Nothing on TV and I don't feel like working... so I am going to ramble a little bit.
You make the statement, "I have my suppliers list and rates, I can see that the margins are good." Let's run with this one for a little bit.
You say you are going to run a "small family grocery shop". I assume this means you are looking at 1000 to 2000 square feet max, of the size of the Cold Storage in Greenwood Plaza or perhaps Heng Heng Food Suppliers, located in the same shopping center.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cold+ ... 103.806744
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Heng+ ... 03.8070726
Am I on track at this point? So, you are looking for commercial
property in an area that has local shoppers who might drop in on a daily basis, while saving larger shopping trips for the NTUC or some such.
So... you need a place with reasonable foot traffic... it's not as crucial as a restaurant, where traffic is a make or break... still, you need someplace reasonably convenient for people to pop in (and those people are going to need to be reasonably affluent... I see no way you compete against wet markets like you find in Holland Village, for example.
Have you found such a place? Then you know what your rental costs are. Add in the costs of utilities, plus amortize the costs of improvements (coolers, shelving, lighting) over three years or so and you have your monthly/yearly fixed costs that you must cover just to have a door to open every morning. For fun (and don't you wish it would be that cheap!) let's assume that you must cover $2,000 per month in fixed expenses.
We haven't started talking about food costs yet, nor salaries, nor a profit. So, let's talk about this. You need to fill the place up with things to sell... perishable and non-perishable. You say that "the margins are good" in the grocery business... I cannot speak for Singapore, and therefore, again you need to do some research about your gross food margins. But, let's assume for the moment that the margins you have are correct.
You already know how much sales volume you must generate to cover fixed costs... that amount represents the difference between what you pay for your merchandise and what you sell it for. For fun, let's assume that your gross margin on foods is 50 percent... you buy lettuce for one dollar and sell it for two... that's a 100 percent markup... understanding the difference is crucial.
If you have a gross margin of 50 percent and $2,000 in fixed expenses, then you must sell $4,000 of food per month to cover your fixed expenses. Now add in a $6,000 salary and we see that you will need to sell an additional $12,000 per month in food to cover the salary.
You can see that you need to generate $16,000 per month in gross sales to cover rent and the salary for the EP. Now that you know that absolute minimum amount of business you must generate to keep the lights on, start working this backwards into the number of people you are going to have to serve on a daily basis.
You'll need to have some sense of the average spend per consumer... you can get this by asking other shop keepers in the area or digging around at SMU... somewhere, somebody has compiled a survey like this. But, we can make a SWAG (serious wild ass guess) for the purposes of an example. Let's say your average customer spends $50. Then you must have 320 customers month. If they only spend an average of $20 each, then you need 800 customers a month... that's somewhere between 10 and 30 customers per day if you are open every day. Will your location and traffic model support this?
This is only a rather simple example. A quick check says that you will pay $5 to $8 per square foot per month for decent retail space... a 1,000 space will cost you $5,000 to $8,000 per month. Add $1,000 for utilities and you are looking at $8,000 per month or more in fixed costs. So, if you had $8,000 in fixed costs, plus the EP salary of $6,000, you need to generate $28,000 per month in gross revenues... 560 sales per month at $50, 1400 sales per month... 50 sales per day... at $20. Can you do it?
You have to account for loss by spoilage and theft, which can often be a significant expense. You've got many other expenses not listed here... insurance, for example. You will get screwed by your suppliers who will demand discounts on sale prices to move products, or force you to buy much more than you need in order to get the right price. Or they will force you to buy product you don't want in order to get the product that you do want. Distributors can be a big big hassle.
You can use what I've put here to layout your first set of pro forma financial statements... years 1 thru 5. I'd be interested to know what your numbers look like. In the USA, grocery stores are highly competitive. The big stores have a net profit of 2 to 3 percent... sell $100,000 of product, make $3,000 when it's all said and done. Smaller stores have a somewhat better net profit... but still only 5 to 6 percent.
I don't know Singapore grocery (although I do know that Singapore restaurants have similar margins to those in the USA), and I predict that you should ultimately expect about a 5 percent net profit (pre-tax) on sales... labor costs are lower in Singapore but rents are much higher, as are food costs.
Finally, I judge that if you are trying to open a shoe string operation, you will never get an EP approved. It's simple... because the gahmen is going to reserve the shoe string operations for Singapore locals... the ones who scare up $10,000 to start selling vegetables... if you are planning on going down this road, it won't work.
The gahmen will expect a foreigner to have sufficient capital to create a small grocery that can compete against a neighborhood Cold Storage or mini Fair Price... a cut above the average stall you might find in town. My guess is about $100,000 to properly outfit a store... but that's just a SWAG.