BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

Background

Union Kitchen is a DC-based large commercial kitchen and incubator space for food and beverage businesses at all stages of growth. The founders established the kitchen after facing difficulties themselves in expanding their own food business, given the high expenses of a commercial kitchen. Union Kitchen offers a shared commercial kitchen at affordable rates for start-up companies while also providing a shared space for ideas to be exchanged. Union Kitchen first opened a commercial kitchen facility in the NoMa neighborhood with 7,300 square feet of production space. It then opened a second facility in the Ivy City neighborhood (16,000 square feet of production space) and broadened the model to include grocery outlets and a warehouse for distribution.

In Essence

As a food and beverage business incubator, Union Kitchen specifically aims to lower the barriers to entry and growth for food businesses through its integrated model. In addition to offering subscription-based access to kitchen space and utilities, they provide a full-time cleaning team, catering opportunities, distribution services, and access to their own Union Kitchen Grocery retail outlets. These services allow food businesses to develop the operations and distribution needed for them to grow, with all these services priced at a rate that allows the businesses to attain financial stability and growth. Union Kitchen is very adaptive to the requirements of incoming businesses: a large open space can be rearranged and set up to meet hosted businesses needs as necessary. Union Kitchen provides its members with access to capital, employee resources, and discounted production materials required for a food business to grow, in addition to a wide range of services vital for production and distribution. Its members include businesses specializing in bakery and pastry, bar and cocktail, bottled beverages, packaged goods, ready-to-eat, and health and dietary, among others.

Impact

Union Kitchen is distinguished by its membership structure, which builds a sense of community and accountability. Unlike commercial kitchens that charge by the hour, the membership model aims at fostering a strong network of industry peers that can support one another. It builds an entrepreneurial community by allowing food and beverage business members to gain a sense of familiarity and exchange ideas and inspirations with one another within this shared space.

This CCS is able to help food-based businesses accelerate by providing access to capital, employee resources, and other services, such as affordable kitchen space, supplies, and discounted production material. In addition, Union Kitchen provides businesses hosted in this space access to its groceries stores and to an integrated distribution system serving the metropolitan area. So far, its alumni have generated more than 400 jobs and opened more than 70 storefronts (Union Kitchen press release).

In Practice

Project in Focus

Broodjes & Bier (http://www.broodjesandbier.com) is a Dutch-inspired sandwich company. It started in a DC bakery, but it proved extremely difficult for it to scale up there. Relocating to Union Kitchen allowed the company to take advantage of the incubator's commercial kitchen space and value add-ons. Union Kitchen's handling of a load of services - such as food safety management, cleaning services, and preventative maintenance - and its provision of office space and business consultation, allowed the Broodjes & Bier team to focus on what is most important to their business: their customers, their employees, and their product. Through Union Kitchen's distribution and catering services, the growth of Broodjes & Bier quickly took off, quadrupling production.