NYC Food Detective: BRINGING UP FOODSTERS
Posted by Ed Yowell, Slow Food NYC
Incubator kitchens are affordable, time-share, professional kitchens that make it financially possible for start-up food processors to move out of home production into a licensed, professional production facility where they can start to grow their businesses.
Katherine Gregory, the founder of Mi Kitchen Es Su Kitchen, operates the Artisan Baking Center (ABC) Kitchen Innovations incubator kitchen in the Long Island City facilities of the Consortium for Worker Education, a non-profit organization that provides free career training to New Yorkers.
The ABC kitchen, primarily a baking facility, boasts three large, well-equipped working areas, each capable of accommodating several cooks, and a separate confectioner's kitchen, away from the heat of the rest of the facility. Since Katherine started it in July 2005, the ABC incubator has been used by more than 100 food micro-entrepreneurs, many of whom have “graduated” to their own successful food businesses or to more permanent, shared kitchen facilities.
Katherine is a veteran of the New York City food renaissance of the late 70s and early 80s. She managed the two restaurant chain Au Natural, popularizing “natural” food, including lots of fish, chicken, a notable hamburger, salads with sprouts on top, and the City's first frozen yogurt. She was a food innovator who also minded the bottom-line. Her Au Natural bosses loved her for insisting that the kitchen get as much out of every chicken as possible, “everything but the cluck,” Katherine recalls.
In 1987, she and her husband took over one of the City's bastions of French haute cuisine, Café Argenteuil. Catching the new wave of casual fine dining, they turned it into the French-American Argenteuil, and the associated, next-door Le Petit Grill into Peccavi (Latin for “I have sinned”), with one of New York City's first celebrity woman chefs, Leslie Revson, minding the kitchens. At the casual Peccavi, Katherine helped patrons atone for their sins by banning smoking and printing calories next to the prices on the menu. But, alas, Argenteuil and Peccavi fell, victims of the economic aftermath of Black Monday, the October 17, 1987 stock market crash.
And so, Katherine joined the legion of restaurant consultants. She found herself mentoring catering start-ups, and, so-doing, found her calling. In 1996, Katherine formed Mi Kitchen Es Su Kitchen, a consulting business that aimed to work with non-profit organizations operating professional kitchens. Katherine rents kitchen space during off-hours, nights and weekends, thereby helping her non-profit host in its educational mission, and, in turn, offers the space to up and coming food artisans, helping them enter the New York City professional food world. Drawing on her experience, Katherine also offers value-added services, including business and regulatory advice and business loan leads.
Since 2005, 121 food entrepreneurs have used the ABC kitchen facilities. The program's diverse roster of creative culinary tenants has included: Amai Tea and Bake Shop; artisan chocolatiers Nunu Chocolate and Roni-Sue's Chocolates; Wheel House Pickles; Exceptional Brownies; Nordic Bread; Itzy Bitzy Macaroons; Vizza Pizza, a maker of conical pizzas; The Israelite Church of God in Jesus, which once each year caters 3,000 Passover dinners; Trudy's Homemade Dog Food; and, non-profit bakery, Hot Bread Kitchen, engaged in helping immigrant women bake their way into becoming professional commercial bakers.
Jessamyn Waldman, founder and Executive Director of Hot Bread Kitchen, says, “There are few places where food micro-entrepreneurs can access the equipment they need. For Hot Bread Kitchen, the incubator kitchen allowed us to prove that there is a real demand for our baked products and a real need for our educational program without first raising and risking the capital necessary to have a kitchen of our own.” Katherine says, “During the past twenty years, New Yorkers have come to appreciate good food and, even in this downturn, they won't go back. Believe it or not, now actually may be a good time for a person to do what he or she loves best and turn those favorite recipes into a business.”
New York City is home to five incubator kitchens: operated by Katherine, the Artisan Baking Center Kitchen Innovations incubator in Long Island City, The MAC Kitchen Innovations incubator at Kingsborough Community College, and the DRM Bakery Center in Manhattan; Kitchen for Hire (www.kitchenforhire.com) in Brooklyn; and the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation (www.whedco.org) shared-use kitchen in the Bronx.
