On sometimes-gritty West Broadway Avenue in North Minneapolis, the warm, cozy glow of a commercial kitchen can seem surprising. Yet somehow, it fits right in with the neighborhood.

"This effort is really about community, in many ways," says Terese Hill, kitchen and program manager at Kindred Kitchen, a program that's been gaining momentum in helping local food entrepreneurs to kickstart their businesses. "We work with those in this neighborhood and other areas who want to start a food business, and we connect with a range of food industry professionals to make sure our program is useful. We provide a resource, and that's very exciting."

The food-focused and non-profit incubator provides commercial kitchen rental and use, as well as a series of classes and workshops that range in topic from wholesale ingredient ordering to navigating city health regulations. Each crop of entrepreneurs takes 15 weeks to get through all the information and work on their specialized products.

The space opened in February 2011, and 16 food entrepreneurs completed the first round. After some minor reworking of the program over the summer, Kindred Kitchen started back up in early September with 25 new business owners ready to learn. They'll end their studies with a Food Show and Buyer's Fair on Dec. 15th (open to the public, so feel free to come and sample).

This session's crop of entrepreneurs represents a broad range of interests, Hill says. There's a kombucha maker, a food truck owner, a developer of frozen soup, and someone who's attempting to perfect wine jelly.

"You wouldn't believe how well we eat," Hill says with a laugh. "One of our favorite aspects of this is getting to sample everything." To demonstrate, she hoisted a container of melt-in-your-mouth peanut butter cookies, a product from one of the entrepreneurs in the current cadre. She adds, smiling, "And you know these are made with love."

Cooking Up Success

"I'm kind of shocked that Kindred Kitchen exists," says Marta Klepinski, who's in the current crop of entrepreneurs. "It's such a vital resource. I'm not sure what people did before the program existed."

Klepinski is the owner of Toffee Prosze (which means "please" in Polish), a venture based on her great aunt's recipe for English-style toffee. Her family makes the treat every Christmas, and Klepinski had the idea of creating a small business that would offer the toffee for sale on holidays throughout the year.

By day, she's a banking professional, and in the evenings, she's cooking up batches of to-die-for toffee treats. "Since I have a full-time job, I can only do this on a hobby basis," says Klepinski. "So, I needed a commercial kitchen, and I found Kindred Kitchen as a result. I'm thrilled that I got so much more than just some kitchen space."

The classes opened her eyes to the breadth of issues that food entrepreneurs face, and soon, she was digging into topics like insurance and pricing. Along the way, Klepinski tweaked the organizational structure of her venture, she notes, and came up with new ideas about how to sell her product.

"Kindred works so hard to help the food community grow," she says.

The buyer's fair can certainly get food businesspeople off to a strong start as well. At the last event, makers of a superfood bar, Pashen (see The Line's previous coverage here), were able to get their product into two area locations, Seward Co-Op and Golden Fig on Grand Avenue in Saint Paul.

Wendy Sorquist, who started Pashen with her brother and sister, echoes the enthusiasm of Klepinski, noting that the food company wouldn't have gotten such a boost if it hadn't been for Kindred Kitchen.

"They were so helpful, and they made the process very understandable," says Sorquist. "With a food-based business, it can feel daunting to even get started. Who really wants to make the leap to rent commercial kitchen space in order to get up and running?"

She adds that since Pashen bars are based on a raw food recipe, renting a kitchen would have been less ideal anyway, since the siblings wouldn't be using any of the ovens or other cooking equipment. Also, what Kindred Kitchen provided was far more valuable than just kitchen time to create their superfood bars.

"We learned how to be a business," says Sorquist. "Now we feel that we can harness our passion in such a great way."

Community Food

Beyond providing knowledge and training for local food entrepreneurs, Kindred Kitchen is a community resource in a broader sense. The program's parent is Catalyst Community Partners, a firm that works to revitalize distressed Twin Cities neighborhoods by redeveloping commercial properties into sustainable enterprises.

Catalyst was started by Stu Ackerberg, a property developer whose grandparents had grown up in North Minneapolis, so revitalizing West Broadway became a particular focus for the firm. When Catalyst sent out a neighborhood survey, asking residents what types of businesses they'd like to see, they found a surprisingly high number of food entrepreneurs who operated out of their homes, and were yearning for kitchen space.

Kindred Kitchen was put together as a venture that could offer scholarships for low-income North Side residents, and still pay its own bills by renting out the kitchen space to more established food businesses.

Hill notes that Kindred Kitchen is, itself, in start-up mode. The program has been working through the kind of first-year issues that any business goes through, which makes their advice to entrepreneurs more fresh. She says, "We're a startup helping startups, and that's an interesting position to be in."

With another crop of eager program candidates ready for the next round, it's likely that Kindred Kitchen will keep dishing up expertise and assistance for years to come. Fortunately, that means even more food and drink options for the rest of us.

Elizabeth Millard is Innovation and Jobs Editor of The Line.

Photos, top to bottom:

Terese Hill (l.) is kitchen and program manager at Kindred Kitchen.

Kathy Keys (l.) handles administration and communications for the incubator.

In the next two photos, Cairo Turner (in white hat) and Joel Edmund of Sisinni Food Services work in Kindred's kitchen.

All photos by Bill Kelley