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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

shared kitchen

Chew Abandons Plans to Save Former Pilotworks Brooklyn Location

The poor former tenants of Pilotworks’ Brooklyn just cannot catch a break.

This October their commercial kitchen space, which many depended on for their entire business operations, shut down with no warning. A supportive community rose up to support these stranded entrepreneurs, 175 of which had been working out of the Brooklyn Pilotworks location, but many struggled with the challenge of relocating their business.

Then a ray of sunshine seemed to peek out through the clouds. A few weeks ago Boston-based food research lab Chew announced that it was taking over the former Pilotworks Brooklyn location and turning it into a new food & beverage incubator called The Nursery. All previous tenants were invited to return and restart their businesses. The space, under new management, was set to reopen in mid-December, pending permit approval.

But all budding hopes were dashed when The Nursery tenants received an email from Chew founder Adam Melonas on December 18th with the headline “Unfortunate News” (hat tip to Edible Brooklyn). Melonas went on to write that “our plans to open Nursery at the former Pilotworks Brooklyn site will unfortunately not be moving forward.” According to Eater, the Chew team found issues during pre-inspection and came to the conclusion the former Pilotworks location wasn’t up to par with the company’s standards.

While I don’t know details about the facility or Chew’s exact motivations for shutting down this project, I do know it’s a major bummer. Pilotworks’ tenants — most of whom are budding food entrepreneurs hustling hard to turn their business from dream into reality — have been jerked around a lot of late, and it seems like Chew should have maybe figured this all out before they promised to revive the space.

Gripes aside, this news shows just how tough it can be to make the commercial kitchen business sustainable. Thankfully tools like the Food Corridor and Cookitoo exist to help connect small-scale food producers with local shared kitchen spaces. But even so, those resources can’t guarantee that the commercial kitchen spaces on their list won’t also run into issues and shut their doors.

It’s not all darkness and despair, though. Last week Hudson Kitchen signed a lease to open a shared-use commercial kitchen space in South Kearny, New Jersey, not far from Pilotworks’ former Newark location. This may seem like relatively small news, but it’s still a sign that the demand for food business incubators is still very much there — and that companies are working to meet it.

Cookitoo Brings Rental Kitchen Marketplace from Down Under to the Bay Area

The food community was rocked last week when Pilotworks, a startup that provided new food businesses with shared kitchen space, shut down abruptly and without warning, supposedly because they failed to raise enough capital to continue operations. In the Brooklyn location alone, the closure left almost 200 entrepreneurs stranded and scrambling to find a new production facility.

Ever since the news broke, we’ve been putting together a list of alternatives for food businesses in search of kitchen spaces, aided by a community looking to support entrepreneurs during this surprise transition. One of the most comprehensive resources is The Food Corridor (TFC), a startup with a platform where food businesses can book commercial kitchen spaces during their off hours and get support for things like health code compliance and invoice management.

Now, a new transplant is doing something similar in the Bay Area. Cookitoo is an online marketplace for unused, off-hours commercial and cloud kitchen space. Restaurants, catering companies, and private chefs can list their kitchen space for rent on the Cookitoo platform, and food entrepreneurs can surf those listings to find a space that fits their needs. Businesses can search for kitchens based on their availability, equipment, storage, location, and price.

Cookitoo was founded in 2016 in Australia under the name “Sprout,” and the startup set up shop in San Francisco last month. They officially launch in November but already have a few spaces listed on their site.

According to Cookitoo co-founder Caroline Lepron, who I spoke to over the phone, the startup differentiates itself in a few ways from TFC. Firstly, While TFC is a full-stack SaaS model, Cookitoo is more of a straight-up marketplace for kitchens. Cookito also has a slightly different focus. They chiefly list underutilized spaces with commercial kitchens — such as cafés, universities, schools, and churches — that are unused for at least part of the day. TFC mostly lists shared kitchen spots. Cookitoo is also devoting a lot of energy to cultivating cloud kitchens in particular so that new food entrepreneurs can easily expand into delivery.

Cookitoo also provides more details about each space — it lists not only the price per hour of each kitchen, but also all of the equipment and available times for any given space. TFC, on the other hand, prompts you to contact the kitchen directly to get details.

TFC charges participating kitchen spaces $179/month plus 4 percent of all transactions. Cookitoo doesn’t charge anything to list a kitchen on their space, but add a 20% commission on top of each rental booking.

The Pilotworks closure indicates how great a need there is for these sorts of flexible, shared kitchen spaces to nurture new food businesses. TFC and now Cookitoo are necessary tools to help connect budding food entrepreneurs with the space and resources they need to scale.

While Cookitoo is focusing resources on the U.S., Lepron said that they would maintain operations in Australia so as not to leave the roughly 90 kitchens in their network high and dry (cough, cough). They’re in the midst of raising a seed round which they expect to close by the end of this year.

Pilotworks Shutters Providence, RI and Portland, ME Branches

Yesterday Pilotworks, the company that is working to become the AWS of the food industry, announced that they would be closing down their shared commercial kitchens in Providence, RI and Portland, ME. A statement on the company’s website says it will shutter the Providence location on September 30th. Member food companies will have until October 5th to remove their kitchen equipment from the space.

Pilotworks will also close the Food Fork Lab, a Portland, ME-based shared kitchen space they acquired in 2016. According to the Bangor Daily News, the decision was “due to the structural layout and market dynamics in this location.”

In the same article, Pilotworks CEO Zach Ware went on to say that operating the Portland location sustainably was “not feasible long term.” Ware took the helm rather suddenly in June after Pilotworks co-founder and CEO Nick Devane stepped down. Apparently, the new CEO is tightening up operations and focusing on higher-performing locations. There’s no word yet if there will be any change to Pilotworks’ other branches in Dallas, Chicago, Brooklyn, and Newark, NJ.

Pilotworks isn’t the only player in the shared commercial kitchen space game. Colorado-based The Food Corridor is an online platform which lets growing food businesses find and rent certified commercial kitchen spaces. And Pasadena, California’s Kitchen United offers kitchen space rentals to restaurants and other companies looking to up their delivery output. (Psst — the CEO’s from both of these companies will be speaking at the Smart Kitchen Summit this October!) The shared commercial kitchen space seems to be growing rapidly — just maybe not in smaller towns like Providence and Portland.

This news is especially surprising to us at the Spoon, since we hosted a successful meetup on blue tech at Providence Pilotworks just a few weeks ago. We’ve reached out to the company and will update the post if we hear back.

Food Tech News Roundup: More Crickets, Fewer Wobbly Tables

Happy Saturday! Hopefully you’ve got some pancakes and a hot liquid of your choice. Maybe you’re recovering from the Specialty Coffee Expo, like we are (check out the robot barista and connected coffee roasters we saw!). To kick off your weekend, we’ve rounded up some quick food tech stories from the week that caught our eye. Enjoy!

Edible insects leap forward in Canada
It was a big week for edible insect company Entomo Farms. First, Maple Leaf Foods, a company best known for its plant-based meat products, took a minority stake in the company. Secondly, food distributor Loblaws launched a cricket powder made with insects from Entomo Farms. These two updates are a big step towards introducing edible bugs into the mainstream — at least in Canada, where Maple Leaf and Loblaws are based.

Grubhub adds Venmo payment option
This week food delivery service Grubhub launched an update that will allow its customers to automatically split the cost of their food with Venmo, the Paypal-like app that lets you send money to friends, and request payments. This is a (smart) way that Grubhub is adding value, trying to distinguish itself from the competitive food delivery pool. Grubhub owns Eat24 and Seamless, so they’ll also offer the Venmo payment option.

Finally! A way to fix that wobbly table
You can stop wedging sugar packets and napkins under your wobbly restaurant tables — a pair of restauranteurs have developed a hydraulics system that will keep your table wobble-free, even on uneven floors. Customers can either purchase their FLAT table bases, which use fluid to expand or compress table feet, stabilizing the table, or if they don’t want to purchase all new furniture, there’s also a modular option which can replace screw-in table feet. A low-tech solution to a highly annoying problem.

The Food Corridor releases a guide for commercial kitchen spaces
On Tuesday The Food Corridor launched their Shared Kitchen Toolkit. The Food Corridor, which raised $555K in February, is an online platform which lets budding food entrepreneurs connect to shared commercial kitchen spaces. The web-based toolkit is geared not towards startups, but towards people who want to launch and manage a commercial kitchen space. Because with more shared kitchen spaces come more startups; if you build it, they will come.

Did we miss any food tech updates from the week? Tell us in the comments, or on twitter @thespoontech.