Ideas on how to make a business go bust, pretty please!

Los Pollos Hermanos

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Hello, lovely people of AW,

I’ve been chewing over my book plotting and have come up with a better idea for part of it. The story is pretty much planned, but I need a couple more figurative nails in the coffin that is one of the main characters’ business.

Setting: England in the present day.

The business is a semi-rural cafe/restaurant with a gift shop. It recently diversified into private parties and wedding receptions.

I need it it to start losing money due to external sabotage by an aggrieved individual AND internal incompetence/disharmony between the owners... hit me with your ideas!!

Big thanks in anticipation,

LPH.

:heart:
 
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Atlantic12

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I'd use rumor.

The aggrieved party starts spreading rumors the restaurant hasn't passed the health inspection. Maybe he or she goes so far as to smuggle in a cockroach or a rat during the evening rush. Maybe the rumors are about the private lives of the owners, or some terrible secret about where some of the food ingredients come from. Social media is the place to do it, it's the home of conspiracy theories and nonsense, so the baddie can hit hard via FB and co. Either directly on the restaurant's site/page, or on a local page/group for the community the restaurant is in.
 

Maryn

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Add to Atlantic's idea negative reviews every place where such reviews might be posted, which (falsely) specifies ways their incompetence ruined an important event like a wedding reception.

Disharmony between the owners is also fun. Character A, who handles finances, isn't really paying the taxes, but tells Character B she is. Suddenly the government wants its money in 72 hours or they'll shut you down, which would further damage your reputation since you've taken prepayments for some weddings that are right around the corner. (This happened to a seemingly successful local restaurant with quarreling owners. They lost the business.) Or Character A says she's paid vendors but has not, and now you cannot get alcohol, table linens, meat or whatever. Character A doesn't even have to be channeling the funds into her own account, just lying about necessary payments and hiding the money where Character B either can't find it or can't access it.
 
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pdichellis

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Rumors that people got sick from eating the food (salmonella or e. coli type of food poisoning) would have a quick and lasting negative impact. Easy for characters and readers to believe, because there have been many actual news reports about various restaurants, food suppliers, etc. with food safety problems.

Internal conflict: Most small businesses go bust due "cash flow" problems (not enough $ in the till to cover immediate expenses). So the suggestion about taxes (in post above) works great, especially if U.K requires small businesses to make advance partial payments of estimated taxes due (as U.S. does). Easy to forget to make these payments, then large tax bill comes due all at once, with not enough cash to cover. Tough for a small business to get a bank loan for something like this, especially if sales are spiraling downward and rumors are circulating.

Good luck!
 
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Chris P

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Yeah, fake Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews were my first thoughts. Perhaps harassment from the health department from bogus anonymous tips.

How sophisticated is your villain? Hacking the restaurant website to give the wrong directions, wrong phone number, redirect to the wrong Facebook/Twitter page, mess with the menu, etc. Could the villain be in cohoots with the food supplier, and cause shipments to be late, or wrong stuff delivered? Or could the villain be in cohoots with one of the co-owners?
 

Los Pollos Hermanos

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Many thanks for all the ideas and keep ‘em coming! There’ll definitely be a couple of dodgy reviews and the financial shenanigans would tie in nicely with the owners’ habit of living waaaaay beyond their means.

Need to look into UK tax stuff. I’m out with some former colleagues tomorrow night and one used to be a trainee accountant, so her brain will get picked. Even if she doesn’t know/can’t remember the nitty-gritty, she’ll hopefully be able to point me in the right direction.

I also need need to work out exactly how to plant something to cause food poisoning. Another friend had campylobacter from eating unpasteurised cheeses in France, which by all accounts was a prolonged and unpleasant experience...
 

Enlightened

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External: Supply-chain is repeatedly attacked or bought by the rabble rouser; threatens customers who go near the place with violence; threatens the business owners with physical violence or financial problems. I learned this one while taking HVAC classes in culinary school (feel free to use it).... If a refrigerant leak occurs, you cannot notice it (no smell) and it is not toxic. If it touches open flame (e.g. pilot light on range), it becomes toxic to humans. Just smell a little of it and you have a terrible headache for days. It causes eyes, nose, and mouth to concurrently form acids. It feels like tossing white vinegar on your eyes, in your nose, and in the mouth (if the refrigerant catches flame and you smell it). I asked the HVAC professor if I could smell it burned. He allowed me and another student. Not pleasant! This would be a great rumor to spread to potential customers.

Internal: Bartender drinks while serving alcohol and does sexual harassment on a waitress (who later sues and wins a HUGE settlement that cripples the owners, financially); food is sabotaged (e.g. gluten is added to the ingredients for gluten-free items).
 

frimble3

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This isn't sabotage or quarreling: How about business incompetence?
This is a semi-rural restaurant, and the owners are living well beyond their means? Maybe they have wildly misjudged the number of people who want fancy catered weddings and parties?

Colleagues in London might be making a good living out of this, but that's densely packed people, in small apartments. Not sure how 'rural' your 'semi-rural' is, but if people have space, they may do their own parties, and if there aren't a lot of businesses, no fancy business 'dos'.
Maybe your MC's are friends with whoever has money (living beyond their means is hard to do without competition) who hire them for things, but once they're all married, no more posh weddings, or big occasions, and all the locals aren't constantly having fancy events.

Combine this with at least one of your MCs buying/hoarding supplies and decorations, because they would be perfect for this or that occasion, and they could end up supply-rich and cash-poor.

(When one of the marketing execs at work was canned, they discovered that he had, over the years, accumulated a vast supply of stuff for give-aways at trade shows: dry pens, outdated calendars, etc. All personalized, and cases of it.)

Combined with a few nasty rumours, and they'd have no way to fight back. To cover the up-front costs for a sudden big job, or get an exterminator.
Brides can get really nasty when their big day turns bad. (Their mothers can be worse.)

Then the fighting starts, as one MC accuses the other of whatever went wrong.
 
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frimble3

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Also, if you don't want them to be incompetent, maybe just have them in over their heads? Running a café/restaurant, all in one place, is one thing (even with gift shop).
Branching out into parties and weddings requires more people, transport, equipmen and furniture if they do off-site events, lack of total control over the menus, (and in a smaller place, how do you find trained help? And, fancy stuff for the special event menus has be ordered in, on short notice.)
Tighter cost management and bookkeeping is necessary - tough if they've been used to a set menu for the restaurant, and doing stuff on the back of an envelope.
 

Conrad Adamson

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A common problem among cafes and restaurants is too much overhead due to spoilage. If they expand to provide more food services this could lead to that problem. There could also be a problem in getting a small business loan to cover the cost of new equipment for the new services, especially if the spending on those initial items is excessive--brand new box truck, industrial cooking equipment, etc. A sabotage might be very effective if it happens during the party or wedding of a prominent/large community family that "knows everybody." The resulting slump in business would mean less income to offset the projected income and thus the constant cost of the loan.
 

stephenf

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Often failing business have cash flow problems. Once the rumour starts to circulate, that your business is on the skids. All the people you have credit with will call in the debt and demand immediate payment. On the other hand, people that that are in credit to the business will sit on their hands, hoping you will go bust and not collect the debt.
Another thing that happens, the staff leave, making things difficult.
 
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Al X.

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From what I've observed, failure seems to be the norm for independent, startup cafes, particularly those located in rural areas. I think that you have to give them a lucrative market and a viable business plan to begin with to make failure by sabotage credible.
 

R.A. Lundberg

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Here's an idea for disharmony within: have one of your MC's (#1) change the primary vendor they get their supplies from. The new vendor delivers lower quality food at higher prices, but the MC insists on using them. The other MC (#2) can discover that there's something irregular about the relationship between the vendor and #1...perhaps a relative runs it, or the vendor has something dirty on #1. You could also have a staff member be compromised by the external character, and forced to sabotage the business from within, or simply supply information on the owners. For instance, a wedding catering job could be interrupted by a sabotaged vehicle, when it's too late to do anything about it.
 

neandermagnon

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From what I've observed, failure seems to be the norm for independent, startup cafes, particularly those located in rural areas. I think that you have to give them a lucrative market and a viable business plan to begin with to make failure by sabotage credible.

That's what I was thinking. It's hard for small, independent business to survive as it is. Even if they're doing okay, they're not going to have a huge clientele, so anything that's going to put their regulars off from going there any more will cause them serious problems.

If it's in a tourist location, then anything that's going to stop them from running effectively during the tourist season could easily put them out of business. A lot of businesses in tourist locations depend on the takings in July and August to stay afloat as there won't be much coming in for the rest of the year.

The new branch of the business for parties/functions would also depend on enough people wanting them. In a rural location, there might not be enough people for the business to be viable, or they may find that they have to take on clients further away, which means greater travel and transportation costs. Again, it wouldn't take much to make this fail.

Bad online reviews would be a very convenient way for a malicious person to sabotage a business like this. In fact a local business not far from where I live has claimed that their business went bust because of one person leaving bad reviews - at least that's what was reported in the local paper. I just looked up to see if I could find anything on the paper's website, couldn't, but found this from the local paper from a different town http://www.romseyadvertiser.co.uk/n...shop_to_serve_its_last_coffee_today/?ref=plst (there's nothing in the story to suggest any sabotage, but it illustrates how it only takes a few factors - in this case an increase in rent and burglars breaking in - to seriously compromise a small business)
 
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waylander

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Other stuff - business premises have been rerated this year, many small businesses saw their rates go up significantly.
Major road works shutting down their passing trade.
Dodgy accountant/lawyer - they discover late that they do not having planning permission for running a business from the premises.
 

talktidy

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It's the rare venture into a business in the catering field that doesn't go belly up, isn't it?

I would suggest for internal incompetence, something as basic as a failure to stay on top of cash flow would probably be fatal in short order.
 

Rob40

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Could base it on actual truth. The food vendor delivered a bad batch of something and for a week the restaurant actually did have sick people. Recovering from that was tough and now everythings fine again with great fresh ratings but the stigma is still there.....and they're just slowly bleeding noney. So the internal owners just can't agree on the next step but also can't seem to let go of the past over who is at afult about that, so that covers the internal strife of disharmony hurting the business. Plus, the food vendor isn't admitting a thing and trying desparately to cover that up and making efforts to discredit the restarurant.

Now this all depends on the direction you're looking to go. Directly personal problems to work through or directly circumstantial influences to work against and win.
 

neandermagnon

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Could base it on actual truth. The food vendor delivered a bad batch of something and for a week the restaurant actually did have sick people.

AFAIK environmental health would close them down and that would end the business right there and then. The same cafe would only be allowed to open up again under new management after significant improvements have been made to the kitchens, which is death for a small business. For a large chain, they can sack the current manager, make the necessary changes and employ a new one.

I'm assuming because the OP's location is England that it's set in the UK. There may be different bylaws in different local councils but my understanding of UK food hygiene laws is that any confirmed outbreak of food poisoning would result in the above. (Check though, because I'm no expert and the laws may have changed since I learned about food hygiene rules for restaurants etc.)

If people got sick after eating there but environmental health couldn't confirm anything, then they'd stay open and the whole rumour thing would apply, but they wouldn't know the cause of people getting sick and it could be a coincidence. Or it could be that environmental health confirmed that it wasn't because of the cafe (e.g. the people who got ill had the Noro virus and there's no evidence that they caught it in the cafe, that just happened to be the last place they ate before they showed any symptoms).

If this is used as a storyline, it would be necessary to research the local council's rules for food hygiene and make sure that whatever happens fits in with that.
 
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Los Pollos Hermanos

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Thanks for all the nefarious ideas, you lovely people!

I think I've got it pretty much all planned. The business in question is loosely based on one not far from where I live. They're now obsessed with the wedding/corporate side of things, and rerouting customers through their overpriced (and tacky) gift shop, so the everyday lunches, afternoon teas, etc. have increased in price as they've decreased in quality AND quantity.

Guess who won't be spending another penny in their establishment?!
 
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MichaelC

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A few ideas:

The business partners have a disagreement over how to share profits and they formed the business without making out a partnership agreement beforehand. Or, a business partner dies and the spouse or child inherits the ownership rights. The new owner does not like the way things are run and demands change from the MC.

You could have the government swoop in and hit the business with a large tax bill after an audit. They could also be hit with regulatory or health violations.
 

carrie_ann

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I didn't see a mention of what time of year your story is set, but a severe weather event could cripple this type of business, tangibly (e.g. building or grounds damage) or just due to travel cancellations.