NOW THEY’RE COOKIN’
For would-be chefs, Millrace Kitchen will help you go from grilled cheese to gourmet
WOONSOCKET — Anna Marie Sepe’s favorite piece of food preparation equipment at Millrace Kitchen may very well be the blast chiller. And why not? Sepe’s startup food business, Valentini’s Kitchen, specializes in fully-prepped meals that are sold frozen. When she’s done whipping up a batch of the heart-healthy chicken and veggie combos, she can pop one in the Trauson Tumble Blast Chiller and drop it from room temperature to ice-cube cold in a little more than five minutes. “I was born with food in my blood,” says Sepe, a Pawtucket native who’s lived in the North End for the last several years. “Food has always been the hub.” A longtime nurse practitioner, Sepe was recovering from Lyme disease last year when she cooked for a friend who encouraged her to go pro. She turned to the state Department of Health for tips on getting licensed, and they referred her to Millrace Kitchen, located at 40 South Main St. – the former Mulvey’s Hardware Store. Owned and operated by the nonprofit development organization NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley, Millrace Kitchen is part of a new breed of “incubator” kitchens whose mission is to help newbie food-based businesses get started – often on a shoestring – by providing them with affordable kitchen space, technical support, and mini-courses in navigating the state’s regulatory avenues. Valentini’s kitchen – named for one of Sepe’s grandmothers, a scratch cook raised in Florence, Italy – is now one of six food businesses that have been licensed by DOH to operate out of Millrace Kitchen since the facility was established about 18 months ago, according to WNDC’s Tamara Burman. Her official title is “health business cultural activator,”
but she says her real job is to manage the kitchen and help its clients dip their toes into the waters of the food-related business world. It’s a team effort that involves leveraging educational resources from colleges and universities to stage mini-courses in business accounting, taxes, law and marketing to help clients develop sound business models and promotional strategies, according to Burman. Ultimately, the goal is to nurture a “culture of food” and expand the food-based economy in the city, according to Burman. “The goal is to help people start their businesses and create jobs,” she said. “It’s hard work and you can do it, as long as you’re willing to work and you have a passion for food.” NeighborWorks decided to establish an incubator kitchen when it was fine-tuning a multi-use redevelopment plan for the old Mulvey’s Hardware. The agency, which made its bones in the 1980s reclaiming rundown tenements in the Constitution Hill neighborhood, knew it wanted affordable apartments to be one component of the project, but it sought out community feedback and relied on a consulting study before settling on a plan to establish an incubator kitchen. At the time, Burman said, there were only two others operating within a roughly 50-mile radius of the city, including Hope & Main in Warren and another in the Boston area. Now there are four, including Millrace Kitchen and another recent addition to the incubator-kitchen family, Pilotworks in Providence. One of the key benefits of getting licensed through an incubator kitchen is the savings a startup enjoys by not having to purchase its own commercial kitchen equipment. The use of facilities owned and managed by an independent party also provides startups with the flexibility to use the equipment when they need it. That’s important, since many fledgling food businesses aren’t stocking shelves in retail stores and restaurants on a regular basis – they’re piggybacking on special events like fairs and food festivals or setting up “pop-up” stores in shops and breweries, says Burman. For $18 an hour – a little less at off-peak hours – clients have access to a smorgasbord of state-of-the-art foodprep equipment at Millrace Kitchen. The stainless steel toolbox includes everything a high-volume commercial kitchen needs to churn out bakery-style breads and pastries, main-course entrees, desserts and deli goods. Millrace also provides commercial refrigerators and freezers for clients to store their goods before they reach the marketplace. Clients clean up after themselves, but NeighborWorks is in charge of maintaining and sanitizing the kitchen. Typically, says Burman, these newcomers to the food business are still feeling their way to a business model that works for them. The Millrace Kitchen isn’t trying to impose a one-size-fits-all business plan on its partners – it wants them to find a niche they’re comfortable in. “When people are launching their food business they’re often getting started in a non-traditional way,” says Burman. “I can provide as much assistance as someone needs – or as little.” Sepe is right at home with Burman’s go-at-your-own-pace approach. Some of her best customers right now are friends and relatives – she doesn’t have a big enough customer base to support a full-time business. She’s not even sure she wants one. But working out of Millrace Kitchen gives her the freedom to keep her business plan alive – and her options open. “I’m right where I’m sup- posed to be,” she says. “It’s like anything else – if you go too fast, it doesn’t come out right. You can’t fix food if you make a mistake in it.” Charlene Soucy agrees. Proprietor of Handmade Chocolates by Charlene, Soucy works as the tour director for Conway Tours, but she felt the tug of commercial enterprise when friends and family members grew a taste for her seasonal confections, including homemade truffles, chocolate-covered toffee and assorted candy bars. “Eight years ago I started off giving them as gifts,” says Soucy. “I made them in my own kitchen. People were definitely calling me to get more and I started to realize we had to go the proper route. You can’t do that in your own kitchen in Rhode Island. You can in Massachusetts, but not Rhode Island.” Soucy has checked all the regulatory boxes she needs to run a full-fledged candy business, but she still hasn’t decided what kind of business model would be best – specialty shop or mail order, perhaps? – or how far she wants to take it. “I’m working on that,” she says. But Soucy is still at it, toiling in Millrace Kitchen on a regular basis. She was there just over a week ago to whip up a batch of chocolaty sweets for a performance of the Beardogz – her son’s band – at the Art Den on Main Street. In addition to Valentini’s Kitchen and Handmade Chocolates by Charlene, four other startups have been licensed by the state to work out of Millrace Kitchen, and all are active to one extent or another. They are Every1sChef, a catering company operated by Roscoe Gay; Bugg’d Out BBQ, specializing in smoked chicken, pork and ribs for catered events; Herb & Forage, a company that makes locally sourced cranberry sauce; and Rustic Roots Baking, a maker of cookies, scones and other baked goods sold at Coffee Connection in Providence. At least one of Millrace Kitchen’s clients is proof that a new business can take off too fast. One of its first partnerships, Burman says, was with a husband-and-wife team that started Providence Pie. It grew faster than the couple wanted and they ended up selling the assets to focus on family commitments. “It just blew right up,” she said. “It was a great learning experience to see a new business grow in scale as fast at that one did.”