Your landlord's balance sheet is part of your business plan

Little Baobab, the Senegalese restaurant that was the resident kitchen at the Africa Centre in Southwark, lost its home in July with no notice. Not because the restaurant failed. Because the building it sat inside closed under financial stress. Two years of trade, an award last year, and the doors shut on someone else's problem.

Now they are crowdfunding £50,000 for a permanent site. Restaurant Online covered it on Monday: https://www.restaurantonline.co.uk/Article/2026/10/19/senegalese-restaurant-little-baobab-launches-crowdfund/

I hope they hit it. But the story is worth reading for anyone running a residency, a concession, a kitchen inside a pub, a counter in a food hall or a pop-up in a hotel. Those deals are cheap to get into for a reason. You skip the fit-out and the full lease, and in exchange your survival is tied to a business whose books you have never seen. The host has a bad year and the operator is usually the last to find out.

A few questions I would ask before signing one. How much notice do you get if the host closes or sells? Who owns the equipment you paid for? What happens to your deposit and your stock if they go under? And are you putting money aside every month for the day you need your own site, because that day tends to arrive on someone else's timetable.

On the crowdfund itself: pre-paid meals and cooking classes are a good way to raise money from people who love what you do. Just treat them as what they are, a debt paid back in covers and kitchen hours during the first months of the new site, and put that in the year one numbers before you open.