Equipped

There is a few different ways to decide on what type of equipment you need. I start off with my menu. I write all of the items for the menu and on the side I make a list of what I need to produce it in the order it would be done. Ex:
Chocolate layer cake with chocolate icing& pastry cream filling-Scale, scaling bowls Mixer with whip and paddle to produce cake batter & icing, cake pans, rack oven, sheet pans  . Pot and hand wisk to cook pastry cream Pastry turntable, serrated knife, spatula, piping bag, piping tips, scissors.

After I do this with all of the menu items I divide it into 2 groups, major equipment and smallwares. Smallwares being anything under $1500. I also write the disposable list off of this ( are you lining cake pans with parchment, is it going on a cake board and in a box tied with string?)

You also have to take into consideration sanitation, hand sinks, dish washing area, refrigeration, lighting, flooring, storage etc..etc..etc...

I found the best way to organize all of this is to get a floor plan of the existing space and sketch out a diagram of where everything is going to go.( this will change 100 times)

Now that you have all of your equipment lists it's time to go shopping!

Goin To Town

So first things first. Get squared away with the town. I headed over to town hall to the zoning office and picked up all the paperwork that I needed to fill out. 20 copies with pictures of the outside of the building for the application review meeting.At the meeting you basically  tell them what you plan on doing, hours of operation how many employees etc. They look over your paperwork and tell you what to change. After this you attend the planning board meeting and they give you the thumbs up or down on your business. Thumbs up for this guy!!

Back to town hall to introduce myself to the health inspector and fire inspector. Both were very helpful and excited about a bakery coming to town. I also contacted the state health department to find out what if anything I needed to do. As far as the state is concerned you need to apply for a state licence only if you plan to do wholesale. The health inspector told me to wait until we were close to opening. Its like 100 years away.

Location, Location,Location

After a deal fell through for an existing bakery in Hackensack. My partners and I decided on Ramsey NJ. https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&q=ramsey

Several reasons why.
 1. One of my partners is a long time resident of the town
2. There isn't an Italian bakery (a good one anyway) for 18 miles.
3. There is a ton of Italian Americans here.
4. Why not


First thing about looking for a location is check with the towns zoning department. We found several cool spots that we thought would be perfect for a bakery but the zoning wasn't right. It wasted a lot of our and our realtors time ( the realtor should have taken care of it)

After looking around for a few weeks we got lucky. There was a tea shop/cafe that just went out of business and just next door an empty space. Each space about 900 sq ft with basements of the same size. The tea place is totally remolded beautifully. The previous owners bailed on the landlord without paying for the renovation and paying out the lease. For the time being we will take the empty spot and turn it into the kitchen and small retail takeout area. When issues are resolved with the "tea" people we will take over that space as well knocking a hole in the wall to connect. Surprisingly rent is reasonable in Ramsey (commercial rent anyway)

As far as the lease goes my partners handled most of it so I'm a little in the dark.We signed a five year contract. We had it put into the lease (putting a down payment on it) that we would have the option to procure the tea place when it comes available. We negotiated free rent for 3 months to do the build out (time is ticking). Not sure if we did this but I picked up a good tip in the book "Setting the Table" by Danny Meyer, have it put into the lease that you have the option to sublease the space. This way if your business goes down you can rent the space out to someone else to finish out the lease minimizing your loss. Good shit Danny!

Now with the lease signed I have 8 million things to do.

Reasons

The reason behind this blog is to keep a notebook for myself of all the steps in opening a (hopefully) successful bakery operation

After years of slaving to the grind  I made the decision to try to break out on my own.
I knew I possessed the skills to produce a product as good as anybody and I definitely have the work ethic. The problem? Where? what kind? How am I going to pay for it? Long story short I found some awesome partners( who are some of the greatest and most generous people I have ever met) who believe in me. Together we figured out a concept (mostly them)t and found a great location (not so easy). So hear I go with an Italian bakery in Bergen county NJ