Hello
New to forum and just considering possibilities at the moment which hopefully I can get some help with from you all.
I live in a village which lost a village shop about a year ago, I've lived in the village for twenty odd years and have seen a number of shop owners come and go. It seems that only one set of owners were good at managing the shop and whilst they owned it, it was vibrant, sucessive owners seem to have had issues with over/under stocking and hygiene which put people of going. I say this because I think our community want and support a local shop but want one that functions.
I've toyed with the idea of running a shop, I have a room I could use, parking is not brilliant but could be overcome I think, The thing that has always held me back is the committment to having to run the shop 24/7, finding cover for holidays and days off etc.
The idea of a community owned shop sounds great in many ways but I have done a lot of voluntary work in the past that has left me a bit wary of committee politic/lack of team spirit but it does have many potential advantages and perhaps a better site (local pub or village hall)
We also have a pretty much defunked freehold pub, hardly anyone uses it, the landlord isn't really interested in the pub or customers, it has beecome run down and doesn't even open on a saturday night now unless someone rings and asks him to open. I think it is possible that he may sell (grape vine)and I think it would be great to have a community owned pub and shop combined.
So 3 questions really
1. Is it a possibility to get a freehold pub/shop combination running as a community owned enterprise or am I living in a fantasy world, due to initial outlay of buying the landlord out?
2. I am torn between, running a shop myself, could do with an income and would be nice to get something for all the effort for a change and this would avoid the possible difficulties of committees OR venturing into a community project which has the potential to be brilliant, shared commitment, workload and loads more inspiration/energy but which may end up with all the 'committee politics and non team players' which worries me more than it perhaps should?
Sorry to ramble, difficult to put it all down in writing but would appreciate your thoughts