Tom Hark Preston Park
Will Post For Cash
- Jul 6, 2003
- 72,352
Much as you have to admire any new enterprise starting up in these grim financial times, you sometimes have to question how much homework they did before taking the plunge.
We've got a new wine bar, The Purple Grape ('Boutique Wines are Our Passion') opened up in Preston Park, half way up Preston Drove, on the previous premises of the, um, eccentric, beardy locksmith. I seriously wish them nothing but good things, but sadly can't see them lasting six months. General consensus among the locals, including most of the shopkeepers, is that they didn't do their homework before setting up shop. There's a well-stocked offie a hundred yards up the road that can get you anything you ask for, there's a pub with pretentions fifty yards down the road. They've put tables outside - about ten foot from the cluster of 'Team Waste' bins. Who would want to sit out there even in Summer, let alone the soon-come six month Winter? Can't see it ending in anything but tears.
Got me thinking about other doomed to failure businesses. The perennial one that leaps to mind is the lock-up restaurant under the Preston Viaduct arches. Changes hands every six months regular as clockwork and never ever has any customers, whether its a Mexican, an Indian or an Italian, or even all three. But still people take up the lease. Gotta say my own personal favourite was the 'Combined Tanning Salon And art Gallery' at the bottom of London Road. Finest crapper the winos in that street ever had. Lasted three months.
My advice to prospective shop-openers would be to DO YOUR HOMEWORK.
Ask around, look around, don't just buy something sight unseen cos it looks like a bargain. Else set up a shop-fitting business. Plenty of opportunities in that direction ripping out the remnants of somebody's failed dream and installing the fixtures and fittings for somebody else's.
End of random rant.
We've got a new wine bar, The Purple Grape ('Boutique Wines are Our Passion') opened up in Preston Park, half way up Preston Drove, on the previous premises of the, um, eccentric, beardy locksmith. I seriously wish them nothing but good things, but sadly can't see them lasting six months. General consensus among the locals, including most of the shopkeepers, is that they didn't do their homework before setting up shop. There's a well-stocked offie a hundred yards up the road that can get you anything you ask for, there's a pub with pretentions fifty yards down the road. They've put tables outside - about ten foot from the cluster of 'Team Waste' bins. Who would want to sit out there even in Summer, let alone the soon-come six month Winter? Can't see it ending in anything but tears.
Got me thinking about other doomed to failure businesses. The perennial one that leaps to mind is the lock-up restaurant under the Preston Viaduct arches. Changes hands every six months regular as clockwork and never ever has any customers, whether its a Mexican, an Indian or an Italian, or even all three. But still people take up the lease. Gotta say my own personal favourite was the 'Combined Tanning Salon And art Gallery' at the bottom of London Road. Finest crapper the winos in that street ever had. Lasted three months.
My advice to prospective shop-openers would be to DO YOUR HOMEWORK.
Ask around, look around, don't just buy something sight unseen cos it looks like a bargain. Else set up a shop-fitting business. Plenty of opportunities in that direction ripping out the remnants of somebody's failed dream and installing the fixtures and fittings for somebody else's.
End of random rant.
, people were queuing outside for the first month, It's not there anymore.