Business plan for a shop in Switzerland: what goes into it

The expected structure

• The project on one page: what, where, for whom, why now.
• The market: a quantified catchment area, target customers, competition surveyed.
• The offer and price positioning, with the target average basket.
• The location: the premises, their full cost, their constraints.
• The means: initial investment, financing, own contribution.
• The forecast: three-year profit and loss account, break-even point, monthly cash flow plan for the first year.
• The risks and the low scenarios.

Turnover is built, not asserted

A turnover announced without construction is the main reason a file is rejected. Two routes coexist and must converge. The top-down route starts from the market: households in the area, average spending in the category, capture rate. The bottom-up route starts from operations: customers per day, average basket, opening days.

When the two methods give results far apart, one of the assumptions is wrong — and the gap shows which.

The break-even point

It is computed by dividing fixed costs by the contribution margin ratio. It is the turnover below which the business loses money, and it is the single most important number in the document.

It becomes genuinely meaningful once translated into concrete units: how many customers per day, how many covers per service, how many tickets per opening hour. A break-even point that assumes serving more customers than the street brings past shows up immediately in that translation.

The cash flow plan: the real judge

A business that is profitable over the year can die in February. The monthly cash flow plan for the first year captures the lag between outflows — deposit, fit-out, first stock, wages, quarterly social security contributions, VAT statement — and inflows, which build up slowly.

The initial working capital requirement is almost always underestimated. A reserve covering several months of fixed costs is not an excess of caution: it is the condition for the assumptions to have time to be borne out.

Documenting the assumptions

Every figure in the forecast must be traceable to a source or to an explicit line of reasoning. Population and households in the area, average spending per consumption item, rent per square metre in the sector, social security rates, the sector's margin rate: all exist in public statistics.

A file whose assumptions are sourced can be discussed. A file whose assumptions are merely asserted is refused.

The low scenario is not a stylistic exercise: it is the one on which repayment capacity is judged. Presenting it yourself is better than seeing it calculated across the table.