I've been tossing around the idea of renting out a commercial kitchen to home catering businesses, looking to eliminate the cost of having to buy their own facility, at least in the startup phase. How feasible is such a business? What would be the risks?

Hello,

I just read an article about this. I was considering this as part of my business. Honestly I don't remember where exactly I saw the article but it may have been an old one in the Philadelphia Business Journal. It was about Kitchen Incubators, which can be very costly. Try to google Kitchen Incubators.

Sandra,

It is quite feasible, there are hundreds of incubator kitchens all over the US. We often have downtimes for our kitchen that I have suggested to my husband we could rent out the kitchen... We haven't done it yet, but the drawbacks and hitches for such a project would be the same... Here are some of the negative thoughts we've had...

1. Are you communing ingredients, if so, who keeps the inventory.
2. If you're not communing ingredients, how do you keep each user's ingredients separate?
3. Supplies and inventory how are you storing them... glass jars take up a lot of space, both empty and full... do you have enough space for each of the users
4. Time allotment. This is a matter of scheduling, but there are about three weeks out of each year where we require our kitchen, so anyone else's schedule would be interrupted by us. That could be a deal breaker for a user.
5. Licensing and inspections. What if one of the users wants to use controlled substances, such as meat or certain chemicals, etc. Who is in charge of making sure the licenses are in place... Is that the kitchen or the individual user.
6. What happens if your kitchen gets an FDA shutdown because one of your users was pulled on a botulism testing?
7. Insurance.
8. Shipping and receiving scheduling.

I'm sure there were more thoughts that came to mind as we discussed it, but that's plenty to think about for now.

There are lots of links on the web that will help you.

Another thought we had for the kitchen was rather than open our kitchen up to a group of different cooks, contact a local tradeschool or handicapped program and see about setting up a program that allows the school or program to use your kitchen a couple of days per week. They benefit, you get your desired outcome, and everyone is happy... this seems to have different concerns, although many are similar.

Good luck with it.

Tina Brooks, VP Marketing
Brooks Pepperfire Foods, Inc.
Makers of Peppermaster Hot Sauces
http://www.peppermaster.com

Eat more peppers!