I bake custom shaped cakes for friends and family, and have had requests from others who want to pay me to make one for them. I know that it's not legal in CA to sell baked goods from home, so here's my question...

If I use a rented commercial kitchen space, such as the Chefs Kitchen, to bake the cakes and make the frostings, etc, can I then take the baked cakes home and do all of the decorating there? It would cost way more than the price of the cake if I were to carve and decorate it at the commercial kitchen. Does that seem like it's legitimate, or would that also be a no-no?

Sorry, In CA you must bake, decorate, finish your cakes (in my case cookies) at commericial kitchen. Then it must go from there to customer. Product can not brought home. You also must store all your ingredients at the commercial kitchen. I work out of a kitchen in the SF bay area. It is hard to make money when you have to rent all that kitchen time...but it is the law... I even had to have my car inspected to be a food delivery vehicle.

Good Luck

I figured that was the case...thanks for the info!

I do have another question then...how do the commercial kitchen rentals work for the part time people if they are supposed to store their ingredients there too? I don't think that's an option at places like Chefs Kitchen. But as long as you're insured and have a food handler permit, the commercial kitchen lets you rent and they say that you can then legally sell your products. Hmm...

I believe they do have an area that you can rent for storage, kinda like lockers.

You might want to contact the hd and chefs kitchen to clarify.

Every commercial kitchen rental I've ever seen offers tenants storage space on premises, either included with the rent or for an extra monthly charge.

Here is a copy of a commercial kitchen questionnaire. This may be helpful when talking to kitchen incubator owners about their services.

Just a couple points to remember. Always ask about any hidden fees and whether or not you will need to carry liability insurance in the event of a fire. If the facility has information in writing, get it, don't take their word of mouth at face value, not saying anyone is dishonest, but you want as much in writing as possible and if you must sign a contract, have a legal professional look it over; and try not to get locked into paying even if you do not use the facility. You really want to pay only for the time/space your actually use.