Thursday, June 17, 2010

That Gut feeling

You know when you have that "gut" feeling that tells you not to do something???  Well, I got it when I finally got the lease document.  Just opening it I saw already 3 mistakes that are really bad ones, starting with the name of our business: we are defining it as "Café and Bakery", because the bakery products are a very strong point and basically the reason we started this project.
I later found out that there was a strong reason behind leaving out that part of the name:  turns out that buried down on page 35 of Appendix G there is a little line that stipulates that the Landlord can not lease to anyone selling packaged or fresh bakery products for off-site consumption...  so basically it is telling us that we can make your wedding cake, but you'll have to eat it at our café!
Right away I called Ralph and told him.  He already was complaining about other mistakes he found in the document.
So, we called our leasing agent and told him about that detail.  We were not even going to send the document to our lawyer to check it out.  The leasing agent told us that he would try to get a waiver for that, but that was the last drop.  I asked Ralph what was his gut feeling, because I didn't want to be the pessimistic one, but we all are on the same page.  This doesn't feel good!!

So basically after few months of dealing with this, we are looking for another place, and preparing for other plans.  This means that most likely I'll be spending the summer in NY...

1 comment:

  1. Well, summer in NY isn't bad. I'm sorry this doesn't look like it's working out. It seems rather ridiculous that Appendix G doesn't allow for packaged bakery goods to be eaten off the premises, when that is exactly what your business is about. I hope you can either resolve this, or find a better leasing opportunity elsewhere.

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