The common kitchen culinary incubator

Date

2007

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Southern New Hampshire University

Abstract

The Common Kitchen is a culinary incubator at Southern New Hampshire University's School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Management in Manchester, New Hampshire. The purpose of The Common Kitchen is to help low-income residents of the Manchester area gain improved financial self-sufficiency through the profitable ownership of small food-based businesses. This will be achieved by providing incubator participants access to various resources often difficult or prohibitively expensive to access on their own. This will allow participants to either start their own business, or allow them to grow an already existing business that needs an infusion of resources to move to the next level. TCK (The Common Kitchen) offers participants' use of a low-cost commercial kitchen provided by the Hospitality School the ability to cut operating costs by ordering raw inputs in bulk through the incubator, and guidance in the licensing and permitting process. Through its networks within the University and throughout the Manchester area, T C K will help clients make the connections necessary to give their businesses the best chance of success. T C K will help them to access valuable training in business through the SNHU School of Business, to get help with marketing and promotion through the SNHU Ad Lab, to help them apply for funding through banks and microfinance institutions and to gain improved knowledge and skills in commercial food production and processing by working with the SNHU School of Hospitality. With these new tools at their disposal, incubator participants will greatly improve their chances of successfully incubating their small food businesses and will after which be ready to move on to their own or shared facilities elsewhere in the community. Graduates of the incubator will move towards experiencing a long-term and sustainable increase in their incomes through profitable small business ownership. The first step in this process is to establish the need for a culinary incubator in the Manchester, New Hampshire area. Are the residents of Manchester ready for this sort of project, and will it help them to gain financial independence? The following sections will establish the existence and degree of need for a culinary incubator within the community. (Author abstract)

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