Food Entrepreneurship
Food entrepreneurship is an important aspect of microenterprise development. It provides new job opportunities to people who pursue a business in the food sector, such as catering, gourmet or specialty food and a restaurant. Entrepreneurs in the food sector face numerous challenges, including high costs for commercial grade equipment, strict FDA regulations, and lack of storage space for their products. A number of shared-use commercial kitchens and microenterprise development programs have services specifically designed for food entrepreneurs to address these issues.
Many shared-use commercial kitchens - also known as kitchen incubators - play an integral role in driving local economic development. These kitchens enable entrepreneurs to access production facilities and an opportunity to start and grow a business without facing prohibitive costs associated with owning their own commercial kitchen. Many kitchen incubators also provide business training, access to capital and technical assistance to entrepreneurs.
The Program Guide highlights activities and trends among microenterprise development and other entrepreneur support programs in the US working with food entrepreneurs. To access the guide,
click here.
Are you a business owner (or aspiring business owner) looking for assistance with your food-related business? Use the Program Guide to find an organization near you that may be able to assist with your business.
Glossary of Terms
Want to learn more about shared-use commercial kitchens and food entrepreneurship? Click the icon to download a list of common terms.
Resources
AEO's Food Sector Learning Clusters during 2001 - 2005 yielded valuable information for those working with microentrepreneurs in the food sector. To learn more about the resources available from the Learning Cluster,
click here.
Foodnet listservNational Foodnet is an electronic mailing list or listserv where community-based organizations, microenterprise development programs, kitchen incubators and food industry professionals share information and resources related to assisting food businesses. Past electronic conferences have focused on topics including kitchen incubators, marketing, and working with brokers, and feature key experts in the field. To join the listserv, click here.
Note: the listserv is intended for programs assisting entrepreneurs in the food sector; not for individuals seeking to start or grow their business.
