Sussex County Kitchen Incubator

The Sussex County kitchen incubator is a collaborative community, providing shared kitchen space combined with business assistance to help aspiring and existing entrepreneurs build great food companies, create jobs, improve healthy food access, and strengthen our regional food economy.

The Sussex County kitchen incubator a dedicated licensed food-grade production kitchen. The true goal of our kitchen incubator is to lower the barriers to entry and to provide technical assistance and training to foodpreneurs on what they need to know. Foodpreneurs can rent by a block of time to produce food products. The space also makes it financially feasible for farmer to create value added products, small and home-based food businesses to take advantage of a professional and licensed kitchen facility to develop and grow local enterprises without the onus capital investment of their own production kitchen.

The need for a kitchen incubator in Sussex County stems from the fact that a licensed food preparation space is required by the Delaware Environmental Health Department in order to run a food business. In many cases, foodpreneurs who need a licensed kitchen do not have the capital to invest in their own commercial kitchen and cannot develop to their full potential. A licensed kitchen is expensive to develop. Most foodpreneurs are very creative and rent space from a restaurant after hours, use a church kitchen, or seek other types of licensed kitchens that may be available. Often these spaces are not ideal due to a lack of flexibility of when the space is available, limited access, expensive and a lack of equipment.