Can anyone advise? Estimating utility costs for soft play type venue

[AlexRGL]

Hi everyone. My first post on here....(!)

I am considering whether to start a new venture, and in order to determine whether/at what scale it might be profitable, I want to understand (approximate) running costs. I am struggling so far to find good guidance on the running costs of utilities for a commercial (leased) premises (gas, electricity, water, sewerage etc). Can anyone help (with any of these?). Ball park figures, rules of thumb, price/area or similar examples would all be great!

To give an idea, the premises and their operation is roughly modelled on a soft play. Options range from 2000sq ft to 6000 sq ft, likely within a converted light industrial unit (or maybe agricultural), so fairly poor insulation and probably high eaves, 4-5 metres, which will waste a fair amount of heat upwards. I'm afraid I don't know target temperature (any soft play owners able to help?), I suspect we aren't looking to reach office 20+ deg C, but has to be reasonable for customers attending and sitting in the cafe area. No specific heating system in mind (though recommendations on most economical to look for welcomed).

Water/sewerage, it would have 2 to 3 toilets total inc staff, no major catering but coffee/snacks. Operating hours likely 9am to 9pm, all year round.

Any figure (per square ft/m), either cost based or energy units (KWH), or just ballpark figures like "I spend x a year on energy running a y square foot' venue", would be great, from any sector.

Very grateful for any help on offer. Can provide more info if needed to narrow things down. Thanks everyone, look forward to hearing from you.

Alex

ps you might see this post reappear if I find any specific soft play threads sorry!

 

[NickGrogan]

Energy is going to cost you 2 or 3 times what it would have done a year ago.

A lot of suppliers are not quoting for any businesses at the moment, and those that are tend to avoid new businesses in high risk sectors.

If you budget for about 30p for electricity and around 8p for gas then you should be ok.

Depending on when you open, the area you're in, what happens to wholesale prices and in Ukraine, you should be able to beat those figures.

Heating a 6000 sqft agri unit with poor insulation and 5 meter eaves is hard at the best of times, I presume that there are some regulations regarding temperatures and children, so you might want to look at these.

 

[AlexRGL]

Energy is going to cost you 2 or 3 times what it would have done a year ago.

A lot of suppliers are not quoting for any businesses at the moment, and those that are tend to avoid new businesses in high risk sectors.

If you budget for about 30p for electricity and around 8p for gas then you should be ok.

Depending on when you open, the area you're in, what happens to wholesale prices and in Ukraine, you should be able to beat those figures.

Heating a 6000 sqft agri unit with poor insulation and 5 meter eaves is hard at the best of times, I presume that there are some regulations regarding temperatures and children, so you might want to look at these.

Thanks Nick, that's useful (take it you mean per KWH? Sorry am new to this!). Yes I need to look carefully at the rising prices and make conservative estimates. Will look also at regs on kids temperature etc. Ideally I'd find a premises without high ceilings and with better insulation (more 'showroom') but initial searches suggest the price per sq ft rent is much higher, hence trying to model from that.

What would be really great is if anyone can add to this their own experience of energy usage (and whether you used gas and/or electric, or other, to heat?) in a similar premises. My KWH/year estimates are sky-high at the moment as the only source I have found to work with is an American site that gives a range of KWH/sq ft/year figures for different types of venue (Mall, Warehouse, Restaurant etc), from which I am guessing nearest comparator is 'Mall' in terms of the temperature needed and type of space. This is about 23KWH/ft2/year, but I could be wrong. Issue with that is it's all electric (is this less efficient?) and also includes air con energy usage, isn't that more common in the US? I'm imagining using something like gas-fuelled space heaters, and not needing AC.

Hence, it's a nightmare to estimate! Would be great to hear a few more experiences. Thanks

Alex

 

[WaveJumper]

Have a look here I believe there is even a downloadable spread sheet you can use

Calculating the full cost of energy used by buildings

The Whole Life Cost of Energy (WLCoE) calculator helps building owners and operators to understand the full financial cost of the energy their buildings use.

www.gov.uk

 

[AlexRGL]

Hi @WaveJumper , thanks for that. I did see this in my earlier searching, that's one hell of a scary spreadsheet even for those of us used to some monsters! It seems unfortunately that it's for a different purposes, it's for developers/HVAC engineers to look at whole life costs of running plant rooms of different types. Needs a lot of known info as input, about the building and systems, including annual energy usage.
Thank you anyway!
Alex

 

[Mark T Jones]

Hi @WaveJumper , thanks for that. I did see this in my earlier searching, that's one hell of a scary spreadsheet even for those of us used to some monsters! It seems unfortunately that it's for a different purposes, it's for developers/HVAC engineers to look at whole life costs of running plant rooms of different types. Needs a lot of known info as input, about the building and systems, including annual energy usage.
Thank you anyway!
Alex

Do bear in mind that utilities will be either your 3rd or 4th biggest overhead, so the more you understand the variables, the better you can manage it.

 

[WaveJumper]

Don't be afraid to go out and look at like for like building types and have a chat with their owners for some advice on what they are using, running costs and of course don't forget maintenance costs. I was at indoor go kart track back end of last year and could not help myself having a chat with the manager about their heating (mainly as I was overheating myself) it was a huge shed type building little or no insulation using overhead electric heaters the bills ran into the tens of thousands apparently.

If he had his way they would not heat the building but a huge part of the business was kids parties (and I could vouch for that by the noise level in there) and the view was mums would cut their visits short if not heated

Again if your looking at the possibility of air-con as well thats just as expensive to run too

 

[AlexRGL]

Thanks WaveJumper. Yes, I'll be out picking as many brains as poss; the stage I'm at right now is to get a rough, ball park range of prices to sanity check my basic concept (not yet anywhere the stage of actually renting anywhere) and where I have to work within constraints. Interesting that the karting place was 'tens of thousands', they are massive venues.

I was looking at this link:
https://www.moneysupermarket.com/ga...rgy/a/business-gas-electricity-average-bills/
...trying to get a rough figure on consumption of electricity and gas, in their tables of average usage/year. Trying to be conservative, even though on staff and turnover I'd be micro/small, I looked at the worst case scenarios (electricity 50,000KWH year, and gas 65,000KWH/year (ignore prices as unit price has increased since). But I have absolutely no idea whether this is way too conservative, or in fact the 'average' business isn't heating a large space and I'd be higher than this. If you take the 23KWH/sq ft/year (retail mall) example from the US website, it's more like 80,500 KWH/year for whole site (!), assume 'all electric' (?) as above.
Hence, still lost.

As to air con, no I assume I won't need that though ventilation I assume I will.

 

[WaveJumper]

Just been reading this over my coffee:

Setting up an Indoor Soft Play Business!

Ever wanted to set up an Indoor Soft Play Business? The "How to Set Up an Indoor Play Area - a Diary of a New Operator" article was published in 2010.

www.softbrick.co.uk

 

[AlexRGL]

Ah, yes indeed. That was one of the first sources I read some months ago, have scoured it for info. Great minds...
Shame Carol doesn't upload her accounts so I can see costs! Not a lot on utilities but yes, some useful nuggets in there. But I might see if I can politely contact her.

Appreciate your help WaveJumper

 

[WaveJumper]

Ah, yes indeed. That was one of the first sources I read some months ago, have scoured it for info. Great minds...
Shame Carol doesn't upload her accounts so I can see costs! Not a lot on utilities but yes, some useful nuggets in there. But I might see if I can politely contact her.

Appreciate your help WaveJumper

Now that sounds like a plan to me, best of luck with the new adventure

 

[AlexRGL]

Hi everyone, just writing again to see if anyone can help further. Any cost info examples appreciated!

Thanks

Alex

 

[NickGrogan]

Hi everyone, just writing again to see if anyone can help further. Any cost info examples appreciated!

Thanks

Alex

Any cost examples are going to be out by at least 100%.

I've just done a renewal for a gas client. They were paying 2.8p, the cheapest offer is 6.4p for a long contract or nearly 9p for a short contract.

 

[Dory]

If you dont have any experience of running a soft play centre - may i suggest you work in one for a while first - there is so much to know other than just figures for income and expenditure - like regulations - finding and keeping staff - pricing, competition - etc. Not many soft play centres open at 9pm as little kids in bed well before then