Hey all! So I just moved to Ohio for a family emergency. I am now staying for awhile. I am in Canton and have decided to take my baking to the next level. I started hanging out at a local hookah lounge that just opened up a few months back and they have a kitchen they are looking to rent out during the day time hours. It is a large space, but lacks some important things like work tables and large stand up mixer. It has the full stove top and then 2 commercial ovens that have 3 racks in them. They do not use the kitchen because the hood is broken and needs fixed before they can get it health code passed.
Here are my questions:
How much should I pay to rent this space? I am going to have to most likely purchase a work table myself.
As for the mixer I was looking at buy a Cuisinart SM-70BC 7-Quart 12-Speed Stand Mixer. Any opinions on this?
Do I need to have a different Health Certificate then them since I am a different business?
What are the first steps I need to take to start this?
I also am thinking that the holiday season is really when I am going to be needing the kitchen. I am scared everything kinda stops during the winter. But I would like to find restaurants around here to sell my baking too.
I have about 20k in savings. I do not wish to spend it all, I would like to do this and hopefully see profit.
Thanks!

Ohio has a cottage food law that allows commercial baking from home, so I would recommend looking into that first before you invest in a commercial kitchen. You will probably burn through most of your $20K starting up the business from an inspected kitchen (unless there are other issues in the kitchen that need to be fixed, in which case it could be double or triple that), while the owners of the hookah lounge reap the benefits. Bakeries with this type of overhead often aren't profitable for at least a year or two.

Plus hookah lounges typically have a strong residual smell from the smoke, if the kitchen is not sufficiently segregated from the lounge that could be an issue.

Thanks for telling me about the cottage food law. I just do not see my kitchen here at this house large enough. It lacks counter space, the oven sucks (which I could replace) and there isn't storage anywhere.