January 31, 2008 issue
Making Money with Food
Regional Commercial Kitchen Offers Infinite Possibilities
Story by Kathleen McFadden
What cook hasn’t dreamed from time to time of creating a business from a favorite recipe? Everyone has heard and read stories about inventive people who have crafted lucrative careers from cookies, fudge, pies—and even fruitcake.
One of the big problems with making food products to sell is capacity. The average oven will only hold a few pies at a time and even fewer cookie sheets. But the far bigger problem is regulatory. The health department doesn’t allow you to prepare food in your home kitchen to sell unless that kitchen and your water have been inspected and certified. If you’re on well water, you face a whole different set of testing and certification issues.
This double-whammy of obstacles has kept plenty of stellar cooks from moving into food entrepreneurship, but a facility in Ashe County offers a way to overcome those problems and get down to the basics of business planning, packaging, marketing—and cooking.
Creative Food Ventures is a $1 million USDA certified commercial kitchen located at Family Central in Jefferson that has $500,000 of commercial-grade equipment ready for use. The facility celebrates its one-year anniversary in March.
A similar facility—Blue Ridge Food Ventures—is located in Asheville, but Jefferson is far more convenient for High Country cooks.
According to current director Carol Coulter, folks haven’t exactly been beating down the doors to use the facility so far, but the pace is picking up as the region’s would-be food entrepreneurs begin to understand that actually starting to make their goodies for market is the result of plenty of planning and preparation.
“Generally people come in with ideas and recipes,” Coulter said, “but not a lot of business sense. They haven’t thought about labels, pricing, packaging and marketing.”
Educating folks about all of the aspects that go into a successful food business and pointing them in the right direction to get the necessary training is one of the jobs of the Creative Food Ventures staff that includes Jacky Brown and Rhonda Church.
Training in food safety and kitchen use, as well as business concept training are all necessary first steps before starting to cook.
Wilkes Community College has the business end well covered. Periodically the Ashe Campus offers a series of courses geared specifically to food entrepreneurs, as well as basic business training.
“We’re getting better at assessing where people are and what they need,” Coulter said. “Baking is the easiest. If you’re canning or making things with meat, there are lots of hoops to jump through. If you’re not baking, it takes about 4 to 6 months to get into production. I think that’s sometimes overwhelming for people and they drop out. But then some come back. What I tell people is ‘Don’t quit your day job yet.’”
For the past year, the staff members at Creative Food Ventures have kept things going by operating a catering service and providing a variety of baked goods and salad dressings to area restaurants.
The kitchen is a cook’s dream, with just about every type of equipment imaginable, along with some gadgets and time savers home cooks have never encountered.
Two convection ovens are available for baking; the large one can hold up to 60 pies. A commercial gas oven and range, an amazing pastry machine that fills and crimps, a large-capacity steam kettle, a commercial-grade mixer and a chopper are just some of the kitchen amenities. In addition, Creative Food Ventures has a walk-in freezer and refrigerator, as well as storage areas available for dry goods.
More equipment is on the way. The kitchen is getting a juicer/sieve that will purée foods, a bottle-filling machine that will also affix labels, a heavy-duty chopper and a 28-shelf dehydrator.
“The mushroom, fruit and herb people have been asking for the dehydrator,” Coulter said.
“This is a place for somebody who has some kind of entrepreneurial spirit,” Brown said. “Say you have Aunt Earleen’s chow-chow recipe that would rival anything that Paul Newman would make. You would have to revamp your whole kitchen to get beyond the point of making just enough for church fundraisers.”
The kitchen rents from $8 to $20 per hour, depending on how many pieces of equipment you use.
One food entrepreneur rented space in the kitchen for six hours, brought in a four-person production team and made 3,000 apple pies that she later sold at a festival.
“We have a guy ready to do hot sauces and dry rubs,” Brown said. “He’s about to jump off the cliff,” she grinned.
One of the big pluses at Creative Food Ventures is the staff’s flexibility and willingness to consider requests and suggestions.
Because someone asked, Creative Food Ventures will sell entrepreneurs’ products from the kitchen for a small transaction fee.
Because someone asked, space in the freezer, the fridge and the dry goods storage area is available for rent.
“Some people want to contract with us to make their product,” Coulter said, and so they’ve worked out a procedure—including a proprietary agreement—that will bring in more work and more money.
A farmer in a nearby county who has developed a purple sweet potato has contracted with Creative Food Ventures to process and purée 129,000 pounds of sweet potatoes by March.
“We hope to get enough steady work,” Coulter said, “to hire more people with benefits.” Those steady work plans include bidding on the contract to provide the meals at the new jail when it is finished. Coulter said she hopes these extra jobs will lead to spin-off businesses. She can see potential for someone to have his/her own business bottling products for others. She can also see the potential for someone to offer accounting services.
But you don’t have to be a cook, a bottler or an accounting whiz to use the kitchen.
With minimal processing, farmers can get more for their products, and the kitchen is the place to do that processing.
Coulter explained that a local garlic grower made the rounds of area restaurants with beautiful braids of whole garlic. One chef walked into his cold storage, grabbed a bottle of minced garlic and said, “When you can supply it to me this way, we can talk.”
“We have to learn how restaurants need things,” Coulter said.
To that end, Creative Food Ventures is holding a food networking event on Monday, February 25, from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. at Family Central. Anyone who is interested is invited to attend the session that will connect growers with restaurateurs, chefs and retailers to find out who can grow what and how the chefs want it.
Creative Food Ventures is open from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, contact Rhonda Church at 336-982-5127.
Want To Go?
Date: Monday, February 25
Time: 8:00 to 10:00 a.m.
Location: Family Central, Jefferson
Cost: Free
Community Interest
News & Notes
Events
Arts & Entertainment
