Location & Property
Choosing the Right F&B Location in Singapore
How to evaluate a potential F&B site — catchment, footfall, visibility, rent and the practical details that are easy to miss.
Draft prepared · 2 min read
Editorial draft — not yet reviewed for publication
This general guide is for information only and is not professional, legal or financial advice. Always confirm current requirements with the relevant authorities.
- Consider adding an anonymised example from New Nanyang's own site selection.
Location is one of the few decisions in F&B that is very hard to undo. Once a lease is signed and a fit-out is complete, moving is expensive. That makes careful evaluation worth the time.
Start with who the site serves
Every location has a catchment — the people who live, work, study or pass through nearby. Ask:
- Who are they, and when are they around? Office workers, residents, students, hospital visitors and shoppers all behave differently.
- What do they need at each part of the day — breakfast on the way to work, a quick lunch, a family dinner?
- Does your concept fit those needs and price expectations?
A concept that suits a weekday office crowd may struggle in a weekend-driven mall, and the reverse is also true.
Look at real footfall, not just headline numbers
Spend time at the site at different hours and on different days. Watch where people actually walk, which entrances they use and where queues form. A unit around a corner or on a quieter level may see far less traffic than the building's overall visitor numbers suggest.
Visibility and access
Can people see you from the main flow of traffic? Is signage allowed, and where? For takeaway-heavy formats, ease of access for both customers and delivery riders matters.
Understand the full cost of the space
Rent is only part of it. Ask about service charges, promotion levies, turnover rent arrangements, fit-out periods, reinstatement obligations and lease length. Then compare the total occupancy cost against realistic sales at that site.
Check the practical details
Some of the most expensive surprises are technical:
- Is there adequate exhaust provision for your style of cooking?
- Are water, drainage, gas and electrical loads sufficient?
- Are there landlord restrictions on cooking methods, opening hours or menu categories?
- Where will deliveries and waste be handled?
Weigh the trade-offs honestly
No site is perfect. A cheaper unit with weaker footfall may need more marketing; a prime unit may need much higher sales to work. Writing down the trade-offs side by side makes the decision clearer.
How we can help
Our F&B Business Setup support includes location evaluation from an operator's point of view, and landlords can propose a site for us to assess.