honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, February 17, 2003

Low-income food businesses get help

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

The stoves, deep-fat fryers and stainless steel tables are still sealed in plastic for now. But in a few weeks, the organizers of possibly the biggest kitchen program of its kind plan to bring in dozens of underground food operators and give them legal status.

Joy Barua and Dean Masuno of Pacific Gateway Center discuss plans for the opening of the "Culinary Business Incubator," a Kalihi kitchen facility to help low-income people get a start with their food businesses.

Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

The "Culinary Business Incubator," tucked away in Kalihi, off North King Street, was designed for an unknown number of low-income people who make food for profit without the benefit of the kinds of commercial-grade kitchens that would make their businesses legal.

Making food for sale in anything less than a certified kitchen runs against a variety of city and state regulations — from state Health Department codes to possible city zoning violations to various tax laws.

"These guys are around anyway," said Dean Masuno, economic development coordinator for the nonprofit Pacific Gateway Center, which was formerly known as the Immigrant Center. "We're saying, 'If you're going to do this, let's do it in a way that you're protected and the consumer is protected ... and the state and the economy get the money they're not getting now.'"

One dozen kitchens have been laid out inside the center's new $4 million, two-story, 20,000-square foot building that was paid for by grants from the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, McInerny Foundation, U.S. Department of Commerce and federal funding that came through the city.

The individual kitchens range in size from 500 to 900 square feet and are outfitted with a total of $300,000 worth of equipment, including pots and pans. A walk-in freezer will allow cooks to store their food in locked racks.

The kitchens will open around the end of March and eventually be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a fee that will range somewhere between $22 and $25 per hour. The fees are designed to cover the center's operating costs, insurance and personnel who will offer technical assistance.

Culinary Business Incubator
  • Location: 723 C Umi St. in Kalihi
  • Contact: Joy Barua at 845-3918
As many as 60 people can work in all of the kitchens at one time and 40 people are already waiting to get in. Kitchen space goes to whoever signs up first.

Telephones inside the kitchens are linked to a network of computers upstairs in the Pacific Gateway Center so cooks can take orders online or check accounts or billing.

Just down the hall from the kitchens, the center has a free childcare center. "We don't want people leaving their kids at home to come here," Masuno said.

Most of the people who have signed up so far come from Thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, Chinese or Filipino backgrounds, said Joy Barua, the center's business manager. They tend to run mom-and-pop operations that churn out plate lunches and pupu or cater parties on the side. Their families rely on whatever money comes in as a result, Barua said.

At the incubator, they can rent kitchen space indefinitely. But the Pacific Gateway Center also offers free training in a variety of business-related topics, from filing taxes to bookkeeping to writing a business plan.

The center also has $1 million available from the Small Business Administration and another $1 million from Bank of Hawaii to offer loans to those who want to start a business. Those who want a loan would have to go through the center's business training.

Barua believes the Pacific Gateway Center's kitchen incubator is the biggest of its kind in the country measured several ways — by square footage, number of kitchens, storage size and number of people who can be accommodated at one time.

Benton Robinson, 57, can't wait for the kitchen to open so he can make his lilikoi and strawberry li hing mui jams. He hopes to work two eight-hour shifts at night and churn out 150 8-ounce jars a week to be sold at craft fairs, small shops and the swap meet.

He's disabled because of a degenerative disc problem and his wife was recently laid off from her job at a call center. So Robinson can't afford the $60,000 to $70,000 he figures he needs to start a commercial kitchen.

But he's looking forward to generating a potential $4,000 to $5,000 per month in jam sales.

Since he has been taking classes through the center, Robinson has just begun to learn that there's more to running a jam business than coming up with a recipe.

"Besides an approved kitchen, you need liability insurance, you need to have labels approved by the state for everything from the height of the lettering to the location," Robinson said. "But I'm anxious to get started."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.