Ah, the next mountain to climb... leases. The landlord had a lease drawn up by his attorney. It was 17 pages of legal words. My agent looked at it and so did I. It had some really scary things. I was going to be responsible for any structural problems. First, that is absurd and secondly, the building was built in 1890. The landlord was going to pick all my insurance policies and I was going to have to pay for them. If the landlord put planter boxes around trees and someone tripped on them, I'd be...

scifimom

the continuing saga of putting together a commercial kitchen for rent..

I had my web site, my logo and really felt committed to this business. Now it was time to find a space to rent. I figured it would be easy - find some old restaurant for lease, get it, fix it up and open! No problem. At the time it was October and I thought I could be open in time for Christmas. I was so very wrong.

I started looking online. There is a web site called LoopNet that has commercial space...

scifimom

I unconsciously made the commitment to open this business when I created the web site. It showed up in Google and Yahoo just after it was posted by my designer. I was so excited to see it hit the top of the list when I googled 'commercial kitchen sacramento'. I started getting email and phone calls even though it said I wasn't open. This is just what I needed and I didn't even know it.

Should be easy, right? Find some restaurant that was for lease, make the improvements and then...

scifimom

I had my logo, I had my business name.. and here was the step that I felt would make me commit to the venture. I needed to create a web page.

I try to buy local so found a man named Edmund at E. Curtis design (www.ecurtisdesigns.com). I really liked his style and feel of the projects on his web site. Edmund asked me to look at my competition's web sites and tell him what I did and didn't like. I have found two web sites for commercial kitchens for rent. One was poorly designed and...

scifimom

I had the name. Still no committment, no money spent. I could still back out. But, I thought I should have a logo designed just in case I decided to go forward.

A friend referred me to a woman who she really liked. The woman did all sorts of identity things for businesses - logos, web pages, hosting and so on. The logo she designed for my girlfriend was just exactly her. It showed her spirit, her goals and her attitutde. I figured I couldn't go wrong.

The woman...

scifimom