What Do Growing Businesses Forget When Opening a Second Location?

The first location teaches a business owner a lot, but it can also give them a tiny bit too much confidence. Sure, that sounds awful, but to a degree, there is some truth to it. It’s like the first local, one more, and then it’s like there’s enough confidence for global expansion. Because once one shop, office, clinic, salon, restaurant, or studio is working, it’s easy to think the second one is basically the same process again, just with a different address and maybe a better coffee place nearby. Which is a super simple way of thinking of things. 

But it really doesn’t work that way, though, because the second location is where the business stops being one place and starts becoming a whole operation. Granted, it already was, but now, there is two landlords, two sets of keys, two sets of utility bills, two sets of staff problems, two maintenance situations, two opening routines, and two places where something can go wrong on a random Tuesday when everyone is already busy. There’s just a lot there.

And okay, by all means here, growth is exciting. Of course it is. A second location means something is working. It means your business is so good that you actually have the means to expand, and you calculated that this would work too. But the problem is the smaller details and the assumptions, that's where the problems actually lie.

The Lease Details Can Come Back to Bite You

But that doesn’t really make any sense, though. Well, the problem here is that commercial leases have a talent for hiding important things; they’re still there, but you don’t think much of the contract. For example, there are costs in everything and limits in everything, and that includes rent increases, renewal options, repair responsibilities, insurance requirements, signage rules, parking rights, shared-area charges,  and even notice periods.

The tricky part is that the second lease might not work like the first one. Like your first one could be great. The old location might have an easy landlord, decent parking, simple maintenance terms, and a renewal date that’s years away. The new one might have stricter signage rules, different repair obligations, rent that climbs sooner, or a notice deadline that absolutely cannot be missed.

The Admin Needs to Grow as Well

At one location, it might be possible to survive with a folder, a few calendar reminders, and one person who “knows where everything is.” At two locations, it starts feeling a bit risky. The main problem, though, is that documents might get saved in different changes, sometimes that can even mean that they get missed, rent changes get forgotten, and nobody remembers which lease said what without digging through PDFs. So you’re honestly better off here getting leasing software so these things can be tracked better. 

Maintenance is it’s Own Can of Worms

This is the part that can catch business owners off guard because repairs feel like future problems, and future problems are very easy to ignore when there’s an opening date to hit. So, if you’re dealing with two locations, well, you either need to have a staff member you can rely on or a repair company you can get a contract with that can get things done in a timely manner.

The Second Location has its Own Personality

That sounds weird, but the point is that it’s a new location; therefore, new customers, new personalities, new cultures, like one location, the original might have catered to a certain demographic due to the location it was at (like Boomers), but the second location is in a trendy location with younger crowds. You see, same business, totally different personality.