I may have an opportunity to have use of a commercial kitchen. We havent worked out all the particulars yet. However, trying to get things in order before proceeding further.

For those of you who also rent/share kitchen space, how do you make the best use of your time there?
How many hours per week/month is your agreement?
How much is your fee to use the kitchen?
What is your "schedule" like for completing the orders? For example, do you bake one day, assemble another day, etc?
Do you have a minimum dollar amount for your orders or are you open to pretty much all orders?
Approximately how many orders do you do per week?
What's the maximum number of orders you will accept per week?
Other questions...
Do you tote all of your supplies, ingredients, etc. back and forth or does the facility allow you storage space?

I know I probably have a million more questions, but I cant think of it right now. LOL! It will come to me.

Thanks in advance!

What city and state are you living in? This may help to answer some of your questions.

These are just general questions. I didnt want to narrow it down by location. I am just trying to get an idea of how to make the most of my time if I were to pursue this at a shared kitchen.

I can share some things pertaining to efficiency, working in a comm'l kitchen.

First, don't measure how much time it will take you based on working in a home kitchen. You have much better efficiency in a comm'l kitchen.

Instead of being able to bake one or two (3 max) cakes at a time, you can put 6 to 10 cake pans in an oven, depending on the size. What might take you 5 hours to bake at home will only take one hour in a commâl kitchen. So maximize your baking time. The oven is going to run for an hour, whether you have one cake or 8 cakes in there, so bake ahead some of your common sizes and freeze. With a stockpile of cakes, there will be times you wonât even have to allocate any baking time.

While the cakes are baking, make flowers and other decors. Store them appropriately so when itâs decorating time, you can just grab-n-go.

With a larger mixer, you can make all of your icing in one batch instead of multiple little batches. While the cakes are baking, mix your icing and store it in large containers.

When youâre ready to decorate, you usually have lots more counter space so itâs easy to set up assemble line icing/decorating. Youâll be amazed at how much faster it works.

Commâl kitchens are also easier to clean. Unlike a home kitchen, they are designed to be cleaned: everything on wheels and 6â above the floor for easy sweeping/mopping; no pretty edges and borders on the counters so you can move the trash can right up to the counter and in one clean sweep, push everything into the trash; if you have a commâl dishwasher access, do the happy dance! My dishwasher does a wash load in 55 seconds. Heck it takes you that long to fill the sink in a home kitchen!

But the key is (1) high volume so you can (2) utilize your time to maximum productivity (i.e. full ovens during baking time).

Thank you so much for your response, Indydebi! As usual, lots of great information!