The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen congratulates our first group of newly-state-licensed food processors!
Our state inspector was in Friday morning to go over the applications of our first food Processing Partners. These are folks who will be processing their own recipes in the Innovation Kitchen.
All passed with flying colors. All 4 are launched and underway.
These good folks represent a wave of new opportunities emerging in food entrepreneurship. They are also representative of the regional impact and opportunities the Innovation Kitchen can help create. Two of the four are existing Iowa County (WI) businesses. One is from Dane County (Madison), and one is from Grant County (Platteville)
One of our Processing Partners, my friend Matt, has already had his foods accepted at a major food store in Madison.
Another of these friends, Mike, set the gold standard for making the most of a community shared kitchen during his test run.
We were able to offer another of these new Processing Partners – Cindy, a wonderful baker - an opportunity to do the baking for a new, recurring order she could legitimately build a nice business around.
From the beginning, we’ve talked of this facility becoming both a processing and marketing kitchen. It’s happening. We are not only attracting innovative food enterprises as you’d expect, but also buyers who are asking us to supply local and regional foods to enhance and grow their businesses.
So, congratulations to our four new Processing Partners – those making their own recipes in the Kitchen!
We also have several excellent Preparation Partners emerging – those that have the Innovation Kitchen prepare their recipes.
This group is the model for the ‘artisan food career’ concept I’ve been proposing.
These Preparation Partners are building business plans around becoming ‘virtual food enterprises’. They will operate the money and management sides of their businesses from where ever they live. All professional food preparation, processing, and distribution can be managed at the Innovation Kitchen.
This alleviates the need for the virtual food entrepreneurs to build their own state-inspected facilities, take all the certification courses, as well as hire and train food processing staff.
The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is moving forward on all fronts. This is an exciting and fortunate time to be a food entrepreneur.
We can help, train and launch your food enterprise no matter where you live. Join us!
The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. Opens in a new window.
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