Business incubator rents out kitchens
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Sharon Kobayashi gently removed a tray full of hot oat cakes yesterday from a commercial kitchen she rents in Kalihi and, in the process, helped bring Hawai'i's underground food businesses into the open.
Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser
Kobayashi, the owner of Latitude 22, has joined 27 other small businesses that rent kitchen time from the nearly 1-year-old "Culinary Business Incubator" organized by the nonprofit Pacific Gateway Center, formerly known as the Immigrant Center.
Retired restaurateur Martin Wyss uses rented kitchen space to produce his signature salad dressing.
The 12 kitchens that the Pacific Gateway Center set up on 'Umi Street run seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and provide an honest home to small food operations that are required by law to use only certified commercial kitchens.
Demand is so high for kitchen time that the center has a waiting list with 40 names on it.
"I'm trying to do things the proper way, the way it should be," said Bernadette Benigno, a Kapiolani Community College culinary arts student whose Country Comfort Catering provides the sole source of income for herself and her two teenage daughters.
"Without having a whole lot of capital to work with in the beginning," Benigno said, "this is really good."
The Culinary Business Incubator was designed for an unknown number of low-income people who make food for profit but can't afford commercial-grade kitchens that would pass a variety of city and state health, zoning and tax laws.
Typical clients come from low-income Thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, Chinese and Filipino backgrounds, said Joy Barua, the center's business manager. The average business that uses the center's kitchen generates only $5,000 to $10,000 in annual gross sales, Barua said.
The fees to use the kitchens vary widely depending on factors such as income, length of rental agreements, the size of the kitchen and how much equipment it includes. In general, Barua said, the fees can range from $10 to $35 per hour.
Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser
"It's a real nice deal," said Thomas Lai, who prepares Auntie Xian's Cool and Spicy Salsa out of the kitchen known as K-3.
Sharon Kobayashi of Latitude 22 rents space in Kalihi for baking.
Lai's fees average about $14.25 an hour to produce a fresh salsa that's now carried in Foodland Super Markets.
"It's very accommodating and so flexible," Lai said. "There's no down payment or big expenses."
The kitchens are housed in the Pacific Gateway Center's $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 money that came through the city.
The kitchens range from 500 to 900 square feet in size and come with $300,000 worth of total equipment — from deep fryers to pots and pans.
Pacific Gateway Center officials visited similar kitchens on the Mainland and tried not to duplicate their mistakes.
They learned that Mainland kitchens need lots of storage — at least 50 percent of the building's space. So the the Kalihi center uses 60 percent of its second floor and 20 percent of its ground floor for storage.
It also offers modular storage cages that can be locked, to prevent the problem of theft that plagues Mainland kitchens, Barua said.
Clients also must sign in before entering the kitchens and are escorted around by the center's staff, Barua said.
After nearly a year, Barua and the others at the center want to make a few improvements, such as adding more freezer space and upgrading the equipment so that all 12 kitchens include ovens, fryers, griddles and ranges.
By outfitting all 12 kitchens with full equipment, the center can charge higher rates and use the money to help more people, Barua said.
Martin and Jeanie Wyss are plenty happy with the center so far.
They and their Swiss Inn Inc. salad dressing business were among the first clients to set up operations in one of the center's kitchens.
The couple, who retired from their Niu Valley Swiss Inn restaurant in 2000 when the lease ran out, now spend one day a week mixing their oil-and-vinegar-based salad dressings.
"It's terrific here," Martin said, as he blended the ingredients together. "This is just perfect."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
