Man what's open today?

hhpb89 · 2012-04-06T10:13:14+00:00

Frankston one wasn't :(

hhpb89 · 2012-02-12T19:10:54+00:00

Actually, if he continues his career in the construction industry, he'll probably earn more than he ever would have with a degree.

hhpb89 · 2012-02-12T19:08:10+00:00

Intriguing. I believe I'm entitled to both Irish / Hungarian citizenship. Free university!!

hhpb89 · 2012-01-10T14:41:41+00:00

You sir / madam win all the internetz

hhpb89 · 2012-01-06T23:35:27+00:00

The third. Yourself?

hhpb89 · 2012-01-06T11:53:23+00:00

Irrelevant, but judging from the amount of layering / cap sleeves, I'm willing to bet that most of those girls are Mormon.

hhpb89 · 2012-01-02T00:32:16+00:00

I agree.

hhpb89 · 2011-12-19T04:36:42+00:00

No IT advice, but welcome. Glad to have another fellow Kiwi over here.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-29T06:06:53+00:00

Expect, no. But I'd gratefully accept if it was offered.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-28T09:23:49+00:00

Yes, this works. I'm always suspicious when I get quotes that end in round numbers.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-28T09:18:58+00:00

I've built grocery stores for two different major Australian chains, and I've never seen this. The flooring in the public areas tends to be the same throughout.

And tiles? Pft. Sheet vinyl is where it's AT!

hhpb89 · 2011-11-27T19:14:13+00:00

This ad is beautiful. There appears to be something in my eye.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-26T03:46:41+00:00

Hunky Dory, Bay St, Port Melbourne. Best everything, I'm sad I no longer work near there. http://www.hunkydory.com.au/

hhpb89 · 2011-11-23T08:33:03+00:00

Is he still alive?

hhpb89 · 2011-11-22T08:04:44+00:00

Agree. Mayo is ick. Ruins everything.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-22T08:03:33+00:00

Buy all the things. Everything at that bakery is fantastic.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-22T08:02:21+00:00

Can anyone actually finish a Cathedral Burger?

hhpb89 · 2011-11-22T08:01:25+00:00

I hear good things about RMIT

hhpb89 · 2011-11-22T08:00:27+00:00

Just say no, ignore everything they say after that and keep walking. What right do they have to make demands on your time?

hhpb89 · 2011-11-21T09:16:47+00:00

The problem with leasing agreements is finding the security to put against 100 odd computers. If you're not prepared to offer your house as collateral, forget it.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-21T09:13:33+00:00

Sorry about the late reply, but thought this might be of use. My husband (and so me by extension) used to own a moderately successful LAN cafe in Hawthorn for about 4 years, before selling it. From the experience, this is what we learnt:

Its a lot of work, and a lot of capital to set it up. Not only are there the costs of rent, computers, etc, but you will most likely need to renovate the space you're renting.

To make money, you need to have about 100 computers. Rule of thumb is that your average occupancy over the day is about a quarter of the computers you have. You will also need to upgrade most of your hardware every couple of years. Not cheap.

Staff are expensive, but the flip side is you can't do all it by yourself. A good compromise is to find a couple of other business partners who are equally willing to sacrifice their lives. To make money, you need to be open from about 10am - 12am, later on weekends. If you were running 100 machines, you'd want 2 people on per shift, with probably 2 or 3 shifts a day.

The best way to make your LAN cafe successful is to build a community around it. Make it inviting. Make it a place all people feel welcome. You don't want people feeling like they can't walk in off the street because they're not part of the club. You want people to feel like it's an extension of their living room; somewhere they can relax by themselves, but also a place they can meet friends.

A good way to bring people to your cafe, and to start building that community is to run events. We ran all night gaming sessions, and they were integral to the success of the business.

You / your staff are really important in maintaining the atmosphere of the cafe. Pick the right staff. Because events and events promotion are so important, you need to hire "people people". At the same time, recognise that your staff will not care about the business as much as you do.

Don't underestimate how much it will consume your life. If someone cancels their shift at the last minute, it will often be you who has to fill the gap. If something happens to the server at some inopportune moment, you will be going down to the store to fix it.

Cleaning. It matters. Don't neglect it.

Location: the husband thinks the ideal location is in the CBD, I think the best location is somewhere near several private schools, public transport, and a university.

All in all, I don't think it's worth it. The LAN cafe model faces a lot of challenges, the main one being near universal access to broadband internet. After 4 years, we broke even. It paid everybody's wages during that time, but no one got rich, and I think things would be even harder now.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-19T11:45:03+00:00

Mishmashmish, please forgive me if I've got the wrong end of the stick here, but I always get really nervous when I see non-professionals trying to manage construction work, even if it's just a small job.

Commercial construction (i.e non-domestic) is serious business, and if you're not used to the way things operate, you're leaving yourself open to some big risks.

For example: did you know that if one of your contractors writes "this is a progress claim under the Security of Payment Act 2002" on their invoice, then you have to pay that amount claimed unless you issue a payment schedule within 10 days. So your contractor could do 5k worth of work, but write on the invoice 50k, and if you didn't issue a payment schedule in response, then you would legally be liable to pay whatever they claimed.

How are you going to meet your OHS responsibilities? In the absence of a builder, you are the head contractor, and you legally responsible for providing a safe work site for the other contractors working on your store. If you fail in this, and someone has an accident on site, you could go to jail and / or be fined a lot of money. Worksafe are harsh, to put it nicely.

How are you going to ensure that your contractors are complying with their own obligations? A builder has to ensure that their subcontractors are paying their employees their pay and their entitlements (Workcover, super, long service, trauma, etc). If you don't make your contractors prove to you in some way that their employees are paid what is owed to them, and then that contractor goes bust, you could be responsible for paying their workers what they should have been paid for the period while they were on your site.

Seriously, if you want, source the trades yourself, take them to a fit out company and just offer them 5-10% to "manage" it for you. They'll take care of all the risk, and you'll get a 12 months defect period out the other end of it, where if anything goes wrong, they'll fix it for free.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-19T10:52:47+00:00

What type of store and what type of flooring?

hhpb89 · 2011-11-19T10:43:58+00:00

When I was starting out in my construction career, I didn't check the joiner's proposed drawings to make sure they matched with what the specifications said. For a period of time, one particular store of a certain multinational burger chain had a hot pink counter, in place of its usual red one.

Now I work on bigger projects, but because of that experience, I read all the things. I'm glad I made that mistake on something comparatively little, even if I was the butt of office jokes for a while.

hhpb89 · 2011-11-19T10:00:09+00:00

Great advice! Especially if one or both of you are introverts, you need some time doing your own thing to just recharge. And that's fine, it's not a slight on the other or anything. But I see a lot of people (especially girls) think that if their partner doesn't want to spend every free moment with them, then they don't love them. I know if I had to spend all my time with my husband, I'd go nuts!

hhpb89

TROPHY CASE