Campus kitchen helps small food production businesses
Local chefs and bakers looking to sell their products in grocery stores, restaurants or across state lines can now use a kitchen facility known as the Incubator Kitchen, offered at USU, instead of waiting to obtain a professional-grade kitchen of their own.
Assistant professor and extension food quality and entrepreneurship specialist Karin Allen said people can produce and sell food products out of their home if they meet certain requirements, called the Cottage Food Rule. The incubator kitchen allows people who do not meet the home requirements, or who want to sell to a larger market than allowed under the rule, produce and sell food.
“It allows them to sell it at grocery stores, to restaurants and also they can sell it across state lines,” Allen said. “It gives them a little more opportunity to let their business grow than just trying to sell at a farmers market or a craft fair.”
Allen said the kitchen has been certified through the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food. She said the kitchen allows businesses to produce most — but not all — food items.
“Any food that would be approved for a Cottage license, there’s no problem making those kinds of foods in this kitchen,” Allen said. “It’s not as open as a commercial kitchen would be, where any food product basically could be made.”
Allen said recipes are evaluated and approved on a case-by-case basis. She said meat products are never approved for the kitchen.
Allen said the Incubator Kitchen, located in the Family Life Building, uses equipment no longer in use by university programs.
“We have a lot of equipment that really was left over from the culinary arts program when that was being taught,” Allen said. “It wasn’t being used. The kitchens were being used, but some of the equipment wasn’t.”
Allen said the kitchen contains, seven electric stoves, four gas stoves, nine 5-quart Viking mixers and 10 professional-series food processors. She said they also have basic equipment like pots and pans available for use.
Extension Food Safety Specialist Brian Nummer said they also have an Innovation Kitchen for food research and development. He said the Innovation Kitchen is primarily used to make sure a recipe is safe before it is commercially produced. For example, Nummer said, products like salsa need to have a certain amount of acid to prevent disease.
“They can develop it, they can use whatever resources we have, but once it gets to the point where they’re ready to start selling the product, then they have to use the other kitchen,” Nummer said.
Allen said the Innovation Kitchen has also been used to make food for people with certain food allergies. She said the easy-to-clean stainless steel tables help keep food from becoming contaminated with allergens from other recipes.
Nummer said business owners don’t have to pay to use the Innovation Kitchen. The Incubator Kitchen charges businesses after six months, Allen said, and the price to use the kitchen is decided on a case-by-case basis.
“I don’t charge for the first six months, because I really want this to be an opportunity for people to get their foot in the door and have that time to make their product, try to sell it and see if it’s something that really is going to work for them or not,” Allen said.
Allen said she has had six businesses use the kitchen since she started it last fall. Bees Brothers, a local family business run by the Huntzinger family, has been making honey caramels in the Incubator Kitchen for about a year, said Kami Huntzinger from Bees Brothers.
“It definitely meets the needs for a small business,” Huntzinger said. “In order for our business to grow we needed to be able to do research at a dedicated kitchen to be able to sell our products out of state.”
Huntzinger said her family wanted to sell its caramels online, but the Cottage Rule doesn’t allow products made inside a home to be shipped across state lines.
Allen said businesses hoping to use the kitchens need to have a food handlers permit, a business license and a full list of recipes and ingredients to be reviewed and approved by the state inspector.
– chris.w.lee@aggiemail.usu.edu