Kitchen Hire Vs Renovate
As I am self funding this little business of mine, I have to make every dollar count. So, when I was doing some research on how to get a Food Business License, I had a huge decision to make...hire or renovate a kitchen? My first thought was I should hire a kitchen, as the upfront cost of renovating a kitchen may be just too much.
So my requirements for hiring a kitchen were:
Location - can't be too far from me as I don't want to be wasting time driving.
Price - paying per hour to hire is not cost effective for baking as there is so much time involved in the actual baking and cooling process. So finding a venue that offered a per day hiring fee would be the best option.
Equipment - how much of my own equipment will I need to transport with me along with ingredients. Also will I need to invest in more equipment?
Food Business License - the venue must also have one and be current.
On site storage - is this available and how much will it cost to store if necessary. Is it secure? Easily accessible when items need to be retrieved?
Opening hours/booking time frame - Are the opening hours suitable for my business? How much time will I need to give in order to secure a booking.
After I approached a few venues that offer kitchen hire, I found that the cost was too high and I couldn't justify it. The cost of hiring the kitchen would limit the orders I could take, as it would mean the order must be a large cake in order to make it somewhat feasible.
The next and only option I had was to renovate an existing kitchen, if I wanted to pursue this dream. Lucky for me, my parents were in need of an upgrade to their home kitchen, so it was decided I would have it renovated to meet the food business criteria. So the fun begins...
