The New York City-based Food-X, technically an accelerator, is like an incubator on speed. After that, each incubator works a little differently. Some, like New York City's Hot Bread Kitchen, allow new businesses on a rolling basis, while many others like to start new businesses in a group, allowing applications only two or three times a year. According to a 2016 study, nearly 60 percent of U.S. If you live in a city in the United States, it's more likely than not that there's a kitchen incubator near you. "People think you're going to be in an incubator and sell to artisanal farmers markets, but it can be a stepping stone to something big." She notes that when she started her company, she didn't know it would ever grow to the size it is today. "The incubator was the perfect first step," Rocha says. Today, Brazi Bites is a multimillion-dollar company. Then came national distribution, retail, and a stint on ABC's Shark Tank. After a year, she expanded into her own space. You can’t put a price on that."ĭuring the day, she worked as a civil engineer nights and weekends, she cooked in KitchenCru's commercial kitchen. "It was an environment where we all supported each other and each other’s companies. "Not only that, it was an environment where we all supported each other and each other's companies," Rocha remembers. The per-hour kitchen rental cost seemed high for a company that wasn't making money yet, Rocha says, but was a fraction of what it would have cost to do everything by herself. That seems simple, but an industrial kitchen is a big shift for someone used to her oven at home. "What we got was support and training on how to use commercial-level equipment in a kitchen," Rocha says. KitchenCru, too, was just starting out - there was no structured program for members. Though Rocha had taken a community college class focused on starting a food business, she had no experience in a professional kitchen. Junea Rocha, founder of the brand Brazi Bites, got her start at the KitchenCru incubator in Portland, Oregon in 2011. By the late ‘80s, Hall adds, incubators realized it was more useful to have a tenant base focused on one specific industry rather than putting a wannabe furniture maker, baker, and fashion designer in the same program. These incubators took in entrepreneurs and gave them an education in running a business, often for a low fee or stake in future earnings. Incubators are an idea born sometime in the 1960s but became popular during the ‘80s as the government "looked for new instruments to stimulate economic development and job creation," writes Emma Hall in a 2007 study. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images What do incubators do, anyway? Inside Union Kitchen, an incubator in Washington, DC.
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