Brenda Brown is the founder of Northern Virginia's first Food Business Incubator. They offer facilities, business training and business development assistance for food companies–bakers, caterers, restaurateurs, food trucks and food product makers. During the chat, we spoke about her background and how she got started, what her company does to support food and culinary entrepreneurs, and common pitfalls and struggles for food and culinary entrepreneurs.
Brenda used to make business plans for her friends and families. Her fifteen years of service as a government business analyst along with her husband–a chef helped them to successfully launch Frontier Kitchen–an incubator for small and medium-sized startups and entrepreneurs in the food and culinary industry.
Gems from the interview
- It's very hard to get funding for food business because it has a high failure rate. But there are really good concepts out there!
- I like teaching…it's so fun to help people with concepts to not make the same mistakes I made
- We help build the structures of the successful company… we help them get set up gearing your business towards the goals they want
- We don't teach how to cook… for us it's all about how to bring it to the market in a successful way
- What are the biggest pain points that our company help out with
- What are the things and services we do to support startups
- We held meetings to provide information on what new is going on
- Our graduates… share their experience to success and inspire new entrepreneurs
- What are the most common pitfalls for entrepreneur aside from pricing?
- Focusing only on a few frees up time of production and get into marketing and really promoting your company
- We recommend seasonal changes to keep things fresh but every other structure of your company is so important, the food is the easy part… just don't start with so many things that you cant produce all at once
- Where do you see Frontier Kitchen three to five years down the line
- Our partnership with Amazon makes us unique
- “Starting a business is scary it's very risky but for those who are inclined to do so its one of the most rewarding experiences you can have”
Frontier Kitchen Website: http://frontierkitchenva.com
Email: info@frontierkitchen.org
Phone Number: 571-494-0897