Proper Kitchens

You must first have your kitchen approved by the Health Dept. Contact your local county health dept. and they will advised you and inspect your kitchen. Here where I live, you cannot use your home kitchen as a catering or commercial kitchen. If I build a separate kitchen in my basement that meets code then I can use it for commercial purposes. Hope this helps.

Suffolk County HD does not allow you to cook food in your home kitchen. You must have a commercial kitchen to work from.

I suggest doing a lot of research before making any moves. It took me about year to get all of the proper permits and licenses. Alot of that time was spent designing and building my catering/ vending trailer, but it was a long slow process. If you are planning on doing it the right way, it will certainly not be easy.

1. Contact the HD, and explain what you are planning to do. They will send you a packet that includes all of the paperwork & reading material you will need.

2. Look into Commercial liability insurance. That is a pretty big expense, but you don't want to risk loosing your personal assets.

3. Speak with a lawyer to determine what is the right business structure for you.

4. Speak with an accountant.

Start here:
http://www.suffolkcountyny.gov/Home...neral business pages/howtostartabusiness.aspx

Good Luck!

Just an FYI, it is actually the Uniform Building Code that defines what is or is not acceptable as a commercial kitchen, curiously, almost all of the U.S. adheres to this requirement and will not allow you to cater or cook 'ready to serve' out of a home kitchen.

bull2571 said:

Do you happen to know the names of the place that rent kitchen spaces

Thanks again to everyone providing us with useful and helpful information.

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I have not been able to find any in our area. It seems you have to know someone. I've been to halls and other places that have kitchens, but no one seemed interested in renting a kitchen out. Mostly because they wanted to stay off the HD's radar. Maybe you'll get lucky though.

BigParmsPitStop said:

So when renting a commercial kitchen do you smoke the meat there? I understand prepping or bottling sauce there but I would still be using my smoker. Plus I wouldn't want to pay to rent the kitchen while my smoker is outside their kitchen when I could do the same at home.

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It's not the cooking that's the problem. It's food prep and cleanup. Things like 3 bay dish sinks, handwash sink, food prep sink, mop sink that are all needed in a commercial facility. Then once it's cooked where do you serve from? Even if you have the kitchen most HD's still require commercial grade food holding and serving stations, including a roof overhead (can be EZUP usually). And the list goes on.