Around the State
COMPILED BY KENZIE DYE
LIFT Kitchen : Charleston ’ s Food Enterprise Incubator
The LIFT Kitchen , a project of Advantage Valley and Coalfield Development Corporation , will be West Virginia ’ s premier shared commercial kitchen and food enterprise incubator . It will be housed in the former Kanawha Manufacturing facility , which is being renovated into the Learning , Innovation , Food and Technology ( LIFT ) Center . The mission of the LIFT Kitchen is to help launch and grow food businesses by offering access to affordable and licensed commercial kitchens , specialized technical business assistance , co-manufacturing capacity and connections to new markets .
While $ 8 billion is spent annually on food in West Virginia , only $ 500,000 of that is spent on locally grown food . This facility will help expand the West Virginia Grown program and enable more locally grown food to find its way onto retailer shelves and into institutional markets .
The LIFT Kitchen will feature :
• Three commercial kitchens for food-based production , including a food processing center
• Rentable dry , refrigerated and frozen space for pre- and post-production storage needs of clients
• Wrap-around skills building , training and business support services to assist entrepreneurs with licensing , packaging , marketing and sales
• Cross docking and aggregation space for small agricultural producers from around Southern West Virginia who can combine their produce into large enough quantities to access larger institutional market sales such as West Virginia ’ s 5 % local food goal for public schools
• A research and development kitchen to facilitate a food safety testing and verification process with federal , state , county and city agency partners
Advantage Valley has identified initial interest from more than 40 cottage food businesses . There is currently no other food enterprise incubator in West Virginia despite considerable growth in the number of facilities nationwide . While there are commercially licensed kitchens and business accelerators , none are specifically designed to support food and beverage entrepreneurs in the ways the LIFT Kitchen proposes .
Schematic of the proposed design for the LIFT Kitchen .
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE