Community Shared Use Kitchen to Benefit Upstate, South Carolina Food Entrepreneurs
If you are an eager, overachieving entrepreneur with a great
idea for the next food fashion, you no longer have to put your business plan
aside until you can finance your own certified professional kitchen. Very soon there will be a way for you to
start production and earn revenue without funding a DHEC approved
facility.
When I moved to the upstate South Carolina to open
the first eat smart kitchen, Beyond the Bull, located at the entrance
to downtown Central, it wasn’t just another restaurant in an already over
saturated market that I was planning.
As a Servsafe certified instructor and proctor for Tri-county Technical
College (TCTC), I soon became a sounding board for frustrated budding
entrepreneurs who had great ideas, strong business plans and experience, but
lacked the funding and training needed to operate a professional kitchen. The students were not
young and inexperienced. They were mature
adults with years of experience in business management or marketing, mostly women, mostly
unemployed and unemployable because of their age or outdated skill sets. The only other thing they had in common was a
desire to start over and be successful once again. 
For those students and others like them, I am hoping to bridge the gap from idea to reality by opening
the first community shared use kitchen to serve Anderson, Greenville, Oconee
and Pickens counties, a DHEC “A” rated facility equipped with everything one
needs to prepare food products for market.
Although the Bull has
outgrown the location at 233 W. Main Street, Central, the building is the
perfect venue in location and size for a kitchen incubator. The opening date for the kitchen incubator is July 1, when the public will be offered the use of the facility, training and food
service business management consulting.
It is my hope that the community shared use kitchen will become a
focal point for food service professionals and nonprofessionals as well, from
home cooks who need a place for canning to farmer’s market vendors, food
trucks, caterers, future retailers of gluten free brownies and pizza dough to
food photographers and especially for new product development. The main focus will always remain on the small business development
of food related products and small business start ups.
Opening date for the shared use kitchen known simply as Chop Chop is July 1, 2014. Reservations are being accepted now. Early registration will be rewarded with a discounted rate. For more information contact Chef Bell at 2birches@att.net , call her at 207 251 3947 or message her through www.facebook.com/chefangelab or www.facebook.com/beyondthebull.
EAT SMART, America!
Buon Appetito e Buona Salute, Chef AngelaB
