Union Kitchen is a food and beveragebusiness accelerator in DC. They build CPG brands through manufacturing infrastructure which includes a commercial kitchen, retail stores, and distribution. Since starting in 2012, they’ve worked with over 650 food businesses, such as Compass Coffee, Snacklins, Eat Pizza, Swapples.
History
Union Kitchen was founded by the owners of Blind Dog Café, a coffee shop pop-up located in Darnell's Bar, after they found a dearth of commercial kitchen space available for rent in Washington, DC. The original space was a 7,300 square foot kitchen located in the NoMa neighborhood of northeast Washington, D.C. For a time period, Union Kitchen also housed several artist studios that provided branding, illustrating, and web design services for the members. In 2013, Union Kitchen started a distribution company in order to help member businesses deliver in the DC area. In 2015 Union Kitchen opened their first retail store, Union Kitchen, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Also in 2015 the production facility was moved from the NoMa neighborhood to the current location in Ivy City. In 2017, a second Union Kitchen store opened in Northwest DC adjacent to the Washington Convention Center and a third in 2018. The most recent store opened on December 2019 on K street in the Washington Post building. Stores are currently planned for Balston, Virginia and Navy Yard with ten stores planned for the next five years.
Accelerator Program
Union Kitchen partners with food and beverage businesses to help them create a cohesive concept, bring it to shelves, overcome roadblocks, and scale regionally and nationally. The Union Kitchen Accelerator requires a multi-step application where entrepreneurs complete several rounds of interviews with the UK team, a detailed assessment on the entrepreneur's current business model and future plans, and a formal pitch, “Shark Tank” style. The Union Kitchen team is especially interested in entrepreneurs that are passionate, coachable, dependable, supportive, and engaged. Once accepted to the Accelerator program, an entrepreneur joins their cohort in an intensive, 48-hour concept weekend where the Union Kitchen team coaches the businesses through a tailored curriculum that insists on excellence. Over the next eight weeks, the entrepreneur works through the technical elements of launching, guided by the expertise of the Union Kitchen team. From there, Union Kitchen helps entrepreneurs refine their concept and saturate the local market before scaling regionally and nationally. Notable businesses that have launched through the accelerator program include Snacklins, which successfully negotiated an investment from Mark Cuban on Shark Tank in 2019 and M'Panadas which scaled to national distribution with Sysco Foods.
Kitchen Membership
Food and beverage businesses can also apply to Union Kitchen for Kitchen Membership. Kitchen Members pay a monthly fee for use of the commercial kitchen, co-working space, Internet, and printers. They are given access to a curated dashboard of online resources created by the Union Kitchen team, that creates a road map for creating a successful food business. The commercial kitchen space has both communal working areas with shared kitchen equipment and specifically allocated areas where businesses can bring their own equipment and retain the right of access.
