Renting A Church Kitchen, Advice Needed - Page 4

Quote:

Originally Posted by LovelyCakes4Us 

Hay all, I have some questions and would like some advice on renting a church kitchen, Ifound a church right up the street from me that will rent their kitchen to me, a few weeks later I went to meet with them it was brief maybe 10 minutes. They looked sceptical until I told them Ihave taken safe serve have liability and so on. The head lady of the kitchen said quote "maybe this will be a lot better then I thought" . We then went over storage and ect, then how much to pay a hour. The lady said 10.50 I said that perfect I'm on a low income trying to start a business. The guy on the other hand insisted I pay more due to oven use. Understandable right? Yes. But then again most of my time there will be fondant work maybe a hour worth of baking. I left and received a call today he said I will be paying 20.00 a hour plus 100.00 deposit. I know this is a good price for a rental but with how tight my budget is makes $20 a hour impossible for me..

Any ideas on how I could try to see if they could reconsider to maybe $15 a hour or less being as I won't really be using the oven that much.. Heck I only get 1 order a week if that lol!! Any tips advice would be great!! How would you try to see if they could reconsider price if you're income was low?

Please no negitive comments on how I shouldn't try to start a business with low income.. Trust me its possible with the str eighth of the lord.

he knew you liked the $10.50

he doubled this part of your overhead

and wants you to put up $100 when you say you're low income

yeah i'd say he wasn't trying to help out any

maybe save face that they said yes at one point--but they mean 'no not really'

I would make a counteroffer to the church for say 12-13 Hr. Then see what they come back with, I think you can get it to 15 Hr. if you push the issue.

Best of luck, Jimmy

Well I have rented church kitchens, and maybe there is some information misssing here.  OP will no doubt fail to get the message, but for the rest of you, here it is:

US churches are registered with the IRS as NON PROFIT organizations.

When a BONA FIDE MEMBER of a church congregation rents their church kitchen for a ONE TIME ONLY event, there are many  EXEMPTIONS to the food rules that kick in.

When a FOR PROFIT BUSINESS rents church space on a regular basis, then the church might have to comply with the full set of food safety regs as if it was in fact a restaurant or bakery.  Which will cost them $$$ and might even require them to upgrade their facilities and certification. FYI the same applies to daycares and other regulated activities using church space on a REGULAR basis instead of an EVENT basis.

I believe that the church people took the OP's request to their legal advisor who pointed this difference out to them.  They did their due diligence according to the laws of your state.  Yes no doubt the OP will accuse me of some new sort of offensiveness...that's just the OP.

Here while I'm at it are more facts: the OP showed in her budget that she is deducting her personal household expenses off her business income to calculate profit.  Sorry babe but that will get you kicked real hard by the IRS...in back taxes and penalties and audits until kingdom come.  Your business finances must show all BUSINESS expenses and they can pay you an hourly salary and all employment taxes.  You should file and pay those employment taxes so that you can collect benefits. 

Your car gets a mileage allowance for expenses according to the miles logged for BUSINESS not the total.  Your house rent (when you MUST use a rented kitchen) gets prorated by floor area for office space--and your personal  grocery bill simply cannot be part of your BUSINESS finances.  You seriously need to get a local accountant to advise you.  Call me all the names you want...when the IRS invites you to a business meeting it ain't gonna be no picnic.

If I'm not too late answering, I would ask if you could start at $15.00 an hour, and after a definable period of time when you're making more money, say "in 6 months" I can start paying you more - that is exactly what I did!

Hope this information helps,

Lisa Raffael

i looked this up recently and discovered that this church i mentioned upthread is still in hot water to the tune of four hundred thousand big ones

(originally it was for millions in taxes on the entire property--got that notched back...but still at it nine years later) 

you can get a flavor of how the government in tn views this if you get a chance to skim this article

tax exemption is a very big deal and should be safeguarded

note the word purely in the quote following the link

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20121115/NEWS06/311150008/Nashville-megachurch-appeals-tax-break-ruling-over-bookstore-cafe

ok--well it was in another thread about renting from a church that we all discussed tax exemption in regard to non-profit organizations and for profit organizations and the calamities thereof

but the idea still fits here

my opinion on it -- just say no to renting from a church

I just wanted to chime in that there wasn't any mention of taxes in that budget. I was self-employed for a time in 2011 and as an experienced finance professional even I found it overwhelming to keep up with all the rules on when to pay, and more importantly, how much to pay. You may also have to figure out state taxes. If you're currently selling cakes, even cheaply, I assume you already know about all of this. But since you didn't include it, I thought you would appreciate the heads up. 

Also, I realize you probably won't take this in the spirit it's intended, but if you respond to people you are doing business with in the same way you do to people on here that are usually trying to offer you some useful advice, you're not going to get very far. Instead of constantly jumping up to defend yourself, take a second to think about whether there was actually some merit to what was said, because as they say, 'there's no smoke without fire'. A lot of us have had to learn the 'pause and take a breath before hitting the send button' lesson the hard way.