The decision to start a new business is never an easy one, but if you have started a company within the last eight months you have likely faced more challenges than normal. From getting the supplies the you need for the flooring and the appliances to taking the risk to take out a loan during one of the biggest economic challenges the nation has ever faced, new small business owners could likely never have perfect vision during the year 2020. Fortunately, with the promise of a vaccine and the continued use of the best and safest practices it is important to make sure that you continue with the options that will allow you to prepare for your future.
Fortunately, the food industry is known for finding a way to quickly adjust to changes. With the use of satellite pop up containers, for instance, a restaurant owner can serve their foods in extra locations. Perhaps still using the main kitchen in the original restaurant, these owners are able to use materials that were once employed for large catering events to take food to satellite pop up containers in different parts of the city. The shell of modified shipping containers, in fact, can be generically built and rented out to different restaurants for a month at a time. When an outdoor skating rink is open in the downtown area, for example, a gourmet hot cocoa pop up container can be wildly popular if only for a brief time. Later, when the ice skating venue closes down after the holidays, these same customized shipping containers can be used by a company that provides lunch faire for city workers.
Adjusting and spending less on the construction or rent of these pop up containers provides a larger profit margin as many restaurant owners are looking for ways to stay in business as the pandemic continues. Aside from food, of course, there are also many other ways that modified pop up containers can be put to use. From clothing sales to tech support, in a time when fewer and fewer people are willing to go into large indoor malls, these steel containers offer an affordable option. Consider some of these facts and figures about the many other ways that shipping crates can be transformed:
- Although it may seem like a new theory in many places in the country, the shipping container store trend is thought to have been pioneered by Starbucks back in the year 2011 when that company opened a 450 square foot shipping container store in its home state of Washington.
- If every shipping container in the world were lined up end to end, they would circle the earth twice. This is a very visual representation of the number of these containers that might be available for a variety of unique commercial uses.
- Often referred to as Design 4.0, shipping container stores stand to take between five and 12 weeks off a store’s potential opening timeline. This amount of time is crucial to the success of restaurants that are struggling to adapt to a new way of delivering their products.
- In addition to the fast construction and the lower costs, durable, steel shipping containers average a lifespan of 25 years. In addition, they only require a minimal amount of maintenance.
- And while there can be some variations, most shipping containers are eight feet wide, nine and a half feet tall, and either 20 or 40 feet in length.
- For the environmental folks, it is good to know that for each recycled shipping container, around 3,500 kilograms of steel is being reused, limiting the need for producing fewer new materials.
- As one of the biggest examples, Downtown Container Park in Las Vegas covers approximately 19,000 square feet with a mix of 30 shipping containers and another 41 multifunctional modular cubes forming the park’s perimeter.
- There are currently more than 17 million shipping containers in circulation across the globe with the number of active shipping containers at more than five million. In total, these containers make 200 million trips a year, according to Billie Box.
- Pop-up shops are booming and they are getting more attention from small businesses with a current U.S. market value of $50 billion.
