Philadelphia is a true foodie city — famous for fine cuisine, top-name chefs, a strong hospitality sector, and an impressive array of farmer’s markets, urban farms, and sustainable culinary businesses. The city and region play a central role in supporting Pennsylvania’s robust agricultural industry. The Enterprise Center CDC plans to connect this powerful regional food economy to the emerging green jobs sector, creating employment and building healthy communities through a new initiative: The Center for Culinary Enterprises (CCE).
The CCE will transform a long-vacant West Philadelphia grocery store building into a state-of-the-art 13,000+ square-foot complex, offering an array of resources and programming for emerging food entrepreneurs. Multiple components create a comprehensive vision: three shared-use commercial kitchens, a training restaurant for community youth, two retail spaces for local businesses, a multi-media learning center called the eKitchen, and a nearby urban farm. It will be a sustainable facility, LEED certified, growing much of its produce from community-based urban agriculture.
Local business and institutional partners will provide educational programming, focusing on entrepreneurs in all stages of business development, across multiple food industries. Our clients will have a dynamic learning environment, where digital technology will link them with world experts, and an electronic library of food and business resources. This results-oriented project will create 130 new permanent jobs within 24 months, training over 100 youth per year in restaurant management, increasing productivity for existing food businesses, and fostering 20 new food ventures yearly.
The need for the project is clear. Philadelphia faces substantial poverty and unemployment. A significant number of Philadelphians run informal food businesses out of their homes, such as baking cakes or catering parties. However, these entrepreneurs lack access to commercial kitchens, business training and start-up capital, which are persistent impediments to building legitimate and successful enterprises. Many other individuals who would like to get started in the food industry lack basic business development skills and an understanding of how to run culinary enterprises. The CCE will provide the right mix of facilities and programs to overcome these barriers.
As Philadelphia continues its transition to a service-based economy, food entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly important. Neighborhoods across Philadelphia demonstrate substantial unmet market demand for full-service restaurants, produce markets, and other food businesses. Local food enterprises are a critical link in building a sustainable food system, with affordable, healthy, local food access. The goal of the CCE is to train entrepreneurs in all stages of the food cycle — from urban farming to food processing, retail, distribution, and hospitality. The businesses emerging from the CCE will be sustainable businesses.
The CCE will be an engine for green job creation, tapping into one of Philadelphia’s most exciting and robust employment sectors. It will empower residents in disadvantaged communities, provide valuable resources for entrepreneurs, and strengthen access to local food production. With an emphasis on healthy, affordable, local food access, the CCE will contribute to growing regional efforts to build sustainable food systems and bring nutritious food options within walking distance of all Philadelphians.
Now that’s a tasty solution!