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.
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