#2. Sell some alcohol
This one is a classic. You might think that with this business in mind you will get rich, quick and easy. After all, everyone likes a good old drink. The idea is pretty straightforward. You get yourself a nice, large bucket full of ice, stick in some cans of lager, then go and sit in a shady corner near a sports event. The masterstroke is the display of a handcrafted piece of brown cardboard featuring the words ‘cold beer’ – the ultimate marketing slogan.
And that’s it. You just have to wait for the hordes of sweaty tourists to come to you for an overpriced, warmish beverage of the nastier brand. Now, think again. You are not allowed to do that!
According to the Licensing Act 2003 “In the United Kingdom, the sale of alcohol is restricted to pubs, restaurants, shops and other premises licensed by the local authority.” So, after studying closely this piece of law literature, it seems you can’t trade alcohol in the street. You may see people doing it, though – you might also see people dressed as bananas or running naked through the Olympic stadium in the middle of a major event. That doesn’t mean you should join them.
As an alternative you can trade from your house. You don’t need to live near Stratford or the Olympic Park, there are many places in London (and outside) where events will be taking place and you might get lucky and have a stretch of the marathon passing through your living room, or at least outside it.
Of course, you can’t turn your house into a pub just because you wake up one morning thinking that your local is not close enough. In order to sell alcohol, your premises needs on-licences (allowing consumption of alcohol on the premises) or off-licences (alcohol must be removed from the vendor and drunk elsewhere).
Sell from home
There is an exception. You may be eligible for a temporary or occasional events license. Here’s the science bit. Sort of:
“If a proposed temporary event includes a licensable activity in premises that do not hold a Premises Licence, a Temporary Event Notice (TEN) is required. A TEN can be issued for events where no more than 499 people are likely to attend at any one time, or where the event lasts less than 96 hours.”
That means that, in theory, you could hold a party in your house for four days non-stop and sell lots of alcohol. The downside is, at some point, there will have to be someone at the door telling the 500th customer “sorry, you’re not wearing the right shoes, mate.”
So there you go, the perfect business. You only need a house and an alcohol vendor license – oh, yeah, we forgot this one. You need to apply for a personal license, but after some red tape, £37 and a clean slate from the Criminal Record Bureau you should be alright.
#1. Rent your driveway
Outside of prostitution and selling steroids to weight lifters one of the best ways to make money at the Olympics is renting one, all, or some part of your home to visiting tourists with far too much on money on their hands. Renting out your home is a truly excellent way of exploiting wealthy people’s vastly oversized pockets, however there are other ways to profit off your property and one is to rent your driveway to people needing somewhere to hang their car.
Now there is one problem with this, according to ODA regulations, you can’t profit from “any private or public land to which the public have access.” So you can let someone use your driveway, you just can’t charge that person for it, because that, my friends, is too nakedly capitalistic for the egalitarian socialists that head the Olympic Committee. Remember, this is all about preserving the Olympic spirit and definitely not about making money for its sponsors.
The alternative
OK, the key word here is “land.” For those of you not familiar with basic English, land is defined as “the part of the earth’s surface that is not covered by water, as opposed to the sea or the air.” Remember that kids, land is not the sea and is definitely not the air, though earth does contain a certain percentage of both water and oxygen, even if that percentage is zero.
Anyway, you can’t let people park on your driveway, we’ve covered that much, however it doesn’t say anything about letting people park on other less earthly parts of you property. There’s a few ways around this, as far as us non-lawyers can make out. The first one is easy, just get a decent pulley system going and rent out your roof. You should probably reinforce it first and definitely attach the vehicle to something pretty strong or, better yet, just invest in a giant magnet. Everybody needs at least one giant magnet in their house, to make it a real home.
If you’re too cheap too invest in a good old-fashioned wince and magnet system then you’ll have to turn to option number two. This one is cheap and most certainly cheerful. For this, we’ve got to turn to another part of the legislation and an apparent loophole – who doesn’t love a good loophole? – section 4.8 states that those who provide “vehicle-parking services in a building or on land designed or generally used for parking” are exempt.
So, if your land is designed or generally used for parking then you can rape, pillage and charge your way to a brand new bag or at least a few extra pennies.
NOTE: raping and pillaging (whatever it is) are not advised.
So, all you have to do is get yourself some white paint, dap a couple of car park spaces (just one is probably best for the typical residential home) and start renting space before the games begin, then when the whole sporting commotion kicks off you can quite rightly claim that your driveway has provided “vehicle parking services” and is most certainly “generally used for parking.” If you don’t personally own a car, just get yourself a bike and sell-o-tape a motor to it, this idea will definitely stand up in court, unless someone peels off the tape.
If after all of our fabulous suggestions you still haven’t made enough, you should probably just rent out your home for a small, substantial fee and spend it on a wonderful holiday abroad.
Read part one here
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