WE OFFICIALLY HAVE A RETAIL SPACE, and we want to share this idea for an affordable bakery retail space with you.
YAY!! We are so excited. We wanted to share with you all how the opportunity presented itself.
You may be asking yourself, “why do I care?”
That’s a good question… We are all looking for ways to grow our business. We thought we would share with you this idea for an affordable bakery retail space. The pandemic has created some unique opportunities, and we would hate for you to miss the chance to grow your bakery business.
Before the pandemic, we were baking from a licensed commercial kitchen. The kitchen had limited days and hours that we were allowed to bake. We could not schedule hours when it was convenient or necessary for us to conduct business, and that could be very limiting at times.
We not only bake directly for customers, but we sell to two different coffee shops, so we need some flexibility in our kitchen. In you are in the St. Louis area and would love to connect with us for our wholesale business ➡️ learn more ⬅️ We had a team meeting during shutdown and honestly discussed the need to move into our own commercial kitchen space.
We knew how costly this could be and the risk we were taking. Before the shutdown, we paid zero for our kitchen, but we were ready to take on the additional debt to help grow our business.
We had looked several times before the shutdown for available kitchens. We called every church in the area, every known commercial kitchen available for rent, and many businesses asking to rent out their kitchen.
We were either told, “Nope, not happening,” or the price was $15 or more an hour. The cost was just too high, so we stayed in our free kitchen, knowing that we really couldn’t grow more without leaping into a new kitchen space.
Here came the shutdown, then the many weeks of the shutdown, and then the emergence of the economy and cities reopening. During this time, we had resolved ourselves to getting a new kitchen for growth.
So, we hit the internet one more time to make sure we didn’t miss any kitchen space opportunities.
YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE IT!!
During the shutdown, a local restaurant decided to revamp its business model to more of a Food Hall concept.
A Food Hall concept is when you have several restaurant concepts housed under one building. They were now going to be a restaurant business incubator. (Boy, did we luck out).
So what this means is there are several other restaurants in the same space. None of us are allowed to produce the same products. We have to submit menus and get any menu changes approved (in our opinion, a small disadvantage), but this set up provided us with so many opportunities.
Advantages:
- short lease terms (ours is only six months at a time)
- great practice and understanding of the business
- SOOOO AFFORDABLE (under $600+ small portion of sales)
- Use other business’s customers to gain more customers
… Plus so many more (but I won’t take up your time listing them all here)
We were so excited about the opportunity. A few days after signing the contract agreement to start our new kitchen and retail space, we were contacted by one of the previous commercial kitchens.
They informed us that they, too, were changing their business plans and were moving more towards a Food Hall concept.
We figured if these types of opportunities are popping up in kitchens in the St. Louis area, then they may be available in a city near you.
If you are looking for an idea for an affordable bakery retail space in your are, then we suggest giving it a try and seeing what opportunities are available near you.
We would love you to comment below and let us know what type of kitchen you use for baking.
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