11/20/09
Ed Chastain

When considering adding a deli line to your donut/bakery shop; do consider actual community wants/needs based on evaluating existing deli’s within your area with attention to related potential “Fast Food” opportunities. One example to determine actual community needs/wants would be a lack of existing deli competition “that’s a given, go for it” and/or multiple deli franchises within your existing or proposed business location.


An existing established Deli business or franchise like Subway sandwiched or Quizno’ s deli, more than likely have fulfilled the niche market in your area and its important to determine related potential opportunities that have NOT been capitalized upon such as implementing Premium Hot Dog within your shop and specializing in hard to find Polish Dogs, Kosher dogs, New England style beef dogs “a good dog is a hard find”.


This is yet another example of the flexibility of a donut/bakery shop and Americans love hot dogs. In fact, hot dogs have evolved into a huge business. As a nation, we are consuming about 70 hot dogs per person each year. In 2002, Americans ate more than 20 billion hot dogs. Any way you slice it, it's a large market! And I would like to add that selling hot dogs are more simplistic than a deli line.


The single most expensive item needed for sandwich preparation is the sandwich preparation table. These prep tables are designed with the unit backing placed against a wall; nothing like the prep tables found within the popular Subway sandwich franchises whereby: customers are facing the deli prep table. In addition Subway type deli prep tables are very expensive ranging upwards in price of 12 - 15,000 per unit in lieu of 25 - 3500 for a “new” basic sandwich prep table.


Ideally the subway “type” prep table is the way to go however we must find happy mediums as a small business owner and cut costs of desired equipment for the best bang for our buck “And there is an alternative!” Listed below is a 6’ deli prep table I converted to allow customers to face the deli table while there sandwich is being prepared, complementing my deli line and donut shop.

A previously owned deli prep table can be purchased and retrofitted with a sneeze guard to meet health codes and acrylic facing to be applied to the back of the deli prep table, for a finished look.
The sneeze guard can be found at http://www.boxernw.com/search.php?desc=Sneeze+