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What to Prepare Before You Sign a Commercial Lease | Episode 109

  • Nov 20, 2025
  • 7 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts


A commercial space is a tool. It buys you room and reach, and it arrives with rent, a longer drive, a payroll conversation and a hundred small decisions you have never had to make before.


I just finished my first week in mine, and I want to give you the real version: why I moved out of my house, what week one actually looked like, and the specific work I would do in your home kitchen for the next year if you think a lease is somewhere in your future.


If you decide to stay home, that is a completely good answer. Plenty of bakers should cap their production where it is and build a beautiful business inside that. What I want is for you to choose it on purpose.


Why I moved out of my house

I did not set out to build a business. I was sending out resumes trying to find a job that fit our family's strange schedule, baking sourdough as a way to take care of myself, and it turned into something with real demand attached to it. Once that happened I threw everything I had at it.


Eventually the house stopped being able to hold it. My bottlenecks were specific: fridge space and prep space, mostly. Add the mental load of living inside your workplace, and the fact that the room my bakery had taken over was a room we needed for homeschooling.


At that point I had two honest options. Cap my production at the level my house allowed and run a great business inside that limit, or go find more room. Given our family's goals and the way I want to serve this town, more room was the answer.


Going commercial is not one decision, either. A commissary kitchen where you produce and then sell at markets or through wholesale is a very different animal from a retail storefront, and much cheaper. I looked at that seriously. I chose retail because I wanted a place where people could gather, where I could teach workshops, and where other people can teach theirs. I have someone coming in next week to teach a candle making class. I am a lingerer, and I wanted to build a room worth lingering in.


Your reason will not be mine. Just make sure you can say it in one sentence, because that sentence is what you will be paying rent for.


What week one actually looked like

The identity shift landed at 3:45 in the morning on my first Saturday, driving in. I drive to work now. I turn a key in a door that is mine. Everything a customer feels when they walk into that room is my responsibility, and so is who is standing behind the counter.


Three things went genuinely well:

  • Space changes how you think. My prep table is more than double the size of the one I have been working on for two years. I can already feel it opening up decisions I did not have the room to consider before.

  • The community showed up. Long-time customers, brand new people who saw one Facebook post, friends from my women's networking group. They stood in line and were patient with me while I found my footing, and it filled my cup!

  • I stopped sealing and labeling everything. This one is a bigger deal than it sounds. Baking from home meant every single item got closed and labeled. Now, for retail walk-ins, I pull it off the cooling rack, put it in a bag and hand it over. For pre-orders I pull the order up in Simply Bread, bag it and they are gone. Holiday pre-orders still need labels and reheating instructions, but the day-to-day packaging time has largely disappeared.

And then the part I got wrong. I set pickups for 9:00 AM and started baking at 4:00. My new oven takes about ninety minutes to preheat, so my first load did not go in until 5:30, and I was still rotating product at noon. I was also alone, bouncing between the register and the deck, which is the least efficient way to run any day.


I normally do this properly. I know how many loaves I can bake in an hour, and I work backward from how many I have to deliver to find my start time. That morning I simply did not do the math. Everybody got their order and a few people got warm bread, which was a lovely accident, but I would rather earn that on purpose.


The things nobody warns you about

Decision fatigue is real and it is constant. The sign by the sink telling employees to wash their hands. Deli paper for picking up product. A hundred small purchases you never thought about, each requiring a choice.


The mental load of not being dialed in yet. I have a long list of things I have not figured out, including a subscription program in Square that I have lost real hours to. I am not burnt out, just carrying the weight of knowing nothing is optimized yet. That weight is normal in a transition and it does lift.


Rhythms have to be rebuilt from scratch. The commute, which days are for baking and which are for the computer, when the family gets me. I am setting Tuesday as my podcast, coaching and email day and protecting Monday for rest and errands. Those boundaries do not appear on their own.


What I would do in your home kitchen right now

If a commercial space is a maybe for you, this is the work that pays off before you ever sign anything.

  • Optimize your systems now, not after you move. My favorite version of this is counting touches. If you pick up a bag, turn it around, then load your bread in, turn the whole stack around once so you only touch each bag one time. It sounds too small to matter. Multiply it by four hundred bags and it matters. Walk into a new space with processes that already work instead of rebuilding them while customers wait.

  • Know your numbers cold before you take on overhead. The true cost of every product you make, your margins, your real overhead. Then build a financial cushion. I am bootstrapping and running very lean, which is doable, and I will tell you plainly that a bigger cushion buys you a calmer first year.

  • Know your volume and where the growth would come from. Rent only works if you can scale into it. Look at your actual demand today and name the specific channels that would fill the extra capacity: more retail days, small strategic wholesale accounts, workshops.

  • Get clear on your brand. What you stand for, what you say yes and no to, what people feel when they interact with you. When you move, your customers should feel continuity, the same bakery in a new room.

  • Write down your non-negotiables. Your working hours, your rest hours, and the boundaries you will hold with a team, including how far ahead they ask for time off.

  • Expect an awkward adjustment period. Weeks to months of feeling inefficient. That is the cost of the change, not a sign you chose wrong.


If you are already a few years in

Two pieces of this are worth doing whether or not you ever get a lease.


The first is recording your processes as you build them. I have efficient systems and almost none of them are written down, which was fine when I was the only person doing them. Now that I am bringing people in, we are recording each process the first time we do it together, then adjusting in the space rather than reinventing it later. If hiring is on your horizon, I go through the whole thing in When and How to Hire Your First Bakery Assistant | Episode 111.


The second is hiring for buy-in. My bakery is small and it exists for a reason, so the person who just wants a fun job at a bakery is usually not the right fit. Pay in food service is not enormous, and the work is real work. I need people who believe in what this room is for, because every customer who walks in is going to feel whoever is standing behind that counter.


On the equipment side, I went with a My Forno deck oven for two reasons: it is analog, so there are fewer parts to fail, and it is built by a company that has been making bakery ovens in Italy for over sixty years. The evenness of the bake has been the headline so far, no hot corners and no rotating every few minutes, and each deck adjusts independently. I have since put it through a proper season of use and given it a full review in My Honest Review of the My Forno Bread Oven: Is It Worth It for a Sourdough Micro Bakery? | Episode 122.


Final thoughts

Week one was thrilling and overwhelming, often in the same hour, and I think that is exactly what week one is supposed to be. Nobody skips the messy middle. The work is learning to move through it faster each time.


If a door is opening for you sooner than you planned, consider that you might be the person for the job. This happened faster for me than I ever expected. And if something in you says not yet, you do not have to force it, because this is a genuinely big step and staying home is a strong business decision, not a smaller one.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If this one is your season, here is where I would go next.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 

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