak, green beans, etc. The food wasn't spectacular, but the variety was nice and it was like eating in a cafeteria except I could go back and have a little bit of everything. They always had a lot of customers.



Steak houses are a dime a dozen. You'd have to try hard to differentiate yourself. Same for pizzerias but if I remember correctly, the popular pizzerias were the chain ones. If you can do something different, that might be an option. Better to go with a more complete Italian menu though.



If you want to go with a chain, I liked Bojangles chicken (if they are still around) and Shakee's pizza. The thing about Shakee's is that they are concentrating on the west coast and there are very few franchises outside that area. If you could get them to support you, that might be an idea. Unfortunately, most franchises require a lot more investment than striking it out on your own.



Up here, we have some restaurants that have earned a good enough reputation to sell their sauces and spice blends in stores. The prices are marked up significantly, so they are probably doing pretty well just on the sales of those products.



One last idea that comes to mind is Jamaican food. Up here, there aren't many of them but they are doing well. Once again, you have the typical foods of the south, like greens, pork, chicken, and possibly beef, along with cheap stuff like rice and beans. It's pretty spicy, perhaps too much for some tastes, so you can water it down a little but still offer hotter items for the people who really want it hot. The black pepper alone should be good for people who don't like it too hot.



Outside restaurants, there isn't anything I can think of. Anything that isn't already taken by the big chains is offered at flea markets, farmer's markets, etc. The one remaining item is again food, which (for me, anyway) is carnival/fair food. Funnel cakes, fried dough, blooming onions, etc.



Something that offers amusement rides is yet another choice that popped into my head, only because it's past that time of year here. An amusement park would be really cool,. but it involves a considerable investment. Being in the south, you can have a stationary amusement park and you can stay open for a considerably longer time than up here. But like I said, it requires a considerable investment, like $39K to $100K or more per ride. Ouch. A road side hot dog/burger/BBQ joint with a single kiddy ride might be an idea.



OK, one more idea. A real deli. Sandwiches and subs that are better than the chains. Up here, most pizza/pasta places offer subs, but it's hard to find a good reuben. I've had some good reubens up here, but the best I ever had was at the Carnegie Deli in NYC. Give me a reuben like that up here, and I will buy at least one a week, no matter what it costs!
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