Partners opening a Juice bar with no Know How

[Annunciata R.]

Hi BP,

This is tough one: Yesterday I had an Electrician - General Contractor go out to my commercial building which he wanted to lease from me. He told me the business was really for him and a partner. His business partner is a distributor for some nature sunshine product but their goal is to use the place for legal "herbs". I declined on the basis that I would prefer to wait until I could open a juice bar since there is a 24hr fitness centre across the road.

The electrician now he says he wants to partner with me. At the moment he runs a non profit electrical institute where students are trained and need several hours on the job training. Speaking to him I do believe that he really wants to help the community. What I want to know is what are peoples non monetary reasons for wanting to partner. Also as I don't know how the partnership should be structured what are any idea to move forward

Here are our combined strenghts

Partner 1 (Him) Is an Electrician who runs an electrical institute with access to his students

Partner 2 (Me) own the building

Neither of us know much about running a juice bar. Any ideas how to structure at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[Chris Winterhalter]

@Annunciata R.

Yea don't start a juice bar. That's probably the best advice I have.

Who wants to be in the juice bar business between you and your partner? It sounds like you just want a tenant that would be a juice bar because you believe it would get good traffic from the 24 HR Fitness. Do you want to start and run a juice bar? Does your potential partner want to run it? Let's say you start a national franchisee juice bar with the best chance of success (for a non-juice bar experienced person). Someone needs to manage and run this business. I understand that your not worried about the profit but rather helping the community. However you would be better off leasing the space to a solid credit tenant and giving away the profits (plus the amount you will lose on the juice bar) to a local health charity of your choice. Just my dos centavos.