The move to wholesale

When we decided to close the retail shop in Berkeley and go strictly wholesale, our first step was to figure out where we wanted to move. We knew we didn't want to be in Berkeley anymore because Berkeley's attitude against businesses was not very friendly and very restrictive. Plus it didn't really make sense for us to be in Berkeley anymore. At the time we were living in El Sobrante; I worked in San Francisco and my husband worked in Fremont. We decided that San Leandro would be a good middle point for us. I contacted the city and found that they seemed pretty relaxed there about businesses. I asked what they needed for us to open and they just said we needed to apply for a business license and pay a small fee and then we were open. Now finding a space was not much more complicated. We really didn't have any experience looking for space since the first coffee shop we opened was already an on-going business. We basically just looked for something in San Leandro that was close to my in-laws house in case we were tired and needed a place to sleep. We chose a warehouse place on Davis Street right off of 880. The leasing agent was as green as we were, making all these promises which I guess he should not have because when we went to sign the lease, his manager did not seem happy at all with the deal, but he did honor it. The space was about 1,000sqft and they included tenant improvements such as tiling the floors and running all the gas and electricity to our coffee roaster. We were excited but now had to plan the move from the Berkeley site to the new site. Of course, we didn't hire professional movers. We thought we could do it all ourselves with some help from friends. The move was much harder than we thought, due to the Sivetz coffee roaster and the huge afterburner that was on the building's roof. Let's just say we were extremely lucky that no one got hurt in the move. I didn't realize until after we lowered the 6 ft tall, 500 pounds steel afterburner down by rope and ladders that it originally went up to the roof with a crane. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.