Take a good look around your local area today, and you might come across shipping containers. There are more uses to shipping containers nowadays before it gained the kind of popularity it has today. Essentially, shipping containers are now very prevalent in construction, with many people building different structures from them.
Shipping containers have a wide range of uses beyond simple transportation and freight purposes. The benefits and uses range from short- to long-term for temporary and permanent structures. There are many reasons for its popularity, beginning with cost-savings and time efficiency.
If you’ve considered using shipping containers for your building project, suppliers like Royal Wolf and others in your area provide you with different sizes and options for your project. Aside from using it for storage for your business, here are five other business uses for shipping containers:
1. A Storage Solution
As a business grows, its need for more space increases. This space covers not just the store premises but more storage space for inventory. Hence, the first use on this list for a shipping container is as a solution for your storage needs.
Shipping containers work great for this purpose because you won’t have to build from scratch. If you need to have additional storage space ASAP, using a shipping container as a warehouse can help address your space-related needs.
2. Restaurant Or Café
A shipping container works well for a restaurant or cafe because it’s versatile to customize. Whatever your theme is, you have the structure ready, and all you need to do is tweak your interior.
Moreover, while a restaurant or café can be a profitable business, the start-up capital you need might also be high, given all the equipment you’ll need to purchase. If there’s a way to save on other costs like a building, for instance, that’s an opportunity for any budding entrepreneur.
Purchasing a shipping container might be costly initially. However, if you compare this with the cost of building materials from scratch plus labor costs, a shipping container might be cheaper. Many start-up restaurants or cafés have already opened, using a shipping container as their structure. You can even find hole-in-the-wall cafés using only a single shipping container to bigger restaurants with multiple shipping containers these days.
3. Temporary Office
There are instances when a business will need only a temporary office, such as during longer pop-ups or construction sites. In those instances, it’s might not be too practical to build from scratch.
With that said, if your purpose is mainly for a temporary office, shipping containers are an ideal alternative to a full building. It’s efficient, and you can also transport it to the next site.
For construction businesses, this cuts the need to build an office from scratch and then break down the structure once they finish their projects. Because the mobile office can be transported to the next site location, its usability increases, making it a practical choice for the construction company. Apart from an office, this also applies to other temporary structures like site storage spaces or sleeping quarters.
4. Gift Shops
A gift or souvenir shop is a profitable business idea, especially in locations with high tourist foot traffic. While this can be an additional income stream, it also means eating up what limited space your business has. On the other hand, it’s impractical and inefficient to build a bigger structure that might not fit in the available space in a tourist spot.
Shipping containers are ideal because they come in different sizes. For starters, you can have a small gift shop first to see if the market for your souvenirs is strong. If you see you don’t have a market, you can move the shipping container quickly to another location and convert it to another business.
5. Creative Workshop
Do you have innovative and unique products you’d like to sell? There’s no time but now to start. Perhaps you can start with a small office and space at home or in your garage. But once you expand your operations, you’ll also need a bigger workshop to create your products.
If this is the type of business you want to start, then a workshop is a must-have. The more space you have, the more organized your workshop is. That way, you’re not all over the place with all the supplies and finished products you have to sort.
Final Thoughts
The list above contains five of the many business uses of shipping containers. If you have a business in mind, check with your local shipping container provider and builder to see if they can develop the kind of structure your business needs. Shipping containers have many advantages when used in business, but it’s also not without its cons. To make it work for your business, use only quality shipping containers so the pros outweigh the cons.
