From Kitchen to Market

Good news came in the way of a press release from the EDC yesterday. Turns out, the state may finally get its first incubator kitchen, called Hope & Main, housed in the former Main Street School in Warren. It seems like a no-brainer: vacant buildings are bad; and incubator kitchens help all sorts of talented, creative, ambitious folks get their food-based businesses off the ground and to market. We all eventually reap the benefits in the form of crazy-good locally produced foods, from jams to salsas to pies to whatever our local culinary entrepreneurs can dream up.

The idea is still in the planning stages, but the goal is to have kitchen facilities that can be rented out by the hour or month as well as plenty of on-site business mentoring (marketing, graphic design, accounting, etc.). According to the proposal the building would also house a year-round "European-style Town Market," classroom and demo space, and a private dining area.

The possibilities are endless, and the folks behind the nonprofit want to hear from aspiring food pros as they hammer out the design. Here's the survey they'd like you to fill out. And here's the full release from the EDC. One last bit of reading material: here's a piece by Lydia Walshin that ran in Local Flavor about a kitchen incubator just over the border in Dartmouth, Mass. It's of a different scale and scope, but it may get the creative juices flowing.