Need a Commercial Kitchen? Here’s Where to Find Them & How to Create Your Own

Ever had a farmer drop off boxes of surplus produce and have to figure out what to do with them? Gabe Gardner has. 

When he was lead instructor at Central Arizona College's Culinary Arts Program, a local farmer dropped off crates of extra kohlrabi hoping that Gardner could use them. Instead of letting the fresh produce go to waste, because Gardner has access to a commercial kitchen, his students were able to transform the turnip-looking vegetable into a creamy au gratin dish and a zesty pickled relish, which they later served at a fundraising dinner and sold at a farmers market.

Gardner is now the Director of Food Entrepreneurship at Local First Arizona and works with food entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses by providing access to Local First Arizona’s community commercial kitchens. He understands how valuable having access to a commercial kitchen is for turning farm surplus food into highly profitable value-added products and for helping food businesses expand and develop creative food products that consumers are quick to purchase

“Many home-based food businesses are unable to expand beyond a certain size without access to a commercial kitchen. Eventually a small home kitchen runs into the issues of where they are going to store all of their inventory or needing the right size of industrial equipment to do things properly,” explains Gardner. “They also need to be in compliance with food business certifications and requirements, such as the Arizona Cottage Food Law,” he adds.

Commercial kitchens can be expensive to build from scratch or costly if paying by the hour to use. To remove these barriers, Local First Arizona and other organizations are creating ways to make commercial kitchens more affordable, accessible, and commonplace so food producers and entrepreneurs can build successful businesses. 

Local First Arizona’s Community Kitchens

Local First Arizona currently operates four Community Kitchens located in downtown Mesa, South Phoenix, Maryvale, and Eastlake. The kitchens are available to food entrepreneurs who are looking to start or grow their business and need a low-cost, fully-equipped and licensed space for small and large food operations. While most commercial kitchens charge around $40/hour to use the space, the Community Kitchens only cost $8/hour. They are also open from 6am-10pm most days of the week, so they are widely available to use. 

One local farm, Al Hamka Farm, uses the South Phoenix Community Kitchen at the G. Benjamin Brook’s Academy to make items like hummus, dips, and baba ganoush from their farm-grown eggplants and vegetables, which they sell at the Downtown Phoenix Farmers Market. Gardner is hoping to partner with more local growers to offer them a space to create value-added products, often the most profitable items for a food producer.

Along with more affordable hourly rates and extended hours of operation, the Community Kitchens offer large walk-in refrigerators, food storage areas, dedicated wash stations, convection ovens, gas stoves and grills, prep rooms, utensils and pots/pans, Wi-Fi, commercial equipment, and a hub of support for burgeoning food businesses. That’s not all the kitchens offer. 

“Our four Community Kitchens are not only a spring board for food businesses; they also provide benefits to the surrounding community such as providing child nutrition and gardening classes, food pantry programs, cooking classes, community dinners, and outreach,” says Gardner. “The kitchens show how to build community around food.”

People can gain access to the Community Kitchens by joining the food business incubator program. The two-year incubator program is designed to make sure a food business is set up for success: scaling and growing at the rate needed to build a solid foundation, making critical industry connections, establishing the processes that work for the business, and understanding the financial aspects of operating a successful business. 

The first step towards the program is enrolling in the six-week Good Food Boot Camp, which is offered six times each year. Four of the Boot Camps are conducted in English and held virtually, while the two in Spanish meet in person. Good Food Boot Camps cover everything from permitting and purchasing to financing, taxes, and day-to-day operations.

Interviews to join the Kitchen Incubator Program are held four times each year. Those interested or wanting more information about the Community Kitchens can submit a kitchen interest form. 

Other Commercial Kitchens

In South Tucson, the Pima County Cooperative Extension offers a program called The Garden Kitchen with an onsite commercial kitchen. It is free and open to farmers and community members who are interested in doing value-added products and need a commercial kitchen to do so, provided they meet eligibility requirements. These requirements include that a portion of the items made in the kitchen must be sold in Pima County and open to people using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits or other government nutrition assistance programs. Kitchen users must also have a limited food manufacturers license and be a certified food protection manager, both of which can be obtained through Pima County. The Garden Kitchen commercial kitchen partners with the University of Arizona Nutritional Sciences Department for food analysis and is able to make nutrition labels for the products created in the kitchen. Those interested can contact Merdith Glaubach at mglaubach@arizona.edu.

A general internet search for commercial kitchens will provide more listings of shared commercial kitchen spaces (like here and here), but getting creative with finding a place is also key. Is there a restaurant you work with or frequent? Perhaps that kitchen would be open to  renting out the space during off hours or days. Or, is there a closed down restaurant with a kitchen in it in your area?

Yavapai cattle rancher Tim Petersen, wanting to find a way to create value-added products from byproducts of processing his own cattle, found a small space in Camp Verde that had once been a restaurant, complete with a kitchen. Here, his small-batch, handcrafted beef bone broth business was born. Petersen eventually purchased the kitchen and remodeled it to meet USDA standards, enabling him to sell the hundreds of gallons of bone broth the kitchen makes each week to consumers across the country.

Prescott Farmers Market opened their own Community Kitchen by working with Local First Arizona to establish a space built and designed after their successful model. The NoCo Community Kitchen is located in downtown Prescott and is a hub for all the activities and processing needed for growers, producers, and food entrepreneurs in the Verde Valley.

Gardner points out that there are often unrealized opportunities in finding commercial kitchens: “Communities can often have some underutilized assets. Our Maryvale Community Kitchen came about because Rio Salado Community College had a culinary arts kitchen that they weren’t using anymore. Talk to your local Veteran of Foreign War halls, churches, schools and see if they have any unused space. Some places have licensed commercial kitchens, and they sit vacant a lot of the time.” It’s possible to find a commercial kitchen that is accessible and meets your needs, but it often requires legwork and creativity. 

Refurbishing a Commercial Kitchen

Some food businesses require specialized equipment like stone ovens for baking bread or large conveyors for cooling tortillas, and a shared-used commercial kitchen may not be possible. In rural areas, commercial kitchen options might also be limited or nonexistent. In these cases, owning and operating a commercial kitchen may be a better route. 

Commercial kitchens have specific requirements to ensure they meet health and safety standards and to optimize their functionality for efficient food preparation and service. The requirements may vary depending on the location and specific regulations. A commercial kitchen resource guide, such as this one, is a great place to learn about which ones apply to you. 

While at Local First Arizona, Gardner has helped refurbish three of the four available Community Kitchens. From that experience, he’s learned many things and offers some helpful tips to make the process go smoother. 

“Refurbishing an existing kitchen is definitely easier and less costly than building one from the ground up. Some things to focus on are: plumbing, the fire suppression system, and the ventilation and exhaust system. For plumbing, make sure you have a commercial plumber come out to look before signing a contract. Have the person take a look at the grease trap and interceptor to prevent grease from entering the water systems. Also, make sure to find a fire suppression company; do a system check and look at the last time it was green tagged. It has to be repressurized every five years.” 

For the ventilation and exhaust system, Gardner points out that it may not be needed if it's only an electrical operation and gas and an exhaust hood aren’t required. But if it is necessary, he says, “locate a restaurant exhaust cleaning company and do a system check.”

Gardner also encourages requesting the county to do a free facility check prior to the formal permitting process. The inspector will often point out recommendations and suggestions for what areas need to be brought up to code. Permitting for commercial kitchens is done through county environmental services departments. 

Once a commercial kitchen is operational, there are ways to help cover the costs of running one. If you have the proper equipment, inspection requirements, and capacity, some kitchens co-pack, or contract pack as a third-party manufacturer for another commercial company. Another way to reduce expenses is to turn it into a shared commercial kitchen space and rent some of the space to other food businesses or producers. 

Commercial kitchens are a valuable asset for communities and food businesses. Gardner suggests, “If you do find one and have the capacity, bring in others to use it, too.” 

Do You Know About the Value-Added Producer Grant? 

The Value-Added Producer Grant Program (VAPG), administered by the Rural Business-Cooperative Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, assists agricultural producers to create new value-added products, expand marketing opportunities, and increase producer income. Through a competitive grant process, individual or groups of producers, producer-controlled entities, and farmer or rancher cooperatives can apply for the funding to create or develop value-added, producer-owned businesses.

The VAPG includes planning grants and working capital grants, which can help pay for eligible expenses related to the processing and/or marketing of value-added products. The grant cycle typically opens at the beginning of each year, and applicants have 60 to 90 days to complete and submit their application. 

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Danielle Corral