When Rachel DesRochers, founder of Incubator Kitchen Collective, created a membership community and commercial kitchen, she planned to tackle common problems by building common solutions.
Incubator Kitchen Collective provides food-focused startups and small businesses with a commercial-grade, health-certified facility to produce their products.
The idea came about because DesRochers himself saw a need for resources. She had a thriving vegan graham cracker brand called Grateful Grahams, but limited kitchen space prevented her from increasing production. It wasn't just her.
“We were doing a lot of farmers markets, so we were surrounded by entrepreneurs in a similar position. So we started thinking, what if we could find a space and open the door and start inviting people in? …That's how we really started,'' Desrochers said.
Many people who start food entrepreneurship start out as cottage industries, Desrochers said. Kentucky allows people to produce food for sale in their home kitchens, but there are limits on equipment, food types and annual sales, putting a cap on growth. Home processors can sell up to $60,000 worth of product per year, and the use of commercial kitchen equipment in residences is prohibited.
The Incubator Kitchen Collective was launched in 2013 and accepts about 40 food companies each month, Desrochers said.
In addition to providing kitchen space, Incubator Kitchen Collective provides entrepreneurs with access to coaching and networking on the path to sustainable business. “It's easy to make things, but it's hard to sell them,” says Matt Spaulding, director of operations at Incubator Kitchen Collective.
Initiatives like Good n' Local, which connects local food producers with wholesale buyers, and the Kroger Food Artisan Grant, which gives food entrepreneurs membership in the Incubator Kitchen Collective, explore how incubators encourage food entrepreneurship ecosystems. This is an example of how it is done.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 23.2% of private businesses that opened in 2022 will close by 2023. About 90% of Incubator Kitchen Collective's members remain in business after the first year, Desrochers said.
DesRochers said that while many Kitchen members join ventures for extra income, they also often take advantage of opportunities to grow their businesses in incubators. “Maybe they started as a side hustle, but they grew very quickly because they saw potential for growth that you don't see when you're in a space, you're in a commercial environment, you're in your own job. “Because I'm looking at 'home,'” she said.
soul juice
Soul Juici founder Fawn Hayes won a Kroger Food Artisan Grant in last year's spending round and hopes access to this facility will help turn Soul Juici into a full-time job. I am.
Soul Juici is a juice brand that uses fresh, organic produce in its beverages. Hayes has been a cook since he was a child, but he said the idea to become a juicer came to him during the coronavirus pandemic. She says her eating habits have worsened during lockdown because she's spent more time at home working remotely, and the constant fear of spreading the disease has made her eat healthier. He said he wanted to make a choice.
She had a juice machine that was gifted to her years ago, but she had never taken it out of the package, so she decided to give it a try.
Hayes developed a recipe for the juice and began writing it down. And she was amazed at how the recipe turned out. “The taste was so delicious that I decided to continue making it,” she says.
Months passed and she was still making juice, so she shared it with family and friends. Her drink received a complimentary reception. One of her friends said she should sell it. So she did.
Hayes created social media accounts to build his brand and customer base. She also started taking orders for juice through social media and meeting people to sell juice. That led to Farmers' Markets, pop-up shops, catering orders, and eventually an online store.
As Soul Juici grew, Hayes took on the challenge of making the business his full-time job. She quit her day job as a customer service representative and gave it her all. “She started getting tired of her 9-to-5 job and started thinking about Soul Juici more than ever,” she said.
At this point, she relied on two friends' commercial kitchens to make her juices.
One day, she was at Wyoming Community Coffee meeting the person who had been mentoring her to grow her business. Her mentor encouraged her to talk to her store owner to form a retail partnership. Despite her nervousness, she approached her manager, set up a meeting with her owner, and prepared a presentation touting the benefits of the product.
“I started making juice for this coffee shop every week and delivering it to the coffee shop, and it sold out every week,” Hayes said.
However, a roadblock occurred along the way. Food and Drug Administration regulations require fresh juice to be pasteurized or otherwise pasteurized before it can be sold through retail stores, but Hayes did not do so. Because her partnership with Wyoming and Her Community Her Coffee was on a wholesale basis rather than directly from producer to buyer, the partnership was discontinued.
“I don't have the resources or the money to support it. So, towards the end of the summer of 2023, I became discouraged and closed off completely. I went back to 9 to 5. ,” Hayes said.
After taking a few months off from Soul Juicy, Hayes applied for and received a grant to pay for membership in the Incubator Kitchen Collective. The news spurred her to further accelerate her business.
Hay has been able to access the kitchen since February of this year. Although she won't be pasteurizing her juice for the time being, she said she hopes to use this opportunity to increase production within the facility.
“It rekindled my desire to not give up on the business,” Hayes said.
She plans to focus on the catering, online and farmers market channels while stabilizing and growing the business in the incubator.
hot llama hot sauce
Derrick Kissabeth is another Kroger Food Artisan Grant who gained access to the facility this month. His beginnings as a hot sauce maker followed a familiar pattern. He explained that he has never liked hot sauce and thinks many sauces are overly spicy at the expense of flavor.
However, he loves to cook and experiment with imaginative flavors. A friend who knew him challenged Kissabeth to use his excellent sense of taste to make hot sauce.
He was living in Florida when he casually started making hot sauce, but when he moved to Northern Kentucky, his new girlfriend inspired him to continue making sauce.
“When I finally moved here before COVID-19 really hit, I put it on the back burner just because I was moving to a new place. I wasn't really doing much anymore. I started dating my girlfriend, and I was like, 'You know, she says she can't really find anything she likes, so I'm going to make hot sauce,''' Kissabeth said.
She was impressed by his culinary creation and encouraged him to sell it. He spent some time in 2022 making hot sauce at Incubator Kitchen Collective, but said he took a break from his side hustle for a while due to personal reasons. He resumed production after his six-month hiatus, using his friend's commercial kitchen. He learned about the Incubator Kitchen Collective grant and applied.
He said he hopes to double last year's sales with the new space.
“The first year, I think we sold about 2,000 bottles of hot sauce. Last year we were close to 5,000, and this year we're hoping to more than double that. So I'm in the 10,000 area or something.” I want to be in that place,” Kissabeth said.
He said he plans to support this growth by hitting as many pop-up markets as possible and getting the sauces on retail shelves. Selling at pop-up markets is an effective way to build a loyal customer base, but the seasonal nature of vending machine setup limits what a one-man team can do, he said.
“One of my favorite things about doing my own market is being able to recognize people,” Kissabeth said. “It's always really nice to see people say, 'Oh, he finished your bottle in about a week.'”
Kisabeth works full time at Constant Contact, designing training programs. He loves making sauces, but is open to expanding it into a full-time career. The bottom line is the economic viability and creative opportunities of the move, he said.
“It's great to have a business that supports me in and of itself, but I think in order to sustain me I need to stay intellectually interested. Coming up with new sources, coming up with new ideas. or anything like that, you have to keep growing,” Kissabeth said.
His love for making hot sauce stems from the process of mixing and refining flavors. With the resources and guidance of the Incubator Kitchen Collective, he hopes to develop a business plan that will eventually take away the tedious work of bottling and selling sauces and allow him to focus on what drives him: making sauces. thinking.
