Business and Financial News

When Bonnie Henderson decided to return to entrepreneurship after a corporate layoff in August 2008, she says the puzzle pieces seemed to fall into place like answers to her prayers. Her mother was in a position to lend her some startup funding, for instance, and friends found a terrific location for her restaurant.

But the most fortuitous accident came about when her partner, Betty Miller-Henderson, stumbled across a brand new commercial kitchen in May 2009. Not only was it convenient and affordable, but it was also more than just a kitchen facility. It was Mama’s Small Business Kitchen Incubator, a Pasadena (Calif.) facility that exists to educate, encourage, and nurture budding food businesses.

“We had worked out of some commercial kitchens further away, but that was a real trek. So when we heard about Mama’s, it was a godsend,” says Henderson, whose Bonnie B’s Smokin barbeque business started catering and delivery in 2009 and—just last week—staged a grand opening at its new restaurant in Altadena, Calif.

State-of-the-art

Henderson was the first tenant at the $3 million nonprofit incubator, says Larry Bressler, a chef instructor at Le Cordon Bleu and Mama’s general manager. The facility, which has hosted 63 entrepreneurs to date, is an outgrowth of the economic development arm of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. The group owns and operates 200 units of affordable housing in Southern California as well as Mama’s Hot Tamales, a job training restaurant in Central Los Angeles that started as a place to provide street vendors with a licensed facility to prepare their wares.

The kitchen incubator was the brainchild three years ago of Executive Director Joe Colletti, who located the site on a busy street near a freeway. Originally a livery stable that housed horse-drawn fire engines, in more recent years it has hosted a series of restaurants, many of which failed due to limited parking.

Overhauling the property and outfitting it with state-of-the-art kitchens, offices, and a classroom where a 10-week business startup series is held meant raising money from a variety of public and private sources, including a loan from the city, funding from private and corporate organizations, and a $1 million grant from the Henry T.Nicholas III Foundation, established by the co-founder of Broadcom (BRCM).

Kitchen incubators are extremely expensive propositions, due to energy costs and frequent, time-consuming health department inspections. Getting for-profit incubators to self-sustaining levels is notoriously difficult. But Bressler says he has funding to continue operating Mama’s as a nonprofit venture for at least two years and will rely on Colletti’s fund-raising prowess after that.

Easy Startup

There’s no doubt that the incubator is a boon to the low- and moderate-income entrepreneurs it targets (though Bressler says he is not turning down any interested tenants, regardless of income, at this point). Bressler requires each to complete a state-mandated food handling class, put down a $250 deposit, and obtain liability insurance. After that, they pay $25 an hour to use the licensed, inspected commercial facility to create recipes, test batch sizes, and produce product for sale. They can use the kitchens as needed, without having to sign costly contracts or put down first and last month’s rent, as many commercial kitchens require.

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