WASHINGTON — At first, the idea of a communal kitchen in a refurbished warehouse, shared between nearly 100 different small food businesses, seems like a recipe for disaster. Too many cooks in the kitchen? At Union Kitchen Ivy City, there’s no such thing.
Spread out among the many workstations in the building, the people behind your favorite food trucks, pop-ups and locally-produced products are hard at work. The second of Union Kitchen’s facilities, the Ivy City location brings the food incubator’s total square footage to 23,000. Inside the multistory warehouse, Union Kitchen members have access to everything from a finance team and a marketing and branding team, to a distribution company also run by Union Kitchen. There’s a co-working space next to one of the kitchens where members hold meetings with potential customers and investors. Inside one building, entrepreneurial locals can build a business.
Brian Mitchell, the founder of Bright Greens Smoothie Shakers, says he had an idea, but nowhere to turn. After finding out about Union Kitchen, he prepared an elevator pitch and headed to the NoMa location.
“I came over, knocked on the door of the facility, and they answered the door ready to listen to me talk about my product and my plan,” says Mitchell. “It turned into a meeting with the entire crew at Union Kitchen.”
Mitchell says the process for becoming a member was easy. “You don’t find that often,” he says. “Normally when you approach a buyer at a grocery store, it takes a lot of legwork and salesmanship.”
After he became a member, Mitchell began distributing his smoothie shakers to local small groceries. Now, Whole Foods puts Bright Greens on the shelves of all 50 of their mid-atlantic stores, he says.
Kori Hill Wallace, one half of the ‘Chups fruit ketchups team, had a similar experience.
“I attribute a lot of our ability to get off the ground to Union Kitchen. They really lower the barrier to entry and they guide you through a space that is really confusing,” says Wallace. “I don’t know if it’s just D.C. but I think that a lot of these regulatory industries can really hinder your passion and your success.”
Union Kitchen will help you navigate the difficult world of licensing and registration, food safety inspections and permits, but carving out your own space inside the warehouse is up to you. Full-time members are given 24-hour access to the kitchens, and with that comes half of a prep table and storage space.
“I was concerned about sharing a space in the beginning,” says Mitchell, “but what you discover is that there’s really much more room in a shared space than you would think. People are willing to be fluid and move to make room for whoever comes into the kitchen that day.”
For Wallace, it has its ups and downs.
“The community and the collaboration are wonderful. You meet so many really inspirational people that energize you and your business,” she says. “And then of course there are times when you come into the kitchen and it’s super-crowded and it’s the last place you want to be. It’s give and take, like anything else.”
A full list of Union Kitchen’s members can be found here.
