Old local pictures, snow forecast for this weekend and what do we do about Ramsgate High Street?

The photos should expand if you click on them a bit.

In January of last year I did a post about there being so many closed shops in the middle of Ramsgate, here is the link http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/empty-shops-right-in-middle-to-ramsgate.html these shops are still empty.

I suppose most people know that I run the bookshop in Ramsgate and that somehow it’s been running the past 30 years something most other shops in the town don’t seem to have achieved. I think that in view of this I ought to have some idea of how to solve the problem.

I think there are several factors here, the first one being the cost of opening the doors of a shop, this is basically, rent, rates, heat, light, insurance and staff wages.

The rent and rates is roughly based on a thing called the rateable value which is calculated by the inland revenue. In very simple terms the rent is usually around the rateable value and the rates are usually around half the rateable value.  

Not sure if the following link will work but it should give the ratable values for Ramsgate High Street.   

https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/business-rates-find/list-valuations?searchBy=Street+name+and+town&postCodeQuery=&streetQuery=High+Street&townQuery=Ramsgate&primaryCriteria=ADDRESS&baRef=&number=&street=&town=&postCode=&billingAuthority=&specialCategoryCode=&descriptionCode=&from=&to=&listYear=2017

So the first one is Café Nero say £18k pa rent £9k rates around £4k heat and light wages ( the national minimum wage is about £7 per hour living wage about £9 and if you work on it costing around about £10 per hour to employ someone so about £18k per person and I guess 4 people to cover running Café Nero so somewhere in the £72k per year ballpark for or to put it another way costs in the £100k ballpark, or around £2,000 per week to open the doors.

Open 7 days a week so you have to make £300 a day before you would see a profit. You could probably knock the wages bill back to £50k but not much more. What I hope here is that someone is going to find I'm wrong and that it is actually much less money.

I should stress here that there is a lot of difference between make and take, with a new bookshop you would be doing well to generate a gross rate of profit of 30%

I think it really begs the next question what could you sell in the £1,000 per day ballpark in the middle of Ramsgate and to be honest I just don't have the answer. 

I would say that charity shops which are staffed by volunteers is one solution, even cafes have a job surviving in this environment.

Perhaps if Ramsgate Town was full of other thriving shops then them all being there would produce enough supportive trade.

On to the snow forecast of the weekend, this is a screenshot f the BBC weather app on my phone

Some Margate pictures next

This one says [Margate] Mayor. 7th Mar 1922

  

And this one Belgrave Rd. March 1943

Both March, and no snow.

On the bookshop front 2 days of books, I didn't put any shop links on yesterday's post, so here are the links 

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-faraway-tree-in-bookshop.html

and

http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-black-door-in-bookshop.html

I think the main trick here is that you have to be able to buy these books for less in the bookshop than you could on the internet