Shared kitchen, incubator launches in Noble County
Be Noble Inc., the local economic development organization for Noble County, is teaming up with the Community Learning Center in Kendallville to launch The Cookery, a commercial, shared kitchen and foodservice incubator. The partners say the goal is to attract and provide support for culinary arts entrepreneurs looking to launch or grow new businesses.
“We jumped at the chance to partner with the CLC to bring in the kinds of wrap-around services that most new and growing small businesses need to succeed,” said Be Noble Operations Director Lori Gagen.
In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, Gagen said creating The Cookery was a no-brainer, particularly given the space that was already available at the CLC.
“The facility was already there. It’s commercially licensed,” said Gagen. “We have partners who operate in and around the Community Learning Center on a daily basis, including our Purdue Extension office, who offers food service training, and all of those things just sort of came together. As we really started thinking about defining and enhancing Noble County’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, this was just low-hanging fruit for us to really start talking with the community.”
The Community Learning Center occupies a historic building that once housed East Noble Middle School. It includes a commercial kitchen that Gagen said once served all of the East Noble School Corp., which created a prime opportunity to launch The Cookery.
Be Noble said the commercial kitchen had been used as a space for cooking classes and demonstrations. But rebranding it as a shared kitchen, Gagen said, will benefit culinary arts entrepreneurs in the region.
“We already have a lot of home-based vendors,” she said. “We have at least four summer markets that go on in our communities here, and a lot of those folks really can up their game with a commercial kitchen and be able to start labeling and selling their food products.”
The shared kitchen offers hourly and daily rates, as well as membership options for both for-profit businesses and nonprofit organizations.
The Cookery’s Incubator Program also seeks to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses in order to eventually expand into brick-and-mortar locations throughout the county.
Gagen said the program will allow one company to serve as a resident of the kitchen that will give them not only exclusive access to some of the freezer, refrigerated and dry storage areas, but also office space at the CLC as they work toward expansion.
The resident will also have a right of first refusal for catering CLC events, as well as access to educational workshops, seminars and other programs.
“Be Noble and the CLC will work one-on-one with one program participant at a time to help them launch a new business,” Gagen said. “The fee for participation in the Incubator Program is designed to be below market price compared to other shared commercial kitchens. No one is making a profit off the Incubator Program because the goal is to make it possible for a new business to take root. We want the new business to make a profit, not The Cookery.”
Be Noble said the idea for The Cookery was spurred partially by a lack of diversity of restaurants in downtown Kendallville, as well as a large increase in the number of area food truck businesses.
Gagen said she believes the growth potential for The Cookery is infinite.
“As long as we have brick-and-mortar spaces around the county that we target for foodservice businesses, I think the sky’s the limit,” she said.
The kitchen is currently being overseen by CLC staff, but Gagen said she anticipates there will be a future need to hire a full-time employee to manage the incubator program in addition to the kitchen.
You can learn more about The Cookery by clicking here.