The Food Corridor

06/17/2026

Every month, Shared Kitchen Connect delivers industry news, expert interviews, free tools, and real stories from kitchens across the country. Swipe to see what's inside. 👉⁠
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Subscribe → link in bio.⁠
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06/15/2026

Christine can still recite the Butterfinger recipe from memory. 🍫

With a master's degree in food science, she spent years developing products for some of the world's largest food companies, including Nestlé and ConAgra.

But over time, she found herself asking a difficult question:
Was she helping create the kind of food she actually wanted to feed her own family?

That question eventually led her to Local Roots Market & Café in Wooster, Ohio.

Part local food co-op, part rotating-chef café, and part shared-use commercial kitchen, Local Roots helps food entrepreneurs test concepts, build customer bases, and grow sustainable businesses. Companies like Woo Town Bagels got their start there before eventually moving into their own facilities.

Today, Christine helps support that ecosystem, connecting local farmers, food entrepreneurs, and consumers while creating new opportunities for fresh, locally produced food to reach the community.

In our latest Kitchen Spotlight, we share Christine's journey from corporate food science to community food systems, and explore how Local Roots is helping strengthen Northeast Ohio's local food economy.

Read the full story: https://www.thefoodcorridor.com/blog/why-a-former-nestle-food-scientist-chose-local-roots/

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Discover how Local Roots' shared kitchen in Wooster, Ohio is on a mission to create healthy food that families can trust.

06/09/2026

October is getting closer and the agenda keeps getting stronger. 🗓️

Swipe to meet the latest sessions just added to the lineup:

→ Balancing Purpose & Revenue with John Vadnais & Sally Aguilar — what it actually takes to keep a kitchen financially viable without losing sight of the community it was built for

→ Aisle to Incubator with Zachary Paige — early lessons from running a shared kitchen inside a grocery co-op in rural Minnesota

→ From Recipe to Reality with Sherie Theriault, Nick Schonberger, Mark Holland, Abel Aguilar Jr., & Casey Steele — a panel of operators and consultants examining what it takes to move food entrepreneurs from idea to sustainable business, across nonprofit and for-profit models

06/02/2026

What makes a shared kitchen marketable? According to Erika Tebbens of , it starts with story.

Last month on Whisked, Ashley sat down with Erika — Director of Impact at a marketing agency supporting purpose-driven food and farm businesses since 2004 — to talk about what strong marketing really looks like for shared kitchens and the food entrepreneurs inside them.

The big takeaway? Storytelling isn’t a branding add-on. It’s the foundation everything else is built on — your website, your member communications, all of it.

Plus, Ashley shared early data from TFC’s Food Business Survey that makes the case for your kitchen’s community impact loud and clear:

🌱 64% of food entrepreneurs in shared kitchens source from local farms
💰 $2.9M in direct local food spending reported in just the last 12 months

Your kitchen is doing meaningful work. Let’s make sure people know it.

▶️ Watch the full conversation — https://www.kitchenedu.com/on-demand

05/28/2026

The 2026 Shared Kitchen Summit agenda keeps growing. 📋

Swipe to meet four new sessions just added to the lineup:

→ The CEO Shift — The kitchen is running, but is the business growing? Deb Oxman helps operators make the leap from daily manager to strategic CEO — with the systems and team structure to prove it.

→ Small Market, Big Impact — Urban models don’t account for everything. Yonatan Weinberg and R. Valentino Zubia bring on-the-ground experience supporting shared kitchen development in rural and small city communities across California.

→ From Idea to Pre-Development — Peter Fliri is in the middle of building a nonprofit shared kitchen in Connecticut and he’s not waiting until it’s finished to share what he’s learned. The honest early-stage perspective you won’t find in the success stories.

→ The Backpedal That Built Trust — Abby Herman changed the pricing at NoCo Community Kitchen when she had no predecessor, no kitchen experience, and a member base that knew the place better than she did. Here’s what happened.

These sessions + more await in Providence this October. Tickets are going fast — link in bio.

05/27/2026

🎊 Announcing our 2026 Food Business Survey gift card winners!⁠
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We asked food businesses across the country to share their story — and over 1,000 did. Today we're celebrating three of them.⁠
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🏆 — Goldfinch Chef Services, a personal chef business serving the DC metro out of in Arlington, VA.⁠
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🏆 — Domestikated Biscuits, handmade biscuits and scones out of in Spokane, WA.⁠
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🏆 .plus — Tamales Plus, a homemade tamales food truck serving the Aurora/Naperville/Chicago metro out of ⁠
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Congratulations to Kathy, Paula, and Kate — and thank you to every food entrepreneur who took the time to participate. Your voices are shaping what comes next for shared kitchens across the country.⁠
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A huge thank you as well to the shared kitchens who spread the word and shared the survey with their members — this research wouldn't be possible without you.⁠
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Full results coming soon. 🔗 Link in bio to get your tickets to the Shared Kitchen Summit.⁠
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05/22/2026

The May issue of Shared Kitchen Connect is out. 📬⁠
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This month we're unpacking the results of the 2026 Food Business Survey — 1,028 responses from 52 states and provinces across 417+ distinct kitchens. The data on why members choose shared kitchens (and what that means for how you tell your story) is worth a read.⁠
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We also sat down with Erika Tebbens of on Whisked to talk about what strong marketing actually looks like for shared kitchens and the food businesses inside them.⁠
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Plus: the Shared Kitchen Summit has big updates, KitchenEDU Bundles are here, and there's a free Member Retention Check-In Guide with your name on it.⁠
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Not subscribed yet? 👉 Link in bio to join. ⁠
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05/18/2026

New sessions just added to the 2026 Shared Kitchen Summit agenda. 🎉

Co-packing support. Conflict resolution. Operator growing pains. Kitchen development from the ground up. The 2026 agenda is shaping up.

More sessions are still being announced. See the full agenda at sharedkitchensummit.com.

🎟️ Tickets are limited — link in bio.

05/11/2026

Finding the right people is hard. Keeping them? That’s where the real work starts. 🙌

At our latest Ask the Operators panel, Jan Tusick of Mission West Community Development Partners and Andrea Abedi of The Kitchen Table Santa Fe shared how they approach staffing in a shared kitchen — from finding the right fit to training staff so thoroughly they understand the why behind every process.

Because when your team gets it, your members feel it.

Missed the live session? Watch the full recording 👉 https://www.kitchenedu.com/on-demand

05/08/2026

🏆 The 2026 Food Business Survey leaderboard is LIVE — and these kitchens are leading the pack.

Shoutout to our top 10 for getting their members to weigh in:

1. Fork Food Lab— 22
2. Piedmont Food Processing Center - PFPC — 17
3. Carolina Commercial Kitchen — 16
4. The Hatchery Chicago — 15
5. Worcester Regional Food Hub — 14
6. CoMo Cooks — 13
7. Hope & Main — 12
8. Leaven: a collaborative kitchen and resource center — 12
9. Magic Cookery — 10
10. Nimbus — 10

Is your kitchen on the board? There’s still time — share the survey with your food business members and climb the ranks before we close. 👇

https://colostate.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e8P6MoBnf0w1BUW