Chocolate Fountain Business / Chocolate Fountain Franchise

With many Mobile Discos and other Wedding Services looking at viable ways of expanding their businesses we turn our attention to the expense of setting up your own chocolate fountain hire business.

Ignoring the variety of consumer based, domestic chocolate fountains appearing in catalogue and high street stores which do not have the capacity to cope with the demand on a commercial fountain, there would appear to be only two ways to introduce a chocolate fountain business.

The first would be a chocolate fountain franchise. This is where you pay a fee to become part of a larger company or group of companies who offer their services on a national basis. By becoming part of a chocolate fountain frachise, you would agree to cover a certain region, and in return would possibly be granted a certain amount of work per year, in return for a reduction in the cost of starting up and buying the actual chocolate fountain.

The advantage of using a franchise for any business, is that apart from a reduction in start up costs, you are also given support and training, and even a certain amount of guaranteed business every year. This can sometimes, but not always be equal to the cost of buying the equipment, so you stand to make at least what you have spent!.

The disadvantages of Franchise work, is that you may be limited to working in a certain area, be expected to work to a set fee and also be expected to promote the actual company rather then your own business. Usually, calls are also handled by an head office and then farmed out to each regional franchise thus losing that element of customer service and continuity which you may get from running your own independant chocolate fountain hire service. There may also be other terms imposed, so I recommend that you study any contract and franchise documents very carefully before signing.

The other way, is to essentially "go it alone" and start up your own chocolate fountain service and supply to Weddings and other similar functions. To explain what is involved in more detail, here is a cost breakdown from Andy Harris of Your Big Event based in the South West.

Firstly be aware of what you are getting for your money!, sure, you can get a fountain for £2500 (plus VAT), but that has no surround etc, when we started the fountain side of the business we invested just under £6k

Also do not forget the set up costs also include all staffing attaire, aprons, shirts, blouses, badges, coats etc, the fountain also needs a table to sit on, OK you could ask the venue for one, but for £100ish it is more professional to get your own and be 'self contained', you will need an adjustable table, for those marquee jobs.

What about insurances, notice the plural there !, you cannot man a fountain single handedly, you can try, and you will get bookings, but you need two people to man it properly, this means you require both Public Liability Insurance, Employer Liability Insurance, Employee Liability Insurance, also every memeber of staff has to have a Food Hygeine certificate.


So now you have say, two members of staff, each has a company blouse/shirt, (£20 each) and a company apron (£10 each), and coat (£30), each also has a food hygeince certificate (£45), are you getting the picture ?, by the way you will need two or three of everything because you will get dirty

So back to the fountain itself, OK so you decide you want the £2500 model, which by the way will have no 'unique' selling points, our fountain is 50" tall, and has digital thermomators, not much, but two great selling points, anyway you have just spent £2500 on the fountain, you may also like the neon lit surround, that is another £1000 (all these prices are EXCLUDING VAT BTW)

So you have now spent the following amount before your first gig

Chocolate Fountain £2500
Surround £1000
Table £100
Company attaire £500
Insurances £500

Your website will need updating, our  Your Big Event website cost just under £2000, you will get cheaper, but ultimately the way you look will reflect in your pricing.

Chocolate is Belgain, and brought in boxes of 10kgs, in fact I have just a few days ago spent just under £300 on chocolate alone, this was without the £350 we spent on 'extra', jelly babies, marshmallows, fudge etc, also every gig we spent another £75 ish on fresh fruit, strawberries, pineapples etc

We only use top quality food stuffs, fudge is at the moment from Thorntons....you get what you pay for !

As for pricing the average cost to hire a fountain is £500 - £600 per evening, an evening can be anything from 90 minutes to 4 hours. Not bad for 4 hours work is it..................

except as usual it's not 4 hours work.

A typical booking will work out like this

0800hrs - Go to wholesalers and buy fruit
0900hrs - Strt preparing the fruit
1200hrs - Finish preparing the fruit !
1400hrs - Start preparing the chocoalte, it takes about 2 hours to melt, ready for transportation
1700hrs - Start preparing yourself
1800hrs - Arrive at venue
1900hrs - Strat preparing the fountain
2000hrs - Start
2300hrs - Finish, and start breakdown
0000hrs - Finish breakdown and get out !
0100hrs - Arrive home and start unpacking
0200hrs - Finish unpackaging and start washing !
0400hrs - Finish washing the fountain and start polishing it
0500hrs - Finish and go to bed.

And that day has cost you about £250, by the time you have paid your staff, paid for the chocolate and dips, the serviettes, diesel, insurances etc, so £500 is suddenly halved to £250...............for a busy 24 hour day !

£250...............what for ?

OK, so just for me to put the chocolate fountain up at a wedding fayre will cost me about £100, but why ?

Chocolate £45
Dipping food £45
Serviettes/skewers etc £20
Staffing £75 x 2 =£150
Cleaning cost £10

Not to mention our time and efforts

Notice I put in servieetes/plates etc, we always make sure that the serviettes match the colour scheme, along with the flowers we take etc.

Still intrested ?

Then read on

You will need a Transit size van to transport the fountain and disco gear at the same time, when the fountain goes out independly we use a Ford Galaxy with all the seats out, not ideal, as we like to use vans, as it looks more professional, but a Galaxy it is, don't forget you will need to update your car insurance too (we pay about £1000 per year on car and van insurances)

So here is a very rough costing so far, for your very first gig...


Fountain £3000 inc VAT
Surround £1500 inc VAT
Table £100
Company attaire £500
Insurances £750 (£500 for company, £250 for car)
Certificates £100 (2 x £50)
Chocolate £45
Dipping foods £75
Staffing £150 (2 x £75)

That's about £6500 including VAT

Here is a quick check list of required 'bits' that will require purchasing

Excluding the obvoius, don't forget

Sack trucks
Microwave oven
Tablecloths (x at least 3)
Plastic tubs (x 100's !!)
Scrapers (x 10 !)
Cool Bags (we have 5)
Plates and dishes (we have dozens, as they will get broken)
Extension leads
RCD's
Bins ( x2)
Knifes and chopping boards

Dips include

Strawberries
Pineapple
Marshmallows
Doughnuts
Fudge
Grapes
Turkish Delight
Stem Ginger
Pretzels
Jelly Babies
Flapjack
anything the punter wants (within reason !)


Now to advertising!, you need to do some wedding fayres, but you will need at least two tables, the round table for the fountain we have is 4', so that is one 'table space', then you will need your disco services on the other table. It is better to n=have two tables togetrher, as they can bounce off each other, and if sold correctly will get alot of 'joint' bookings.

As for power, you can easily run a foutain, and surround off one 13amp socket, and in many cases I have run the disco off the same 'ring' too.

Also the type of booking we do, require adverts in places like 'Devon Today' (Here is last years rate card), 'Devon Life' ( Their website) etc, not Yellow pages, and these adverts are not cheap. I think we spent £4000 on advertising last year.

Alternatively if you want to provide a chocolate fountain service without the expense, Andy also offers the opportunity for Party Planners, Wedding Service providers, Hotels, Mobile Discos and other related services looking to expand this service to their own clients, to also include the full range of services of Your Big Event on a commission basis. For more information please contact Andy Harris on 0845 257 5694