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We’re a membership-based kitchen with a mission and commitment to racial justice that informs everything we do.
We believe in the power of food to build connections between individuals and build wealth for the business owners who have traditionally been left out of the food economy. Nearly 80% of our member companies are owned by women, immigrants, and/or people of color.
We know that access to a commercial kitchen is one of the biggest and most costly barriers to starting a food business. So we start by providing a fully-equipped shared use kitchen for rent to our members, staffed by professional chefs with extensive food safety training. We help these aspiring entrepreneurs get started with recipe development, permits, and packaging.
But a commercial kitchen is just the beginning!
The food business is easy to enter but incredibly complex to navigate. We pride ourselves on partnering with our members along their journey to help them gain access to the knowledge, capital, markets, connections, and distribution needed to thrive.
In addition to our shared kitchens, we offer wrap-around business and technical support to all members at every stage of growth—start-up, incubation, and growth. We help our business owners master the intricacies of permitting, safe food handling, recipe development and scaling business strategy, labeling, sourcing, packaging, distribution, margin calculations, managing multiple sales channels, and customer acquisition. We also broker connections to powerful industry networks to help members access new channels and secure sales.
We offer wrap-around business and technical support to members at every stage of growth.
Coaching & Mentoring: We offer mentoring, one-on-one advisory support, and a comprehensive online resource library.
Peer Support: Our community of food businesses provides crucial peer support. We also host monthly Town Hall meetings with all members and manage a local food business listserv with over 250 active members.
Workshops and Training:
Start a Food Biz: A 2-hour food business basics class for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Ready to Launch: A 14-week class that coaches aspiring entrepreneurs through the start-up and permitting process.
Cultivate Small Business: A 4-month class that provides business education and mentoring to existing food companies ready to scale.
Ad Hoc Workshops on topics such as selling at farmers’ markets, food truck fundamentals, recipe costing, debt and equity finance, marketing, and social media.
We broker connections to powerful industry networks to help members access new channels and secure sales.
We connect food trucks and caterers to office managers and event planners for catering jobs and vending spots and offer them an opportunity to run their own takeout restaurant in dedicated retail spots.
For bakers and product companies, we forge connections with distributors, specialty food retailers, large catering companies, grocery chains, and food service buyers. We also host our own buyer’s show and provide support for companies attending the Fancy Food Show and other trade events.
We forge strategic partnerships with anchor institutions, food service management companies, grocers, event planners, and distributors to drive sales and help our companies scale.
We connect businesses to grants, angel investors, and crowd-funding, coaching businesses on ways to negotiate better payment terms, and advocating with lenders in their underwriting process.
Plus access to:
For more advanced product companies, we offer the opportunity to outsource production to our trained kitchen crew so business owners can focus on sales and business growth. We take care of the whole process—sourcing, inventory management, food safety, quality control, and production.
Equipment and Pricing
We know that having the right equipment is key to launching and growing your business. We’ve got everything from convection ovens to blast chillers.
A shared commercial kitchen, stocked with all of the tools of the trade plus onsite cold, dry, and frozen storage.
An extra hand when your production goes awry, a sympathetic ear, a community of peers to support you through the ups and downs of your entrepreneurial journey.
