Dec 20, 2021 | Community Food Centers, Good Food Glossary, Kitchen Incubators
The term Commercial Kitchen can have many variations, yet at its most basic its meaning is a room or building, or any part thereof, used for food preparation that meets all the requirements of local building code and is not a residential kitchen. As commercial kitchens proliferate with the development of food system infrastructure across […]
Sep 21, 2021 | Community Food Centers, Food Business Planning, Food Hubs, Kitchen Incubators, Strategic Planning
New Venture Advisors is seeing a growing number of Community Food Center and innovative food facility projects develop across the United States. We are constantly talking with teams and individuals who have big dreams and come to us for help or are looking for grants to fund their vision. While it is exciting to see […]
Jun 19, 2020 | Entrepreneurship, Food Hubs, Food System, Kitchen Incubators, Local Food
Sometimes the perfect storm for innovation is a crisis (or global pandemic) that pushes organizations further into their mission. Or it creates an opportunity to try something that under normal conditions would seem outrageous, but suddenly seems like the only option to meet the real-time needs of the community. We have been catching up with […]
Jun 19, 2020 | Entrepreneurship, Food Business Planning, Kitchen Incubators
Late last summer we were contacted by Open Door Advisors with a remarkable question: “Would you be interested in writing a starter guide to help houses of worship use their facilities as community kitchens?” YES! I could not believe that the idea hadn’t already occurred to us. Houses of worship — churches, synagogues, temples, mosques […]
Mar 12, 2020 | Community Food Centers, Food Access, Food Business Planning, Food Hubs, Food System, Kitchen Incubators
Community Food Centers are an exciting development in food system infrastructure and make up an increasing share of our work at New Venture Advisors. In this screencast I’ll share some of the elements we’re seeing come together in Community Food Centers across the nation. This screencast is the companion video to our Good Food Glossary […]
Dec 19, 2019 | Forces For Good Food, Kitchen Incubators
We are excited to spotlight CommonWealth Kitchen in our Forces for Good Food series. CommonWealth Kitchen is Greater Boston’s only food business incubator / accelerator and integrated “small batch” food manufacturer, providing shared-use kitchens, wrap-around technical support, coordinated access to markets, and outsourced manufacturing to over 55 food companies. They are focused on creating an […]
Dec 19, 2019 | Food Access, Food System, Kitchen Incubators, Local Food
As many of you know, we publish a monthly Good Food Brief with the big and small stories that chronicle trends in the food industry. Sometimes we come across programs that we wish had news coverage so that we could share them with you. Programs that serve often excluded communities, that deploy capital to build […]
Dec 15, 2019 | Entrepreneurship, Food Business Planning, Kitchen Incubators
The growth cycle of most small businesses that make their start in a shared kitchen or kitchen incubator is different from a business operating within its own space. Both face the normal challenges of scaling and the capital needed to support their growth, but businesses operating from a shared or incubator kitchen face the question […]
Dec 11, 2019 | Good Food Glossary, Kitchen Incubators
A simple definition of ghost kitchen is “commercial cooking space with no dine-in option” (QSR Magazine). The concept derived from restaurants that wanted to increase their meal delivery capacity to meet demand without having to increase the size of their storefronts. According to the National Restaurant Association, 60% of restaurant meals are consumed off-premise due […]
Dec 21, 2018 | Entrepreneurship, Forces For Good Food, Kitchen Incubators
New Venture Advisors is privileged to work alongside powerful forces driving progress toward building food systems we can all be proud of. These forces—our collaborators, partners, clients, visionaries—are leaders in changing how we think about food. As a returning feature of our blog, we voice our gratitude and place the spotlight on the people and […]