Deciding what kind of takeaway restaurant to open (or the concept) is one of the most important decisions to make. Once this choice has been made, everything else will flow from it - from what sort of items to offer on your menu, right the way through to the way you greet customers at their door when delivering their food.

What is your passion?

The most important question to ask is, "What kind of food would I love to cook and eat every day?". The concept you choose has to be something you love, since you'll be spending your valuable time on this and will need it to be enjoyable. If you have a few special signature dishes which you love to make for friends and family, then this can be a good indicator of where your passion may lie.

What is the demand?

The next question to ask is, "What kind of food is needed in my area?". Every town has takeaways, and the best way to beat the competition is to offer something slightly different. Try typing your postcode into the hungryhouse home page to see what's on offer in your area, and keep that in mind when formulating your Pop Up Takeaway's concept.

You need to be confident that there will be demand for your concept / style of food. A good way to make sure is to ask around your neighbours to find out who has food delivered from time to time, and find out what kinds of food they would like to be able to order. There's no point in opening a German style sauerkraut and sausage delivery service if all the local residents you speak to say they wouldn't want to order this! Equally, if you happen to have a university halls of residence around the corner from you, speak to a few students - there may be a huge group of potential customers crying out for a good, hearty, home-cooked meal 'just like mum used to make'.

In summary, play to the opportunities of your local area. This is key to making a success of your Pop Up Takeaway.

What can you prepare quickly and efficiently?

As you will know from your own experience of ordering deliveries, being able to deliver the food in good time is crucial. When choosing your restaurant theme, you need to think carefully about how long each of your meals will take to cook, and how much of the preparation you can get done in advance. A good rule of thumb is that you need to be able to make the food in 30 minutes, leaving yourself or a helper a further 15 minutes to deliver it.

What can you deliver reliably?

Remember that each and every customer in the early stages of opening your Pop Up Takeaway can have a major impact on your success through the reviews and feedback they leave. It's essential that the food and service they receive is of the highest quality, and one of your main challenges is to keep your food warm through to delivery. Luckily, good planning is key, and there are some simple ways to ensure that food is warm when delivered:

• Choose a style of food that has the potential to travel and keep warm. This is why Chinese, Indian and Italian foods have always been popular delivery options - and of course it's the reason why McDonalds and KFC don't deliver. Their food would go cold and soggy before they could deliver it.

• Be sure your food can be packaged in a way that will hold the heat. There's no point choosing a style of food which has to be laid out on a plate, as this will go cold very quickly. Instead, think about what kinds of food are able to be parceled up in tightly packed containers, from which the customer can serve themselves upon delivery.

• Choose your packaging wisely. Cheap options may be better for your margin, but this is a false economy if the result is negative feedback from customers who have received a cold meal. Top tip: Existing takeaways are experts at delivering food hot. Use the same packaging as they do, and keep everything together in one bag.

Setting your menu

When choosing what dishes your Pop Up Takeaway will serve, remember not to run before you can walk, and don't try to compete directly with more established restaurants who are bound to offer more extensive options. Focus instead on a narrowly focussed menu of 'crowd pleaser' items which you're confident you can produce to a high standard.

Make sure that you create a spread of options (even though you may only begin with three or four key dishes) so that you're covering a few different people's tastes. It's also worth considering offering a vegetarian or vegan option, as this can be a real deal-breaker when groups are deciding where to order from, and big groups will be your favourite customers.

Creating the small range of dishes on your menu is about weighing up what you will be able to handle, and making your life easier by choosing things that can be prepared at the same time, or in the same way. One simple way to do this is to decide what the core dish that you want to base you menu around is, and then consider creating a couple of additional dishes using a very similar set of ingredients.

As well as making preparation easier, using a narrow range of ingredients is something that will help you in controlling your costs, You need to work out exactly how much each dish will cost you to produce - and of course, the more ingredients you have to buy, the more it will cost.

Costs also have a big effect on one of your biggest decisions when setting your menu - how much to charge. When deciding this, it's best to do some research on other takeaway prices in your local area. You need to strike the right balance between making a healthy profit on the food you sell, but also not pricing your Pop Up Takeaway out of the market.

Finally, it's important that you don't forget to include options for starters, desserts, and drinks. All of these will boost the average amount that your customers spend, which is crucial to ensuring that you are able to create a good profit on every order. If you think about the items that you offer carefully, they should add little extra effort to the prepartion and delivery of the meal, but have a strong impact on your profit.

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