Numerous homeowners in Southern California have been making extra bucks by renting out their properties as movie, TV and commercial locations for decades.

Fewer business owners may be aware that they can get a piece of that lucrative action. Productions are always in need of both generic and unique-looking locations, and with show business booming in the region and a resulting shortage of soundstages to build sets on, the demand for places to film is at a recent high.

Should you want to invite a film crew into your place of work for a day or more, though, you’d better be prepared.

“You have to have a stomach for it because it’s pretty invasive,” advised Bill Rinck, the co-owner of Fields Market in West Hills where, since a scout for the TV series “7th Heaven” talked him and partner Richard Smith into letting them shoot a scene there 18 years ago, movies from “Bird Box” to “Birds of Prey,” TV episodes of “Barry,” “Good Girls” and hundreds more shows and commercials have filmed.

“In the beginning it was really kind of stressful, but once we got several under our belt we found it was not too bad,” Rinck continued. “They come in and they turn your place upside down, but when it’s all said and done it’s put back 90%; the other 10% is, I would say, fine-tuning.”

There’s fine-tuning business owners who want to get into the film hosting game should do as well.

FilmLA, the production-promoting and location-permitting office for the City and County of Los Angeles, launched a multifaceted education and outreach program called “LA Loves Film” late last year to help sustain the region’s high rate of production. A key portion of that encourages business owners to look into the possibilities and best practices for making stars out of their stores, offices and the like.

For example, at a FilmLA-organized panel of veteran location managers in Woodland Hills last month, dozens of attendees were given:

Tips on how to market their establishments either with or without intermediary location agencies

Good neighbor policies for when you invite a film crew onto the block

Advice for getting landlord permission for any production activity on rented sites

And much, much more.

“I came here to learn what it takes, what permits I would need, that sort of thing, to host shoots,” Jake Kremin, who with his wife runs several businesses out of a rented commercial/residential loft on Ventura Blvd., said following the presentation. “This was very valuable.”

In a follow-up interview at FilmLA’s Hollywood offices, the not-for-profit’s outreach liaison for the West San Fernando Valley, Carri Stevens, listed several ways companies can get camera-ready.

First, get your business on the California Film Commission’s CinemaScout website, and look into also getting listed on the third party location services’ sites (The Creative Handbook is a good place to research the latter).

Have good pictures of the property taken.

Know what the parking situation around your business is – and if you’re able to trim back low-hanging trees, the better it will accommodate equipment trucks and talent trailers.

Respond quickly when location scouts inquire, and if you’re not on-site at the time inform your employees to contact you as soon as they can.

“Especially if you look at TV shows and commercials, they have a pretty quick turnaround from when they find out what location they need to when they actually need to shoot there,” Stevens noted. “So the more that the company can sort of give them as a pre-packaged deal, the more enticing it’s going to be.”

FilmLA, as well as location managers and Teamsters Local 399 which represents them, will even provide businesses with free window clings that say “Filming Welcome Here” to alert scouts that they’re available.

Get that landlord OK if you don’t own the property, of course, and expect some to want compensation from the production company for it as well.

Perhaps most important, educate yourself on what various sized and budgeted shoots’ impacts on your area will be, do your best to inform neighboring businesses about what to expect and make yourself accessible should any issues arise.

“They can reach out to their neighbors before they even decide to start filming,” Stevens suggested. “That’s a really big one because you want to have this open dialogue with your neighbors, whether it be residential or commercial. So if they have any concerns they go to you, the business owner, before it explodes and there’s animosity.”

FilmLA distributes notices which have tons of information about upcoming shoots to neighbors. However . . .

“That’s bare minimum in terms of the outreach that should be done,” Philip Sokoloski, the film office’s vice-president for integrated communications, cautioned. “A film crew with resources will knock door-to-door in the community, they’ll make their future presence known before they bring in all the trucks and all the people and all the impact. But you’re the one who has to live in the neighborhood or maintain a business on a busy corridor.”

Of course, film hosts must also calculate how much extra money they’ll make from disrupting their daily business for shoots. A large space like the 25,000-square-foot supermarket Fields can continue serving customers while an aisle or two are blocked off for Margot Robbie or Meryl Streep to stroll along (did we mention that Netflix’s “The Laundromat” was also filmed there?). Smaller establishments will have to close for the day, or many hours of it, unless overnight shoots, which tend to cost productions more, can be arranged.

“Let’s say that somebody has a clothing store and they sell, maybe, $5,000 a day in clothing,” said Josephine Williamson, co-owner of the Encino-based Sight to Site Film Locations agency. “They’re going to want to get about $8,000 or $9,000. They’re going to have to take into consideration what they’re losing to shut down, and it’s not worth it just to take $5,000 and break even.”

Remember, money is the main reason to do this. Occasionally, a film crew will leave behind something you may want, like the pictures of meat and produce at the top of some of Fields’ walls. And of course there’s free advertising, but only if the shoot calls for using your signs or branded items rather than fictitious ones or none at all.

But those considerations shouldn’t bear too much weight in your hosting calculations.

Albert Tran, the owner of Miss Donuts in a Reseda shopping center, still gets curious customers who want to see the place where porn star Buck Swope got caught in a shootout near the end of the 1997 Valley movie classic “Boogie Nights.” That was made before Tran took over the operation, but reverence for the movie also draws location pros, and that led to more recent shoots at Miss Donuts for the Showtime series “Ray Donovan.”

The film crew was professional and left the small, corner shop in as good a shape as they found it, Tran confirmed.

“I just shut down the business and let them do what they wanted for six or seven hours,” Tran recalled. “They paid me OK, but it has to be more than my usual business because if a customer can’t get in and they never return, then you’ve lost a lot more.”

Although Miss Donuts’ shopping center has a pretty big parking lot, Tran isn’t certain neighboring businesses such as a 99 Cent Store or Sexy Nails got enough compensation from the production company to want it filled with movie vehicles on a regular basis. His landlord was cool with it, but may not be again.

“Once in awhile, it’s good to have films come and shoot in your place,” Tran believes. “But not too many times, because that will bother your neighboring businesses and regular customers. Once a year is OK, maybe.”

With vast parking adjacent and available offsite, not to mention strict rules for keeping access to other businesses in the building clear (or compensating them if they’re encroached upon), Fields Market has become such a hot production site that even its regular patrons are happy to cooperate when a show’s shooting there, according to Rinck.

“When they see it on TV they go, ‘That’s my store’,” Rinck reported. “And my customers are pretty cooperative. When they hear ‘Quiet on the set,’ they know the drill.”

Rinck’s wife Jennifer is the point person for filming activity at Fields, and though it’s fairly unique in the volume and industry awareness it enjoys as a location, the business follows several guidelines that anyone who wants to get into the game would be wise to emulate.

“Stay out of the film crew’s way and let them do their jobs,” Rinck suggested. “At the end, make sure it’s all cleaned up. Get a deposit, make sure your contracts are in order and make sure the contracts are being followed. Get a diagram of your location and tell them where they can and cannot be, and everything should go OK.”