Americans considering moving to UK to set up business, what should we know, would our business be viable?

26 comments

1. A business selling alcohol? In the UK? Yeah, you’ll be fine

2. Per the many other posts about this type of thing: visa first. Your business sounds good and viable (from my complete armchair perspective), but it’s not of the type and size that’d attract you a UK visa any time soon.

   (I’m assuming you mean you want to move *yourselves* to the UK, as well as your business?).

3. We can not legally give you visa advice; you need to speak to a qualified immigration specialist as you want to move a business over here.

4. You should speak to an immigration lawyer about the visa stuff given your situation and the legal issues around an international business.

   As for the other you should probably come visit and checkout how people buy their booze where you’d set up. Different strokes for folks between offys, the various supermarkets and the specialist alcohol sellers.

5. Unless you’re going for specialist alcohol. Like beers from all over the world, or special wines, you’ll struggle I think. Supermarkets are able to sell alcohol quite cheaply here, and your competition will be tough. If you can find a niche and supply to those that want something you generally can’t get anywhere else, you might do well.

   Generally you’ve got three types of shops that sell alcohol in the UK. Supermarkets. Specialist alcohol shops. And crappy corner shops. Don’t be the last one.

6. If you pick a good location I guess it could work, but there isnt a gap in the market here for more shops to sell alcohol

7. I think you’re going to struggle **massively** getting a visa which will allow you to do this. You probably want to try /r/UKVisa before doing anything else. I think that Canada is probably going to be a lot easier for you

   > Also, if we were to move to the UK, my husband wants to bring across his classic Mustang, a 1980s example, and my car, a 2013 Mercedes S-Class sedan. The Mustang’s like a family heirloom of sorts.

   If you do find a way to move to the UK, do research the costs of importing a car. Besides the transportation costs you will probably have to modify the car to make it road legal in the UK (especially if the car’s turn signals are shared with the brake lights rather than separate orange lamps). It might be worthwhile for the Mustang, but probably not the Merc (and driving a massive left hand drive car on UK roads is not going to be a fun experience).

8. You’re basically looking at running an off licence. The margins here are razor thin, and the competition will be huge – I have 3 or 4 within 10mins of me and they all have to run various other services to remain viable. Its not glamorous or particularly profitable work.

   You’d also need a visa, the business/entrepreneur visas require significant capital and a viable business plan to aquire – I think you have a very very slim chance of getting one.

9. Alcohol/Snacks – yeah fine, we have a binge culture so it’s a decent market but fairly over saturated so a good location/usp would by handy to set yourselves apart from the crowd or bargain boozers.
   Cars – you can import. Likely expensive and full of add on fees but if it’s a car you can’t leave behind you can get it.
   Locations are very different… London is more expensive for everything, but if your selling artisan stuff that’s more expensive than usual offerings then it may be where you need to be, but your rates and staffing is going to cost alot more too.
   Don’t know about visas but surely you have an embassy or agency that you can contact to discuss from a U.S. to U.K. perspective.

10. What actually is your business precisely?

    I don’t know what selling booze is like in America but it’s not a hard thing to buy here. Every supermarket, grocery shop and corner shop sells it here. I could leave my house and in 5 minutes get to a dozen different places that sell alcohol and snacks.

11. Gosh, coming here to run an offie how depressing. That is your ‘dream’ ? Oh yeah but your reasoning is sound, the uk is a historic country, what does that even mean???

12. Obviously food and drink is viable in itself. Though margins on that alone would be awful without scale. Would be very difficult to cream off that to support yourself after employees. Supermarkets would have you undercut substantially, so you’d need to rely on a convienient location, as typically served by ‘corner shops’ or ‘offies’. Their location doesn’t tend to lend well to having something special.

    However if the USP is imports from the North American craft scene, and American novelty snacks, then fair enough. Your costs would likely mean higher prices, which means a limitation on clientele, which means those that are left probably won’t balk too much at even higher prices to support a fatter margin, either.

    So the consideration is therefore, location. Realistically, you’re going to need to be in a major city for this sort of thing. London is full of quirky stuff like this, but the floor rents will make you cry. Clapham has weird American stuff and is likely to be a smidge cheaper than the inner zones. Other than that, try the major urban areas like Manchester, Reading, Cambridge, Brighton. But beware your prices will exclude most peoples interest, so you’ll likely want to avoid anywhere that relies on Uni student footfall. Similar consideration for areas like Newcastle – as disposable incomes are lower, your higher prices may well be a problem.

    Though could do it online. Or add an actual pub/bar rather than just a shop (American food + American drink is interesting). Either way, a lot pretty much depends on your business plan. Price you can sell at, versus likely customers at that price.

13. I have little to offer in terms of advice around your business idea, I just wanted to point out that you’ll almost certainly be better off selling your Merc your side of the pond and getting a new one over here.

    Doesn’t make much sense to pay to move a 10 year old car to a country where it’s going to be worth less and then have to pay more on insurance as it’s left hand drive.

14. Quite a few towns in my region have specialist alcohol shops, selling wines and craft beers, gin, whiskies etc and they are all doing well. You need to realise that supermarkets sell alcohol very cheaply, so the type and brands of your products need to be competitive. My other half likes to drink Offshore Pilsner made by Sharps Brewery in Cornwall, you can’t buy it in the supermarkets but we can buy it direct from the brewery and we currently have 96 cans ready for BBQs and events throughout the summer. I buy cases of wine online, so a shop like yours wouldn’t appeal to me unless it was to buy gifts for family and friends who enjoy different ales.

15. It’s a crowded market and you’d be up against stiff competition in high street retailers, but also online retailers. I do sometimes buy American products from Amazon. Although Amazon aren’t cheap, I still imagine it would be difficult to undercut them significantly.

    The next point is about what you would do that would be unique. It feels like the North American products that appeal to us are already here and even though America has some great microbreweries, I think most have a negative view of the larger breweries, which could harm your sales, even if it’s an unfair view.

    The last is only a small one, but worth thinking about. The price of fuel is well over double what you’re paying, and it’s going up. Driving a car that isn’t designed for fuel economy is going to eat into your money. That said, it’s much more possible to walk and/or get public transport than in the US. I’ve never driven a car and it’s never been a problem.

16. No way you would qualify for any kind of visa.

17. I would have thought that unless you were importing container loads at a time that the cost would be prohibitively expensive.

    Nobodies going to pay £5 for a 330ml can of unknown American beer.

18. If you open a shop in Newcastle selling Cigar City Brewing Jai Alai I’ll be a regular

19. The American sweets shops do well. They sell American “candy”, there is one near me which makes a lot of money. I think the alcohol one will be tough because there are literally tens of thousands of micro brewery beers, imports, shops, 24 hour supermarkets, offies. My local supermarket has 5 aisles of alcohol and offers all sorts of weird stuff.

20. I would think this niche sort of place would have to be placed very carefully, there are many places this simply wouldn’t work. Myself as a customer if I want a nice beer I go to a pub that does good beers. I may buy the odd bottle to drink at home but this tends to be specific brewery beers (theakstons or banks) I realise I am not your demographic but I won’t be the only person your business wouldn’t attract.

21. I think the business will struggle tbh, the alcohol might find a small niche but as others have pointed out its very easy to get a large variety of different drinks here, and most people wouldnt pay double the price just because its american. I also really doubt that selling american snacks will set you apart, most cities already have a few american sweet shops, all of which seem to get very little business on their own (most people assume they are a front for money laundering). If you feel that you would still be competetive in a market with loads of competition, where you are not able to go as low on price as others, and you have little to no repeat customers, then by all means go for it, but i dont see much of a market.

22. There are a number of importers of US craft beers already here and trading, selling to bars, pubs & bottleshops, and direct to consumers. It’s a tough market, and one that is competing against a growing number of UK & European breweries who are making beer that tastes just as good, if not better than the US stuff.

    Margins are also tight at the wholesale level, less so if selling direct to consumers. So unless you’re importing yourself, have the appropriate duties covered, & the wholesaling & retailing alcohol licenses, then it could work in a place with enough footfall. If you’re trying to cover both bases and sell to both other retailers & the consumer, watch your margins, as you’ll get quickly dropped by retailers if your consumer pricing is too tight.

    That’s not to say that your business model wouldn’t work here. We do like a bit of individuality in our shops, and one that focused on US products could work.

    I would strongly suggest you look at on sales as well as off-sales for alcohol, as that’s where the margin is at its highest. A hybrid beer/US treats shop could work, just consider (and state on your application for premises licenses) how you’re going to manage the safety/balance of serving sweets to under 18’s in an environment that sells alcohol.

    PS, as much as I love a big-engined car, at £1.60+ per litre for petrol, sell the Merc before you get here.

    ETA, if you do end up over here and selling US craft beer at a wholesale level, drop me a message!

23. The only visas open to you are for opening a new and innovative business. A bottle shop isn’t that.

24. Your local authority where the shop is will have to grant you a license to sell alcohol. **https://www.gov.uk/premises-licence**

25. > but the UK market for snack food and drink is a multimillion-dollar business.

    A saturated one.

    > But would we be able to run an alcohol and snack food shop that’s not a franchise, but one I own?

    You would need a licence to sell alcohol, you’re not likely to get one as the local licencing authorities limit how many they’ll issue in an area and are likely to have reached that limit.

    > Also, if we were to move to the UK, my husband wants to bring across his classic Mustang, a 1980s example, and my car, a 2013 Mercedes S-Class sedan. The Mustang’s like a family heirloom of sorts.

    They would need to be modified to be used in the UK, things like headlights, turn signals etc. They would need to pass inspections to be registered. You would have to pay import duty and VAT on them even though they were used and you already owned them and you’d be looking at $1000s per vehicle to ship them. Driving a left hand drive car in the UK is shit, I used to own one.

26. Bear in mind that anything you import will have to comply with UK food/drink import requirements (and there are a lot of ingredients permitted in the USA but not in the UK) but will also have to be relabelled to comply with UK labelling.

    That cost (and it’ll be several % of turnover) will eat into already slim margins.

    You are also going to have to get agreement from all your suppliers to be able to resell into the UK. They may already have exclusive distributor agreements which will prevent you grey importing.

    American food isn’t associated with high quality here, and we don’t have any authentic Mexican food culture.