Building a Catering Kitchen

We started out like many with a mobile concession trailer doing roadside and catering. After 6 years now we've outgrown that set up and decided to build a commercial kitchen in the unfinished ground level basement of our home. It's going to be roughly 500sq ft. Initially with framing out, electrical and plumbing with equipment we were looking at around $28k. It's been one thing after another and we've upgraded a few things to make it better and gone with better and more equipment. We were dealt a blow when we found out we had to install a separate drain field for the commercial kitchen because the engineer would not sign off on our existing one. I had 8 rows in mine and he said my house was being handled on 2 of those rows. After he designed a new one for the kitchen build it has 3 rows which would still leave 3 rows unused in my existing drain field. Long story short he got $200 to sign off on my drain field and $850 to design me a new one. They just finished the new drain field at a tune of $5k and now I find out that the brand new 8ft hood system that I purchased is going to cost $4500 in labor to install :shocked: Anyways I'm setting closer to $50k now and still have a lot to do before I have a kitchen to cook out of. It seems it's never ending. Oh and dealing with contractors has been a learning experience too, seems they have different time schedules than I do. If I contract to feed you on X date at X, if you are not eating on that date and that time it's because you are not hungry and not because I'm not there with your food. Rant over :mmph::shock::wacko:

IamMadMan said:

I too hope things improve for you.....

Here in NJ, the Health Department tells us we cannot have a commercial kitchen with an entrance from the home, it has to have a separate outside entrance.

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It has it's own entrance from the outside, but here in Virginia that is not a requirement.

mchar69 said:

How can a vent hood cost $4k+ in labor?
I bet I could do it in a day. OK, 2 days. OK, 3 days.

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I'm with ya except for cutting 2 2ft square holes in the back of the hood and in the side of my house. The system also has to be tuned so that the make up air and exhaust air are pulling equally. I was worried that if I hired a jack leg and they screwed up it could cost me $20k so I decided to hire a reputable company. After calling around it seems the price is in line, even though I about died when I saw the price :shocked:

Bbq Bubba said:

Venting a hood, from a basement, is going to be expensive.

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The basement is not underground. They are simply cutting the hole through the side block wall and the fans are mounting directly on the exterior side wall 2ft from the hood inside. Total duct work for both make up and exhaust are less than 10ft. Like 2ft for exhaust and 6ft for make up air. It comes down to they know how and where to properly cut and not screw up the hood and or the wall.