In episode one of Kunal Thakker’s Developing a Squat Practice series, he discusses the key factors in selecting the perfect location.
Today we’re going to talk about picking the perfect location for your new squat practice.
You will want to make sure that you’re positioned in the right place in the right town and where there’s a demand for dentistry. So, there’s a few different things that I look at when we are looking at where to place our dental practices.
Footfall
The first one is to make sure you have got some footfall. All of our Tooth Club dental practices are on high footfall locations, typically in town centres or shopping centres. This is where we will position ourselves so we naturally have people walking past, seeing the Tooth Club brand and coming in to book their appointment.
This makes dentistry more accessible to patients and allows us to offer a wide range of treatments which patients want.
Demographics
The location is really key, so we do a lot of analysis around demographics. We look at people’s affordability, their income, accessibility to dentistry and NHS dental care in particular areas. All of these things make you realise whether the practice is going to be successful.
Are you going to get patients in that need dental care, or is there five other practices in a very small, close proximity? All of these things are used to aid us in understanding where the right location is for our next squat practice.
So, we look at demographics, we look at where and how many practices there are in a three mile radius. We also speak to people when we go on certain high streets and ask them where they go to have their dental care.
All of this helps us form an opinion around where the right place is to position our dental practice.
Size
So when choosing a site, when we find the right High Street or the right town that we want to position our practices in, the most important thing is to look at the size of the building.
If you go too big, your building cost is going to be way too high. But then if you go too small, it stops any future growth potential, and it will feel very small and cluttered. These things stop the patient experience being premium and high end. So it’s really, really important to find the right location and then the right size of unit in that particular location.
Typically, all of our Tooth Club locations are around 1500 square feet. This size of location means it’s not overly big, so it’s not going to mean that your building costs will become really excessive, but it also means that you can comfortably put in five or six surgeries. You may not want these at the start, but it’s got future potential if you want to grow your dental practice.
It also impacts the layout of your patient journey. You’ve got a big open reception area, you can have a treatment coordinator room, a manager’s office, a good sized decontamination room etc. All of these things make the patient journey flow really nicely.
Watch the video for the rest of Kunal’s location tips.
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