If you ever think about renting from San Jose Kitchen Rental, read my review so you can make an informed decision. I usually do not like to give bad reviews, but I feel it's almost wrong not to let others know what I went through. I'm not saying that people should not rent from this place, but I just want to share my experience so people can learn from my mistakes and make an informed decision before moving forward.
I was thinking about owning a bakery, but I'm completely new to it so I thought I'd try it out by renting a kitchen first so I wouldn't have to invest in all this money to open a retail bakery shop at first. I've never had a bakery business, not even from home, but I wanted to make sure that I had the correct licenses and permits to run a legitimate bakery so I decided to move forward with the commercial kitchen.
When my husband and I went to go check out the place, Annette (the owner) was 40 minutes late for our appointment. While we were waiting, some other people who had scheduled time at the kitchen were really angry because someone else took their time slot. I should have saw that as a sign, but I didn't! Anyways, I signed up and paid $775 ($500 for 1 year membership fee and $275 for the monthly minimum for 10 hours). In the contract, I was also supposed to get dry and cold storage space.
For my health inspection, I needed to show I had dry storage. Well, even though Annette promised me TWICE that she would give that to me, she didn't. So, I didn't have it for my inspection. Fortunately, the health inspector let it go because I told her that Annette was going to give that to me soon, (which she didn't btw until 3 months later.)
The way that you need to schedule time at the kitchen is on a community white board. You can't do it online! You can't see the schedule unless you are actually there. You may call or ask Annette, but it's difficult because you can't actually see the schedule. So, I had an event I had to bake for and I tried to schedule the time. I contacted Annette several times and she took a couple days to get back to me and then finally told me the kitchens were unavailable. Great, so I had to bake at home which took me forever. Then, I had hired someone to come train me, who was from out of town, and I was unable to get the times I would like. So again, I baked/trained at home. Pretty much, it was really hard to book times. I never hit the 10 hours each month because I was always unable to get the times I wanted.
Well, after just three months, I decided that I did not want to pursue the bakery business and am doing another business. I THOUGHT that I just wouldn't get my $500 fee back but could cancel my membership. So, I told Annette that I would stop using the kitchen and cancel my membership. She immediately shot an email back to me and told me that I owed 3X the amount of the minimum rent due or $5000 if I broke my contract. I'm not really sure how that makes ANY sense because the minimum monthly rent is $275 so times that by 12 months would be $3,300. HOW COULD CANCELING THE MEMBERSHIP BE MORE THAN THE ACTUAL MONTHLY RENT FOR THE YEAR?!?!?!? That doesn't make any damn sense. But anyways, I was really surprised at how fast she responded to me when it came to money, but took forever when it was about getting me my dry storage and renting time. She says that the membership meant that I had to pay the monthly dues no matter what, whether I used it or not. Well, that is really not how I understood the contract. With that said, just because she was always extremely unprofessional, doesn't mean that I am going to be. So, to honor the contract that I signed, I wrote her a lump sum check for the rest of the year even though I am not using it. In addition to this, I wanted to give my hours to someone else who was renting from her and she said I could not let anyone else use my hours. I'm not sure why that would matter either since I am paying for those hours.
Anyways, so there you have it. If you want to rent time here, know that you might face some of the obstacles that I did. Don't make the same mistakes that I did. Make sure that if you rent time here, that you really do get the storage that was promised to you, that you will use at least 10 hours and make sure to look at the calendar to see which times are usually full, and that you will be using it for at least a whole year. Make sure you look at the contracts you are signing carefully regardless if it is at this kitchen or not! read more
