This past Sunday evening in downtown Houston, over 100 people poured into the doors of the soon to open Kitchen Inc headquarters on Franklin Street. Some colorful sidewalk are by yours truly lead the way into our Café and the Standard Kitchen, where a diverse array of deliciousness slowly filled our table. Spicy crackers, thai hot sauces, brittle and toffee, and even margaritas lined the Standard Kitchen. We took groups of 25 on guided tours of our kitchens as the crowd enjoyed the potluck and perused the space.
From 4 to 9pm, I spoke non-stop, explaining our kitchens, answering questions and getting to know many people who, having communicated over e-mail so long, I felt as though I already knew. With construction still in progress, scaffolding lining a few walls and plywood where a stainless steel bar should be, the atmosphere was certainly chaotic. If I hadn’t done this the previous Sunday, I would have been nervous.
The previous Sunday….
The day before Open Kitchen 1 came impossibly fast. One second I had a week ahead of me to spend scrubbing grease off worktables, sanding wood and deep cleaning everything. The next moment it seemed my hands smelled eternally of bleach and Simple Green and Open Kitchen was eminent. I arrived at the site Saturday morning to find that my crew had left early on Friday having mistakenly left a vast array of missing ceiling tiles, a broken A/C unit, no doors and a maze of ladders. A thick cloud of dust covered everything in site from whatever it is they had been doing. Naturally, I panicked.
A lot of hard work and some wonderful help from a pair of strong hands later, things begin to fall into shape. The ceiling in place, the ladders hidden. Now I just had to make refreshments for 75 people!

The crowd gathers in the Standard Kitchen.

I awoke Sunday a rowdy blend of anxious anticipation and trepidation. What if they don’t like it? What if no one shows up? What if the other A/C unit breaks and everyone melts? Luckily the day flew by and I had little time to ponder over my questions. At 4:30 sharp, guests begin to arrive, even before the 5pm start time!

Unfortunately, having gone to pick up ice, I had just arrived too! Our first guests awaited me at the door, cakes and tartlets in hand. What a lovely site. At least I no longer had to worry that no one would show up.

The next few hours flew as I walked everyone through the kitchens. The enthusiasm in the room was beautifully contagious. An excited chat of new businesses and hope for the future filled every corner. Two years of working on Kitchen Inc, it was remarkably rewarding to experience.

Over the course of two Open Kitchens, over 200 people visited our facility, each expressing a desire to launch or grow their food business with us and showcasing an inspiring level of passion and excitement. WOW. The response has been overwhelming. I can’t wait for the real open kitchen in the next few weeks when each of these amazing businesses will be able to get started in our kitchens, and I’m sure you can’t either. So then, back to work for me!

In case your new to the blog, my landlord’s name is Spire. Hence the play on words. Here’s the story:
The language seems fairly simple…

landlord agrees to reimburse the tenant for its share, defined as one 
half of the monetary amount of the cost of the Working Drawings upon 
submission of an invoice from the Architect in charge of their 
preparation within 30 days of the submission of completed drawings

I submit an invoice from the Architect showing the amount I’ve paid. I submit completed drawings. The landlord reimburses me for half of that.
Anyone have trouble understanding that? Good, we didn’t think so.

Unfortunately, our Landlord, somehow does. They like to say things like:

we are simply not able to agree to an amount when the proper documentation has not been submitted

So far, the only additional documentation they’ve requested is further detail and clarification on a single invoice component that amounts to less than one eight of the amount being billed.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world worked that way? If I find a $50 item on my rent bill that I don’t understand, that allows me to forgoe my contractual obligations to pay an ENTIRE $1,000+ bill in time?
Wow, these guys are setting a fabulous precedent as a Landlord.
I would be happy to play by these rules if I didn’t already know that when the tables are turned, the rules would change.
I’d draw up a contract to have both parties agree to the new set of rules, but since they’d fail to understand the language or honor the contract anyway…

One of the most popular e-mail requests for interested Kitchen Inc users is “when can I come see the kitchens?” It’s also one of the more frequent requests I get from my friends and family as of late too. While I can post endless descriptions to the website or add pictures to our Facebook albums, nothing is going to substitute for an actual visual of the space.
I decided to host the Open Kitchen series to provide that to the community but of course, we can’t always have tours once people are actually working in the kitchens. Thus, we’re working to create a 3D Virtual Tour of the entire Kitchen Inc space!
Our 3D model is accurate in every detail, right down to the brand names of the equipment. The tour will allow anyone to virtually walk-through the Café, kitchens and all shared areas, right from the comfort of their home computer. It will also allow us to model events and other potential uses of the space. Interested in arranging seating and staff for a Pop-Up restaurant? No problem. We can model it all, right in 3D!
As you may have noticed, we’re very fond of using technology to improve access to Kitchen Inc and make our clients’ lives easier. Applications, Reservations and now touring the site…it can all be done online and it’s all happening *very* soon!

My awesome resident engineer and designer at MatadorMoto has been working on the model for a few weeks now and it is nearly ready to launch. Naturally, we’ll send out a proud newsletter announcing the final launch. For now, here are a few teaser screenshots to whet your appetites:

An aerial view of the space.

Overview of the Standard Kitchen.

As a side note, our model is probably more than 3 Gig and definitely took more than 3 hours to build, but we wanted to get another song in everyone’s head.

We’ll be hosting an “Open Kitchen” next month for everyone to tour the space, ask questions and get to know one another. Management will be available to answer all your questions and we’ll have copies of our Licensing Agreement for you to sign and register on site.

The Open Kitchen will be a potluck, so feel free to bring your specialties and show off your future KitchenInc products. We’ll have plenty to drink and light refreshments too. This will be a series of family potlucks that we will be hosting at the site so all Kitchen Inc users can get to know one another.

Feel free to post questions and suggestions for this event, along with what you are bringing on the Facebook Event Page.

While we’ve used the last six months to source equipment from all over the Houston area and deliver it ourselves, many of the larger items such as ovens would have to come from a restaurant supplier. That day finally arrived this past Monday when I took delivery of all our heavy equipment items!

A sample of the trash I needed to clear out before the equipment could fit.

An exciting day, I arrived at the site at 9am sharp, expecting to find my crew hard at work cleaning and getting ready to take delivery (we’re not lazy, btw, the Condo association upstairs just won’t let construction start before 9am). Instead, the space was entirely empty and the area where the equipment would have to go was covered in pieces of drywall, tile and steel. To make matters much worse, our commercial loading zone was occupied by a moving crew working on someone’s condo. Only 100 units and someone picked to move in on MY equipment delivery day! I managed to track down the movers and they reported they’d be finished in less than an hour. Okay, things might just work.

Now where is my team? A quick phone call to my Contractor reports that everyone is running late for various reasons (truck problems, tied up with the City, etc) but will be there shortly. Luckily, my equipment is running late too! I continue filling wheel barrows and trash bags trying to clear space for equipment. Nearing 10am, a few of the guys arrive and set to help cleaning and soon the enormous box truck arrives with my equipment. Alas, the moving guys are still in the loading zone! I run around frantically trying to get the movers in the loading zone to move their pickup from the zone as City regulations prohibit parking in a commercial loading zone unless actively loading/unloading but they’ve disappeared into the lofts. I suppose I could call to have them towed, but what good would that do when I have to park NOW?

We manage to find a space for the equipment truck across the street. It looks like all of our equipment will have to travel a block down Travis – ridiculous. A few more of the crew arrive and we’re able to hoist the ovens up the stairs using a ramp and a dolly. Naturally, it starts to rain.

The real challenge comes with the double convection oven, which is so tall and heavy that we’re afraid it will topple onto someone’s head. Our plan was to take it apart into two 600 lb pieces but in some bizarre twist of circumstance, no one has brought their tools today and we can’t find a wrench: I’m on the bike and not in my truck, my Contractor came in his car and not his work truck, etc. A hunt begins and I manage to track down a small adjustable wrench from a mysterious tool bag I noticed in the utility room – I think it belonged to an electrician who was looking at the panel but I never did see him – and we managed to make do. The oven came apart and made it successfully into the space!

As for me, I left for home covered in drywall bits, insulation and soot; and just as I hopped on my bike a true Houston downpour let loose, adding rain and mud to the list of things covering my messy self. Let’s just say I ended up pretty happy that the cooking competition I was supposed to be in later that evening had been canceled because I was *exhausted*!

Now that the equipment is in, I’m itching to get the gas lines turned on so that we can play! Unfortunately it will be another couple of weeks before we’re ready to turn on the gas.

Pushing an oven down Travis St.

Free to build at last! This Monday morning I met with my contractor, landlord’s project manager and the landlord’s building engineer to discuss final transition of the space from their team over to me. With a few tasks remaining on their end (new air conditioning vent and minor details such as an entrance to my space) they reluctantly agreed to allow my contractor to begin work. The meeting also revealed a couple of interesting details that put their construction in a slightly new light.
1. Spire’s building engineer, the chief project manager for all construction, suffered a serious family emergency just as construction begin on my space, leaving an inexperienced administrative assistant and a new contractor to deal with this project.
2. As a result, miscommunication ensued and mismanagement run rampant. Recall my discussion of Spire telling me they had gotten “their own plans drawn” that didn’t have anything to do with my permits? Throughout the first few months I tried consistently to notify Spire that the approved drawings were not posted on site, that I had the permitted plans and wouldn’t they like them? As it turns out, the “plans they had done on their own” turned out to be nothing but the floor-plan my architect had included in the lease. Their work was done entirely off an 8 1/2 x 11″ sheet of paper while my detailed HVAC, MEP and architectural drawings sat in an office untouched. Their administrative assistant said that she was unaware that the plans I’d had prepared encompassed their work in addition to mine. “It’s in the lease,” I pointed out. “I’m sorry if I’d assumed you had read it.” She attributed this gross error to a “simple misunderstanding.” I coughed.

The Omega crew tearing down the house!

All the shock of this revelation aside, my contractor, the ever so awesome Omega Construction (and you can fan them on Facebook too), hit the ground running the very next day. They demolished all of the necessary walls, tore out some frames, and negotiated moving a surprise gas line all in a day’s work. Despite my usual penchant for sarcasm, I say entirely without it that this team has accomplished in less than a week, more than what Spire’s team achieved in an entire month. As a result, my landlord’s building engineer has seen the light and will likely hire my team to do their remaining work as well.

It’s only a few days into our construction and we’ve hit more than a few snafus. The first big surprise came the first morning when we discovered a mysterious gas line whose existence in a wall set for demolition had never been indicated. Naturally, this just happened to be the main gas line for both of our main cooking lines! In compliance with code for handling major gas lines (we’re back to sarcasm now) the previous owner’s contractor had failed to properly support the line and had simply left it propped up by some boards. Wow.

To further entertain us, we also discovered that the refrigeration units in the existing buffet line are not only hammered together in one giant 15+ ft long piece, but have also been screwed into, glued upon and generally banged up in every possible way.

Our intentions to reuse these units as under-counter refrigerators in our kitchens will likely have to be scrapped. Even more fun, the units are so massive they will have to be disassembled just to fit through the door, rendering any attempt to sell the units virtually hopeless.Still, the excitement of finally having my crew in the door and entering the final weeks of construction overpower any frustration. Walls are coming down, walls are going up… and we are happy.
We will continue to post pictures as construction continues both here and on our Facebook Page.

April 16: Permits have been ready for a few weeks. Landlord advises construction begins Monday. Expected time to completion, 3-4 weeks.
April 20: Landlord advises they were unable to begin construction due to a table with granite and tile on top of it on the right side of the room. Physical capabilities of all employees of selected contractor now viewed with utmost skepticism. Sheer laziness suspected culprit.
April 28: Met with my contractor, which shall heretofore be referred to as “Good Contractor” as opposed to “Evil Contractor,” which shall heretofore refer to Landlord’s contractor, at the site. Construction has commenced and seems to be moving along. Neither permits or plans are posted on site as required by City. Competence, in addition to physical capabilities of “Evil Contractor” now viewed with increasing skepticism.
April 29: Email battle ensues. I advise Landlord that appropriate permits and drawings are not displayed and the situation must be remedied. Compliance with the City Government takes backstage to movement of granite and tile.
May 3: In response to countless emails regarding lack of permits, landlord concludes with essentially “none of your business.” Reporting status: work will be complete in less than two weeks; imperative that all tile is removed since “final cleaning” is imminent.
May 10: “Good Contractor” procures our final building permit and confirms with the City that the permits for Landlord’s work have not been obtained.
May 11: In response to being advised that the City reports permits are not in place for the current construction, Landlord replies “you must move the stone.” [Read more →]

Not wanting to simply demolish and waste the 20+ feet of buffet that lined the existing restaurant space, I turned to Craigslist to find someone who might find a use for it. This being Houston, surely someone could use a buffet! I made the mistake of advertising the buffet as free to anyone willing to do the work of removing it from the site. Dozens of emails poured in within a few hours. Many were strangely picky for something free – “what is the exact color of the granite? Can you send more pictures? How much does it weigh?” One email stood out from the pack. It was from a couple who had lost their restaurant due to Hurricane Ike damage and were looking to rebuild. They’d be commuting from up north and doing the work themselves, but had a truck and tools and were ready to assess the materials.At the time, my landlord’s start on construction was eminent, so I got the interested couple into the space soon and explained they could help themselves to the buffet and to any of the tile on the walls. I was initially concerned about the weight of the granite as they were an older couple, but they assured me their sons would be in to help. We made arrangements to meet the following weekend and they could spend the day attacking the tiles with an air hammer. [Read more →]

…or punch in the face, rather.

On Friday, April 9, I was assaulted by a stranger who was parked in my driveway in the Washington Ave. corridor. The man was about exactly twice my size, very angry, and didn’t take well to women who tell him what to do. Apparently unable to deal with frustration verbally, he decided to punch me in the face with all the physical strength of a 6’4″ over 250 lb man and then promptly fled the scene, with a great deal of assistance from his friends who were standing by to help him get away and help deal with the police as though this had happened before.

Never having interacted with a man who would hit a women before, I simply stood in front of him and took the punch. I’m not sure if I saw it coming, but it was completely unexpected. I was taking to the E.R. where I my earlobe was stitched back on and diagnosed with a severe jawline fracture. Later that week I had metal plates inserted into my jaw (not fun) and begin a couple of months of recovery.

I am now speaking somewhat comprehensibly and even moving on to less liquid foods. I’m even getting sick of ice cream. While this is a personal matter, I wanted to let my KitchenInc crew know why I’ve been silent as of late and why construction has stalled a bit. My landlord is supposed to be handling their end of the build-out as we speak, but we me unable to do more than email for the past month, little progress appears to have been made.

If the dirty details of my assault interest you, I’m blogging here. While I tend to make light of things on this blog, this is a serious incident that has taken its place amongst the more life-changing moments of my life. I apologize to everyone for it interfering in our KitchenInc progress and will recover soon and get this project back on track so we can GET COOKING!!

I must confess, I’d been scribbling proposed layouts for the 907 Franklin space since the first day Adam showed it to me. When I showed up at the Mirador Group office, my architect, Todd Blitzer, explained he’d be handling the drawings. “Hey,” I reprimanded, “some of us don’t get to draw for a living.” Then I told him about how I’d studied architecture as a teenager and he begin to forgive my micromanaging.
The drawing below portrays perfectly how I work. However shocking it may be, nearly a year later, all of the notes, numbers and random lines still mostly make sense to me!
[Read more →]

It is only a few days before Christmas and we have just received word from Acción Texas that our loan has been approved for the full requested amount. We are making progress on the lease and permits and despite the fact that I had sincerely planned on being open for the 2009 Holiday Season, I am happy with the current state of affairs. We have the space, we have the funds – we’re good to go in 2010! As one of those people who jumps full on into the Christmas spirit with remarkable fervor, I couldn’t have been happier when I received the approval.
The following day, December 23rd, I receive a phone call from Acción to finalize closing arrangements. I am at my family home in rural New Mexico preparing the house for Christmas Eve celebrations and get little to no reception on my mobile there (thank you, AT&T). It is hard to determine the result of the conversation since it is cutting in and out but it appears that our loan officer, a woman I had not spoken to before, was asking me when I could come in during the next few days to close on the loan. When I explained to her that I was already out of state, traveling for the Holiday as most people do, she grew angry that I had not notified the organization of my travel plans. She explained that the application had been on file for too long and that I had to close before the end of the year or the application would be thrown out. I would have to start the process all over again with increased competition and no guarantees of success. Never mind the fact that the application had been on the books for a few months due to the organization’s over-extension and no fault of my own. Never mind the fact that no one had notified my of a year end closing dead line. Somehow, I should have notified them of my plans to travel at Christmas time through a magical telepathic sense that the loan would have to close immediately after receiving approval. Interesting. [Read more →]

Season’s Greetings from KitchenInc! While we are happily baking away at this most wonderful time of the year, we regret to inform you that our kitchens will not be open for the Holiday season as we had expected. Negotiations with our Landlord and construction planning have delayed our project further.

We wish you a wonderful Holiday Season, a Happy New Year and look forward to having you all in our kitchens next year!

Six months of lease negotiation and the landlord’s lawyer found a problem only now, after we had signed the lease. Convenient, perhaps? Now we are stuck with the impossible task of obtaining a convoluted permit or rewriting language in the lease that we had worked all Summer to achieve. Saner women may have given up at this point; resigned themselves to the great strip mall in the ‘burbs; but I persisted. I refused to consider an alternate location, not only because we had invested so much into the space already and announced it to our clients, but because I am plagued by a innate stubbornness that has been making my life difficult (and wonderful) since the moment I emerged from the womb.
The item in contention was our front door. Our landlord had agreed to build a new entrance to our space and since they refused to allow a recessed door, the entryway would have to extend onto the sidewalk. I was initially in favor of the sidewalk entrance. In my Sim-Houston sidewalk cafés and street vendors line the streets. Unfortunately, in the real Houston, downtown sidewalks are of a sacred nature. The irony of this fact, given that sidewalks are either neglected in or non-existant in most parts of the City, has not yet occurred to them. The proposed door would require an “Encroachment Agreement” to allow our intrusion onto the sacred sidewalk. The process entails a few checks to the City, a lot of waiting and then eventually hiring a Civil Engineer to show the City what lays under its own sidewalks. Yes, it is disconcerting to me as well. The City should probably know what is under its own sidewalks. Alas, then who would pay the Civil Engineers?
To further complicate matters, our financiers also require a fully-executed copy of the lease prior to approving our application. They continue to put pressure on our organization to either close on our loan or get out of the application pool.
Mr. Bad-news-from-Dallas Lawyer insisted that no lease would be executed until we received the Encroachment permit. We waited, impatiently, only to continue tripping over the permit details of our slippery sidewalk. As the year draws to a close we realize that we must amend the lease and proceed with construction in whatever way we can. A temporary door was proposed.

Happy Anniversary to me! This Holiday Season marks the second anniversary of the conception of KitchenInc. Yep, I’ve slowly been building this up for two whole years. While we may not yet be open for business, I’ve spent the past two years learning the ins and outs of the food industry, eaten my way across Texas and enjoyed a few other interesting adventures along the way. To celebrate our anniversary I’ve made a list of some of the more memorable take-aways from my two years in TX:

• Turned down for a loan by over 20 banks and assorted lending institutions despite being a former banker
• Successfully lived off of one year’s banker bonus for over two years, reaching new levels of frugaltiy
• Purchased, learned to ride and compltely, utterly destroyed my first motorcycle
• Wrote an 80+ page comprehensive business plan complete with a financial model that projects every detail right down to the TX Franchise tax – convincing anyone to actually read has been the biggest challenge
• Met the love of my life at Rudyard’s one evening after offering to buy him a beer
• Explored every inch of and fallen absolutely in love with the Hill Country
• Learned how to two step and actually kinda liked it
• Become a taco truck connoisseur

Most importantly, I’ve built a home here and the foundations of what I hope will be a great business. Thanks, Houston, it’s been a great ride!

Growing up in rural New Mexico I learned some unusual things at an early age. I learned that you shouldn’t make friends with a calf, no matter how cute, because eventually he will grow up to be hamburgers. I learned how pipes explode when they freeze and just how many apricots you can eat before you get sick. One of those valuable life lessons was this: bad things come from Dallas.
This was due to the ever increasing invasion that plagued my State. The surgically modified hordes of platinum fluff, sugar-daddy in tow, swarmed New Mexico in search of ski hills and culture. We were taught as locals to react with two key tactics: 1) raise all prices and 2) insist that you do not speak English when confronted.
At this point you are likely wondering what any of this could possibly do with KitchenInc. Let me indulge you. Since leaving New Mexico some eight years ago I have given little thought to the Dallas invasion. However, this past fall I have been forced to remember that childhood adage: bad things come from Dallas.
After months of negotiation, signing the lease for 907 Franklin at last was a most triumphant moment. I celebrated with homemade pizza and an Argentinean cab I’d been saving. I had signed not one, but FOUR copies of the lease and dutifully handed over my deposit check. It could not possibly get more official. We would open in time for the 2009 Holiday season. Such optimism, such joy was mine!
Several weeks later, after sending endless “WTF?” emails, our Landlord’s local middleman responded with most unexpected news. A lawyer in Dallas, in his final review of our lease, had decided that he did not like some of the wording and also noticed a mistake in our rent calculation. The wording in question obligated our landlord to complete build-out of our new entryway as part of the “Landlord’s Work.” Lawyer was uncomfortable with this clause since the ability of the landlord to complete the door depended on City permits that were not yet received.
Fine, we would simply have to wait until permits were in before final execution….or we could amend the lease with proposed language that invalidated the landlord obligations we had spent months negotiating out. “You pick,” the lawyer seemed to propose as though we had much of a choice in the matter.
Well then, how long would it take to obtain the required permits?

When I received the final rejection from Chase I knew I had to act fast to obtain our additional financing. At the time we had conference called the lease to death and the landlord was preparing documents for execution. I called on a few bankers I had spoken with earlier in the Summer and asked them to tell it to me strait. They confessed that despite the guarantee perks from the SBA they had ceased nearly all small business lending. Even established and fully collateralize ventures failed to get through, much less a start-up. My general contractor roommate, trying to get his third townhouse up in the booming Washington Ave. corridor, confirmed the rumors. It seemed my only choice was to seek equity investors.
Then I discovered Acción Texas, the local branch of a global micro lender specializing in start-ups and other high risk organizations. There was one key problem to pursuing a loan through Acción: their maximum amount was less than half of what we had originally intended to borrow. It’s okay, I convinced myself. I can go another year without a salary. Disposable income is overrated. I have enough fat on my hips and shoes in my closet to last several more years without discretionary spending (seriously, I spend all my money on food). [Read more →]

Our story begins early in the summer when I blogged about a magical “pot of gold” at the end of the recessionary rainbow – a recently passed SBA legislation that would make our debt financing cheaper and easier. I chose a banker that seemed not only competent but supportive of our concept. This is fairly rare in commercial banking where “new” ideas are associated with wild risk. “All new food businesses should be franchises of proven concepts,” says Mr. Bank.
Now, I am not an enthusiastic fan of Chase bank. Aside from preferring to support local businesses, their deep passion for outsourcing each link of their vast global business has left me on the verge of violence far too many times. However, I did remember that the heritage Bank One guys I had worked with in credit were genuinely awesome and proud, old-school Texans. As with everything, Texas had it’s own culture.
With this in mind, we submitted our SBA loan application through Chase. My progressive banker was sure that we would have no trouble getting approved given our rock-star business plan, meticulously foretasted financials and 50% capital investment. Through the throngs of paperwork that we faithfully provided, we were assured that it was only a matter of time before we were handed a check at a fair interest ate. The time passed slowly but we were kept thoroughly entertained by our lease negotiations and drafting plans (read that story).. Unfortunately, as that time passed, my chosen banker was promoted to a management position in San Antonio. I was punished for my ability to pick a good banker! [Read more →]

The Downtown District required a lease in order to review grant applications. They made an exception in the initial review of our concept since the application was preliminary. They made a further exception and allowed us to submit a “Letter of Intent” (LOI) in lieu of the draft lease as we struggled to obtain one from the landlord.
The landlord had grown privy to the potential grant and was now calling the program coordinator to assess the potential amount and whether it could substitute for tenant improvement allowances. Obviously the answer was no, but it delayed the process. We had been pulling the teeth necessary to obtain that LOI for two weeks already and when my last meeting before the planned presentation to the Board arrived, we were all worried that the lease would delay the application review yet another month.
As we said our goodbyes I stopped to check my email just before walking out the door. There it was, sitting neatly in my inbox.
All I had to do now as make a presentation convincing the Board of our concept’s functionally and financial feasibility; something I’ve done so many times over the past few years that it has become as natural as riding a bicycle. Those presentations had seldom been about my ideas or ones that I believed in at all, so this would be a treat.
The plan was to make a 10 minute presentation to the Board and have a brief Q&A session just before their lunch meeting. Shortly before my presentation I was introduced to the board members as they began to enter the room. Immediately I knew who my skeptic was – the woman who had supplied the rest of the Board with all of the negative press and was not in favor of giving us the grant. There was an obvious inherent dislike in her demeanor and it was apparent that my appearance as a young woman did little to appease her disfavor. I was a bit shocked at her initial personal questions even prior to the onset of the presentation, though they did little to prepare me for the shock of the questions that would be asked in the Q&A. <!–more–>
When I mentioned to a few of the board members in the room that I had just, that morning, arrived back in town after a meeting with my partner and that my business partner was also my mother, the woman interjected to imply that my family was our funding source. I immediately assured her that the partner had just become involved in the project to assist in operations, provide an alternate source of liquidity and would not be making an initial equity injection into the start-up. I wanted to make it clear to the board that the equity injection shown in the financials was my own and that I was not asking them to invest any more in this business than I was already willing to invest myself.
The presentation went smoothly. I ran through a few colorful slides showing the proposed layout of the kitchens and describing how these kitchens have empowered entrepreneurs across the country over the past decade. I gave an overview of our operational model, proving its success through references to similar kitchens operating in San Francisco, New York and Austin. The Q&A began.
Her first point was to ask how I could prove that not a single incubator kitchen project had failed, pointing to the articles she’d found on the Boston kitchen. In order to address the concerns raised in her research, I had added a number of articles to the appendix of the our business plan explaining what had happened to the Boston kitchen and also telling the stories of many other similar kitchens. The amount of positive press in existence greatly outnumbers the more pessimistic articles. The updated articles I included provided new information showing that the Boston kitchen set for failure had actually been saved at the last minute by a private task-force spearheaded by the Mayor himself. Her displeasure in having been outsmarted in her first “question” set the tone for the remainder of our interaction.
The battle then moved to the area of operational concerns, where it would remain for quite some time. Rather than ask a question, as is the norm for a Q&A session, the model here was actually for the woman to point out a potential problem in our business model and then have me address it. As this was not a court room, I could not object, and I politely addressed her concerns before the Board.
It must be noted that many kitchens employee a large staff and process individual applications by hand. This is often done to ensure that the applicant meets program requirements to comply with grant funding. As this is not an issue in our case, we devised a system to completely automate reservations and will be booking only through our website. Although this is explained in great detail with a process-flow diagram in our business plan, our friendly interrogator had either not read this portion, chosen to ignore it, or simply did not understand it.
Subsequently, I had to spend a good 20 minutes attempting to explain why we did not plan on hiring an office manager to take care of bookings and sales and how this process could be entirely automated. The main objection to this was “why do the other kitchens need a larger staff then?” The answer was simply that these were non-profit programs that go far beyond simple kitchen rentals. I walked her through a few case studies on kitchens that are successfully run by a single manager where that manager also ran a full-time catering business out of the same kitchen. The explanations were in vain and we eventually went back to her making the same points made at the beginning of the discussion. An efficient and well-planned approach that dealt with operational problems before they started was dismissed by this woman.
That would be the point when other members interjected and facilitated one or two of the other parties being able to get a word in and actually a ask a question.
Each of these questions raised valid concerns and I was happy to address them. I understand that a new business model requires a different approach then just another restaurant or store. After all, I’d graduated with a degree in Entrepreneurship! Many of the questions from the other Board members allowed them to better understand the financial projections and my managerial background.
The session went back and forth like this for over an HOUR. Then, just when the rest of the Board was sufficiently astounded by the nature of the questioning, she put forth the most preposterous one of them all. I give her that – this woman will not cease to outdo herself! “In your list of risks you say that since you are the single founder and manager that Kitchen Incubator may not be able to operate if something should happen to you. How should we feel about that risk?”
Really? You are asking me to address the potential risk of my death? “Well, I certainly do not plan on dying any time in the near future,” I started. The Board members laughed. This “single-manager” clause is standard in prospectus language and is merely added in to the list of risks for liability protection. I tried to explain that this is standard language and inherent to any small business, which, despite adequate insurance protection and other precautions, will always suffer should anything prohibit its leader from running the business. I explained how this is especially pertinent in the restaurant business where a chef is essentially, irreplaceable. “However,” I noted, “this is accepted in the industry and hardly makes a business dependent on a single personality such as Robert Del Grande’s ventures, a prohibitively risky concept.”
It seemed then that the other Board members were simply laughing at the question. A few of them, I am sure, had actually fallen asleep. The Head of the Grant Committee made her final and at last, successful attempt to wrap up the meeting and I was set free.
What continued after that was a heated debate over my application and an exchange of emails that, once made privy to them, left me rather dumbfounded. In the end, the Lady Anti-Entrepreneurship, despite having declared that she would never agree to my receiving the grant, decided to cave. Perhaps a trusted source had pointed out that she looked rather ridiculous, arms crossed in anger and stomping her feet wildly. I am under the impression she was quite used to throwing temper tantrums to get her way, this being one of those qualities so evident in any person no matter how they age. Her last words in the argument against my application were my “dismissal of sole-hands on difficulties” and “tendency to see harsh realities through a rosy glass.” Apparently, the optimism, hard work and passion so inherent in entrepreneurship were entirely new concepts to her. I highlighted these quotes because I want all of you KitchenInc start-ups to remember those words clearly. Other people will probably tell you the same thing- NEVER believe them!

During my initial research I compiled a spreadsheet of all the shared-use kitchens that I could find. This was in the fall of 2007 before the near dozen websites listing such kitchens had popped up. I broke down the list into kitchens that are run as private businesses (that list was very small then) and those that were formed as non-profits. Problems in the non-profit model were obvious. The sources of grant funding available limited these kitchens to tailoring their services to special interest groups such as minorities, low income groups or agricultural areas. While I understand the need for such programs, I feel that investing the $300K minimum required to open a fully-equipped commercial kitchen is not something that is particularly difficult only for socially “disadvantaged” groups, it is difficult for everyone!
From the first moment I decided to go through with the project, I knew that I was going to do something that would be accessible to anyone and everyone with no red tape and an easily navigable process. I swore to myself that grant funding was simply out of the question.
This was strengthened by further research on how a few of these kitchens are being run. I found a number of articles on a kitchen in the Boston run as a non-profit that was struggling and about to close down. The mismanagement of the organization was painfully obvious – a staff of five had been hired at “comfortable” salaries to do daily tasks that a computer should have handled, the kitchen was not advertised, had a hidden website missing ontact information, the program required a mountain of paperwork and interviews to gain access to the kitchen, there were no private work spaces and the spaces were being rented on an honor system where people marked usage on a white board and were billed for reported use. Although the Mayor and a few local organizations did eventually join forces to save the kitchen, they hired a new manager with a business background to address their problems.
Stories such as that of the Boston kitchen left me reluctant to consider a non-profit model. I wanted to keep the organization as clean and efficient as possible without outside investors. That’s why it is a bit strange that I somehow ended up spending over a month on obtaining a small grant! [Read more →]

I had the brilliant idea of trying to have a brilliant idea during the worst possible time in the last 50 years to have a brilliant idea. This is normal for me: chose to quite my job during a time when everyone was holding onto their jobs for dear life and decide to start a business during the biggest lending contraction the world has ever seen. Never mind that this business also happened to be in industry blacklisted by the current economy. Just mention the word “kitchen” to a bank and the doors are immediately shut. Even better when you have the word kitchen in the very name of your business!
Kitchen Incubator was a quick launch for me. I was new to Houston, fresh from the New York City restaurant scene and looking for a pastry internship. As I perused the ads on Craigslist and local forums, a trend appeared – people in Houston, in Texas in general, were desperately searching for kitchen rental space. A bit of googling later and I stumbled up The Kitchen Space, a shared-use kitchen in Austin that was just starting construction. I found Kitchen Chicago, a successful shared kitchen that was started by a former investment banker like me! Several hours of google later I had dug up a list of at least 20 such kitchens in existence or in the works across the country.
A potential business that would combine my passion for the food industry with my background in business development was far too alluring. I was hooked. I threw up the website and the survey. I filed for LLC in Texas and submitted all of the business and tax forms. All in a day’s work. Then I began to work on the business plan… [Read more →]

After I’d finished our lengthy business plan complete with financial modeling as detailed as your typical million dollar merger, I thought the lengthiest part of the start-up was over. Soon I discovered, as most entrepreneurs during their first start-up often do, I was wrong. When I tell people that I’m starting a business in this economic climate, they assume that the most difficult part of the process is obtaining financing. Not true. Financing is fairly clear cut: you meet with every banker in the city that will actually answer your phone calls, give it your best shot and maybe two or three will tell you there is hope. It’s quite simple. Far more complicated, is deciding where you want to put your business.
The website survey and an ongoing e-mail dialog made it very clear where clients would like to see this business go: the Galleria, Katy, Sugarland, Clear Lake, the Woodlands…you get the point. So it was obvious that we need to keep it centrally located with easy highway access. Maybe we can’t be in Katy and Sugarland at the same time, but we can most certainly be accessible from those places. This narrowed things down a great deal as inner-loop real estate is far harder to come by and most of it lay far outside our budget. [Read more →]

Hello! Thank you for your interest in Kitchen Incubator, “A Center for Culinary Entrepreneurship” in Houston, TX.

Here you will find all of the latest updates on Kitchen Incubator as we progress towards opening our shared-use kitchens and café, along with helpful links, pertinent resources and articles and access to our new community of culinary entrepreneurs.