Incubating dreams

Fledgling businesses start cooking by using Pacific Gateway Center's incubator kitchens

THEY SAY you have to spend money to make money. But what if you have nothing to spend? If your dream lies in food service, the upfront costs of setting yourself up in a certified commercial kitchen can be insurmountable. This is where the Pacific Gateway Center's incubator kitchens come in.

BENEFIT BRUNCH A monthly Marketplace Sunday Brunch is held at E&O Trading Co. to benefit the Pacific Gateway Center. The Ward Centre restaurant turns into a mini-food fair on the third Sunday of each month, offering Southeast Asian dishes, some prepared by clients of the center. The next brunch is Nov. 19, featuring Vietnam, Brunei and Sri Lanka. It will be the third benefit event, and E&O owner Kenwei Chong said he hopes to build to 400 guests per Sunday. Last month's, on Oct. 15, went on despite the earthquake and power failure. "It was very dark in the kitchen, extremely hot," Chong said. "It felt like Southeast Asia." Tickets to the next Marketplace Sunday Brunch are $30 ($15 tax-deductible). Seatings are from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Call 845-3918 or 591-9555.

The Kalihi center offers 12 kitchens equipped with all the basics for making food ready for sale. Small, start-up businesses incubate here, just as the name implies, until they're ready to -- well -- take flight.

"They told us that everybody here is just like a baby chicken," Robert Joyce of Uncle Bobo's Smokehouse Barbecue said.

Uncle Bobo's is a Pacific Gateway graduate. Joyce and his wife, Keiko, moved on after about two years at the center to lease space in Kaaawa for a small restaurant.

Those two years allowed them to test the market and their system for making smoked brisket, pork shoulder and ribs -- without having to put up substantial cash for equipment, Joyce said. "We haven't made lots of money yet, but we didn't have to go into a whole lot of debt."

SO THERE IT IS: Pacific Gateway provides the nudge, the means by which an entrepreneur with an idea can try to fly. The kitchens provide prep and cooking space; the food is then sold in small markets or lunch wagons. Packaged goods such as salad dressings are also made there for sale outside.

Executive director Myaing Thein says the center's primary mission is to serve low- to moderate-income clients, and the island's growing refugee and immigrant population. Besides kitchen space, they also can get business advice, training and use of center computers.

Clients include Korean immigrants cooking Vietnamese food; Chinese cooking Mexican. "It's a real, real, eclectic mix," Thein said.

Don't go there expecting to find a United Nations in aprons, though. Some clients are long-time Hawaii residents in for a career change.

Phillip Mowrey, for example, retired as an architect and went into partnership with Eric Lo making take-out salads and soups for the Downtown office crowd. Every day they package about 150 salads to be sold at San Francisco Salad Co. at Pioneer Plaza.

"When you're starting out, you often don't know the equipment you'll need," Mowrey said. "And equipment is expensive."

Using the center's facility, "you can make fewer mistakes."

Kiseon Wu uses the incubator kitchen to prepare taro, breadfruit and tapioca for his market, Yamasin, on North King Street across from Farrington High School.

Wu came to Hawaii from Korea in 1983 as a student, then elected to stay and build a business. "Better life here," he said.

His original idea was a vegetable market, but the high immigrant population in the area got him started cooking Polynesian and Micronesian food.

He's at Pacific Gateway for three hours every day except Sunday, then trucks the food to his market for the lunch crowd.

MARVIN BERNARD, project assistant for Pacific Gateway, said 60 to 70 small businesses currently use the incubator kitchens. Their cost is $600 or less per month for 50 hours. They also are allowed storage space -- refrigerator, freezer and dry storage.

"Once they grow to where they can go out and be on their own, we let them go," Bernard said. Last year eight to 10 "graduated."

It's a slow process, given the cost of doing business on the outside, he said, but most clients are motivated to gain the convenience of their own space.

Both Mowrey and Wu said that is their aim -- someday.

The idea of incubator kitchens developed in Italy, Thein said, where farmers would pool resources to develop certified kitchens and food-processing plants.

The $5 million Pacific Gateway kitchens opened in 2003 and survives on a mix of government grants, private funding (primarily through the Weinberg Foundation) and individual contributions.

The next step for the center is a retail outlet, which Thein hopes to open in December on North King Street, selling Micronesian arts and crafts, as well as packaged foods from Pacific Gateway clients. The new outlet will have its own kitchen, she said, so some fresh-made foods will also be sold.

"Our staff, as well as our clients, have this affinity for food."