tasteMAKERS

tasteMAKERS was funded in part by... (gentle piano music) -

Woman

What does a craftsperson look like? Is it this? Or this? Or is it this?

Is it possible a craftsperson might also look like this? Edward Jones salutes the makers who share their expertise and take pride in their craft. (upbeat music) In this episode you're gonna meet a bunch of makers, each creating something entirely unique but tied together here at Union Kitchen, a food accelerator in Washington DC that is fostering success through partnership, community, and support. (inspirational music) I'm Cat Neville and for the past two decades I've been telling the story of local food.

In that time American food culture has exploded in tiny towns and big cities from coast to coast. In Taste Makers I explore the maker movement and take you along for the journey to meet the makers who define the flavor of American Cuisine. In this episode of Taste Makers come along with me to Washington, DC to meet Union Kitchen's Cullen Gilchrist who is working to help launch and nurture culinary start-ups. He offers business advice, distribution services, a communal kitchen, and even a string of grocery stores to help ensure their success.

(gentle guitar music) I played sports in high school, loved sports, played football in college. And loved the idea of being involved in something that was so tangible. It was real, you could like touch. And so when I was trying to get a job out of school I looked at the finance industry, I worked in some stuff there, did some other random things and just food was drawing me.

So, I just decided to just give it a run and start working in food. Alongside of that my sister started making her cookies. Chocolate chip cookies. These like chocolate disks in it, full of butter, and just like the best cookie you've ever had.

And so, we decided that hey, we wanna grow this business and everyone was asking for more cookies, we couldn't make more cookies 'cause we were too small so we started looking for a kitchen. And, we were talking to our friends that were at farmers markets, and they were all like yeah we don't know we work in a restaurant after they close or you know, actually we just do this at home don't tell anyone, ya know. So, through that process, we realized that hey we could actually get a kitchen and we could share it. and so that was the beginning of Union Kitchen.

We got a kitchen and we put my sister in it and we started making cookies and we started sharing it with our friends. We wanted to do it in a way that kept everyone engaged and near each other. Just an open environment. Building a community around it, a community of respect and collaboration and supporting the growth of food businesses through that.

So our building is 70,000 square feet in the Ivy City neighborhood of Washington, DC and what we wanted to create when we built this was a place where the energy and the passion of entrepreneurship and food just came to life. Where you could feel it the moment you walked in. So whether it was you coming in every day to run your business, or it was a guest visiting to learn about it, or it was someone who was thinking about a food business that they would come in and just be swept up in kinda the the energy of business is happening and food is everywhere and it's like really cool. Cullen saw a need to help small batch businesses not only launch but also survive.

Just because you have a great recipe or an idea for a product doesn't mean you actually know how to run a business so he makes commercial kitchen space available along with a host of business support. We started to realize that this is cool these people are doing this but, they're going to fail, and they're going to fail because we can see it. We can see they're running out of money. We can see they're running out of energy.

The passion gets you this far but not over the hill. And so, what we've done, was start solving problems that are the reasons people fail, the reasons people close their business. So, we have the kitchen, right, and we have our distribution, and we have our stores. Those are tools that we're using to build businesses that are gonna accelerate and be successful.

So Union Kitchen is a food business accelerator. We're bringing companies in, aligning with them long term and we become their partner. And so what that means is, well yeah, people can come and use our kitchen, and they can learn to manufacture. They can use our warehouse and our trucks to deliver food all over and our stores to show off who they are and compete against the national brands.

But we also get to work on design, get to work on strategy, we get to work on your mission, you know like why are you doing this? And those are conversations that we think actually are going to get these companies beyond just surviving, to finding success. So we're standing on the second floor of the building here at Union Kitchen and of course I'm here with founder Cullen, and, there's obviously kind of a, an area for people to have lunch. Kind of like lockers where people can store their stuff and you've made it so that people can kind of just decide on their own to come and go as it feels comfortable for them.

We want to make sure people can be here 24/7 seven, short of sleeping here. That's what cars are for, right? We want them to have no disincentive to work more. Because that's, many times, the difference between a good and a not good business, or success or not success is, putting the time in and so our whole setup is about making it as easy as possible for them to run as good of a business as possible and lower their barriered entry for money and capital the whole time through.

Awesome, so you gonna show me around? Yeah. (smooth jazz music) So, right now, we're standing in our main production area and this is our shared space. This is where people get started.

And then we have different spaces throughout our kitchen for people to grow into that kind of fit where they're at better. -

Cat

So when people come on board with you-- -

Cullen

Yeah. They're not just getting a kitchen space though they're getting a relationship with you and with your team. Yeah. That helps them not only learn how to cook their product but it's also about branding and business models.

All the things. And learning about accounting and all the things that actually are the backbone of a good business not just being a good cook with a great recipe. Yeah there's a million things that you don't know about that are hard. -

Cat

Yeah. And so, we're gonna help figure out all those things from that perspective and that's really where our accelerator comes to play where we're delivering a network and experience and expertise. And then the kitchen is where all those things become real. Yeah.

They get to come and they make it and then we get to eat it and we say hey great idea, it doesn't taste good, let's try again. So, I mean, I know that this kind of like came out of your own need for a kitchen space. Yeah. 'Cause of your sister's fabulous cookies but, beyond that, I mean, what do you get out of this?

What does Washington, DC get out of what you've created? Small businesses and food businesses in particular, they're the builders of our community. I mean when you walk down a street in a place that you like it's the small businesses that set that culture, they set that community. So we've worked with 500 companies in the seven years we've been open and they're creating jobs, they're creating store fronts, they're creating products, they're creating revenue, and money, and wealth.

Yeah. All in ways that are making a vibrant city that are making a diverse city, and frankly, making an interesting place to be. And so that's fun and exciting for me and that's what we wanna be able to create. Yeah, so we're gonna be able to meet some of your-- Yeah.

- Makers today right? And eat some food, hope you're hungry. Ooh that's my favorite part. (Smooth music) -

Cullen

So Cat, this is Manny. Manny runs a company called Para Hita. Hey Manny. - Hey how you doing?

Nice to meet you. Manny, you too, nice to meet you. So tell me about what you're doing. So today I'm doing research and development for a new product coming out next month.

It's gonna be our Honey Barbecue Finna'denne' wings and so, what it is, I'm taking my traditional hot sauce of Guam. It's a soy sauce base and I'm mixing it with a little bit of honey for sweetness and then I formed a glaze over it. So you mentioned Guam. Yeah Guam, born and raised, yes ma'am.

And so, are these flavors pretty authentic to Guam? Yeah absolutely. Or is it your own spin on it? Kinda tell me about that.

So the soy sauce, the finna'denne', is the traditional sauce of Guam. I add honey to make it more my flavor and to kinda bridge the gap between Guam and Mainlanders. Sure. - Here on the state side.

Yeah. So, it kind of makes it more familiar while still being unique. -

Cat

Can we taste this? Yeah. - Absolutely. So that's when we talk a lot about, with Manny, and with everyone it's like hey you like you have this thing you care about.

Mmm-hmm. And it's Guam. The customers don't. How do you connect the two?

Right. And still make it authentic to your story? Absolutely. And so for him it's figuring out well what's delicious 'cause everyone connects with delicious.

Yes, they do. And then you can tell your story through that. -

Manny

Yeah, absolutely. We get to eat it. - All right. Oh my God.

We have a wing eating contest right now. Yeah that's delicious. -

Manny

Yeah? Thank you, thank you. All right, well let's keep going. So this is one of our rooms for our businesses that are growing and scaling and doing some cool stuff.

These guys just got some enormous things coming down the road. They needed space and we just sat down and were like you guys need a lot of space and you need it now and you're making ice cream let's find out the best place, and this room was it. And the name of your company is Milk Cult? -

Ed

Yes, that's correct. I love it. Thanks, we were one of the first companies to move in with Union Kitchen six years ago. Oh wow, so and now you're about to go national?

Yeah. And so, is it the ice cream sandwiches that are going national? -

Ed

Yes, the ice cream sandwiches. So tell me about them. -

Ed

We make everything from scratch. We have an avocado ice cream sandwich. Oh, cool. So it's a vegan avocado ice cream, with a chocolate wafer cookie.

Nice. -

Ed

The main one that we sell is just a regular vanilla ice cream on a chocolate chip cookie. -

Cat

Awesome, can we try that ice cream sandwich-- Yeah, of course. - That's sitting over there? Okay. - Yeah all right.

Can we dig in? - Yeah, let's go. Yeah you nailed it. This is good.

-

Ed

Thanks. -

Cat

Sweet success. (upbeat music) This is Dave of Lord of the Pies. Hi Dave. - Hi there.

Great name. -

Cat

I guess you are Lord of the Pies. I am. - Look at all these pies. -

Dave

I love pie. It smells like Heaven in here. And we're gonna eat at least one of these just face first. Are ya?

- That's part of the tour. Pie eating contest, I think I'm going to win the pie eating contest so. Okay. -

Cat

So how did you get into the pie business? I love pie, I've always loved pie. I made my first pie in third grade for a school bake sale and everybody loved it, I loved it so that was the thing I felt, strongly enough about to really make a go at it. I see that you obviously have whole pies, but then, you have packaged goods too?

Right, this is a grab and go snack. It's two little pies in each one of those. We were working with Dave like a year ago and just being like what? Like, how does Dave go from, I mean he made a lot of pies, a couple hundred thousand pies at this point.

Wow. - Probably, yeah. But, you know, it's a seasonal business and how do you turn it into millions of pies? Right.

Started thinking about when do people eat? How you get pies into the snacking category? Right. And so Dave figured out making these awesome little cheesecakes and key lime pies.

It's been doing really well and it's been fun working with the Union Kitchen team. Awesome. (jazzy music) We've got all sorts of businesses, and we're outside, and we got food trucks. Yeah.

- And so Jesse Hi. - Hey. Is one of the founders of Swizzler. Nice to meet you.

- Thank you. So we started out at Union kitchen, I don't know, five and a half years ago at this point. It was a while ago. With our original food truck we're doing gourmet grass fed beef hot dogs and hand cut fries.

We spiral cut them and they're really unique and different. Nice. So it took us about two or three years to kind of get our legs under us and really understand the food industry in DC and what was important to us and what we were doing that was working. Yeah, well without the support of this community and the incubator that was here, do you think that you'd be in the same spot?

Absolutely not. Just in the last year and a half seen so many leaps and strides and a lot of that's coming from getting mentorship and experience from businesses that are in very similar situations or a little bit ahead of us. We're now happy to be able to provide the mentorship for new businesses but also still continue learning and finding ways we can push the envelope as well. Very cool.

One of the things that makes the Union Kitchen ecosystem so unique is that it offers distribution to the makers who are part of its program. You just can't get something sold in grocery stores across America 'cause you want to, or because it's a cute idea. Or it's because it's something that you think is missing. There's a heck of a lot of business to it, there's a heck of a lot of relationships.

So we realized that we had to be the first person to buy and sell and distribute their product. So we started a distribution company. We have trucks, we have a warehouse, we buy lots of food, and then we go out and we broker and sell that food into retailers throughout the region. Whole Foods is a fantastic partner of ours.

We have a handful of other local partners in the area. And so we launch them from our ecosystem into this larger infrastructure that already exists. A trio of stores rounds out the Union Kitchen platform allowing these small locally made products to take shelf space next to the big national brands. For many of our members this is the first shelf that they're on, this is where they get the feedback from the customers and actually get to have those interactions where they learn how people are using their product, what people like about their product, what they want more of, what they want less of, and they can really iterate and fine tune what they're making so that they can make things that people want.

We ask customers questions all the time. Why are you buying this water versus that water? What is it you look for in an ice cream? So that we can pass along those lessons we're hearing from our customers to our members and that's really the value of what we're doing here.

(rhythmic beat) Vegan pork rinds sound like a joke right? Well that's exactly how Snacklins got started and now these crispy chips are available on shelves across the country from Walmart to Whole Foods. One day I was like hey man I got this really funny joke, like, I'm a Muslim and I wanna make a vegan pork rind LOL, right? And so we made this crunchy puffy almost pork rind like chip, and then as we got bigger we realized oh my gosh this has feet, this has legs, we gotta get somewhere legit and that's when Union Kitchen came on and they not only gave us space to work to of but they also helped us with guidance, you know.

Building all the infrastructure that you need to start a company. It's not just cooking oddly enough. We joined with them, we were in seven stores and now we're in close to a thousand stores nationwide. You know, probably hitting 1500, 2000 by the end of the year which is mind blowing.

I still to this day, I walk into a store, I walk in a new state, I walk in a new region, and if I see Snacklins I'm getting down low, I'm getting my cutest sorority girl pose, and I'm taking my "shelfie", you know. The co-founders of Compass Coffee spent four years together in the Marines where coffee was their fuel. Today, they run a chain of 10 cafes and it's growing thanks in part to the folks over at Union Kitchen. (smooth jazz music) So now I'm sitting here with Harrison and Michael, the co-founders of Compass coffee, both joined the Marines end up deployed to Afghanistan together and then you come back and you're like let's start a coffee roaster and now you have 10 cafes throughout Metro DC so how did you get here?

We come at this from the point of view of Marines. You know, we're not coffee snobs, we don't have like some pedigree as baristas. You know, we've learned it over time so we were just making coffee and sampling it with our friends and getting a lot of early feedback from people. We finally think that we've roasted a batch of coffee that we can show Cullen.

He's running the DC food scene and he's running a cafe called The Blind Dog Cafe. -

Cat

Mmm-Hmm. We have that meeting, at the time, it wasn't right for Blind Dog, all right? -

Michael

He turns us down. But we become friends and we hear about Union Kitchen and we're building out our first cafe and Cullen is starting to explain that there's products that they are making that they could sell to us when we open. That's really the beginning of our relationship with Union Kitchen is we're buying fresh baked goods from Union Kitchen, we're buying snacks, and I mean, we'd rather support local businesses with people that we know. I think about six bags of Snacklins were purchased over my shoulder within like 15 minutes.

I mean, so having that supports your fellow Union Kitchen member. -

Michael

Yeah. I think that it's just really exciting to see that through the support of all of these other entrepreneurs you guys are creating just a really vibrant food scene in DC. (smooth jazz music) -

Cullen

What's really awesome about Michael and Harrison is that, they've opened 10 cafes. They do great, customers love them, and then we sell a ton of their coffee in our own stores but also to places like Whole Foods. At Compass they're selling tons of products that are made here. They're actually the biggest customer of Made in DC products and Made In The Union Kitchen products because they believe in creating this ecosystem like we do that's supporting itself and getting bigger and kind of growing, it's like a tornado.

It was about two years ago that Margarita Womack began making her empanada's at Union Kitchen and just 10 days ago she moved into this brand new 3,000 square foot facility. (upbeat music) Empanada's was something that I had done as a kid in my father's kitchen and we took some of the basic recipes from Columbia, and Chile developed for the American palate. When I first started this I thought I can go and lease a space and have my kitchen there. And I looked online, found Union Kitchen, and met up with them and the rest is history.

Having the accelerator program, the certified kitchen, the distribution, the grocery store it means you have all the pieces to go from developing your idea to actually trying it on shelves with the least amount of risk and least amount of investment. It's the way to do it. So now Margarita and I are in her brand new kitchen and you're gonna show me how to make your spinach and mushroom empanada's. So spinach and mushroom empanada's, very basic set of ingredients flour, water, your spinach, roasted mushrooms, sauteed onions, and mozzarella cheese.

-

Cat

Tada! -

Margarita

And there's your empanada. -

Cat

Nice, when did this begin? -

Margarita

Two years ago so we started in 2017. At the beginning we would make a couple dozen a week. And, in May, you produced 30,000 30,000 empanada's. - Yes.

What I love is that you've taken your culinary history, your background, things that you ate growing up as a child and you've used that as inspiration to kind of start your very own culinary business here in the states and you just moved in to this massive space. -

Margarita

Yes and it's something extremely rewarding to just watch your company grow. It's something you're making and and nothing like watching people trying the empanada's and to go like they like my empanada's, they like what I'm doing and this is real, and it's something tangible. It's wonderful and it's something that allows me also to relate to people through food. (gentle tinkling music) We want to make things in DC.

We want to build our community here and we want it to be something we're proud of and so, by supporting the growth of these businesses, it's having enormous impact on our city. It's creating thousands of jobs. Over 500 businesses have started. Over a quarter of a billion dollars of revenue have been created.

Dollars spent and taxes paid. I think the ecosystem that UK has created and fostered and nurtured is unique and special and something that I think we're both really proud of to work with and support. Being within a community such as Union Kitchen was extremely helpful because we're all walking the same path and we're all dealing with the same problems and it's much more fun I think when you can share the ride with others that are on the same boat. What's really awesome about food and manufacturing is they fit the kinda the idea of it doesn't matter where you've gone to school it doesn't matter, where you've come from but if you do work hard you can be successful.

A first generation like Iowan with Muslim parents who creates a vegan pork rind company in the nation's capital, like that's, that doesn't make any sense but that's really what the American dream is all about isn't it? It's easy to get caught up in a lot of politics and all the other stuff that you hear on the news about DC, but we want this to be a part of the narrative. DC is a place where people can come and they can build, launch and grow small businesses. The thing that we wanna do is make it where you don't need millions of dollars, in fact you need like 5,000 dollars to build something and grow it and that creates opportunity, it lowers barriers to entry and that's why we have, such an interesting mix of people with such interesting back stories from such diverse places because they don't have to come with a million bucks.

When you start putting those rules in place, where you have to show up with like five million dollars you're gonna get a monoculture of people and outcomes. You're gonna get the same junk sold because it's being made by the same people. So how do you change that? Well you have to let other people in.

And we realized the way in was lowering the need for capital which increased access and good things happened. To learn more about Union Kitchen and all of the makers we featured in this episode just head to WeAreTasteMakers.com. Thank you for joining me here in Washington, DC and I'll see ya next time. (inspirational music) Connect with us online at WeAreTasteMakers.com or through social media on these handles.

-

Narrator

Taste Makers was funded in part by -

Woman

What does a craftsperson look like? Is it this? Or this? Or is it this?

Is it possible a craftsperson might also look like this? Edward Jones salutes the makers who share their expertise and take pride in their craft.