Mis­sion State­ment The mis­sion of La Cocina is to cul­ti­vate low-income food entre­pre­neurs as they for­mal­ize and grow their busi­nesses by pro­vid­ing afford­able com­mer­cial kitchen space, industry-specific tech­ni­cal assis­tance and access to mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties. We focus pri­mar­ily on women from com­mu­ni­ties of color and immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties. Our vision is that entre­pre­neurs will become eco­nom­i­cally self-sufficient and con­tribute to a vibrant econ­omy doing what they love to do.

San Francisco’s First Incu­ba­tor Kitchen La Cocina is a ground-breaking busi­ness incu­ba­tor designed to reduce the obsta­cles that often pre­vent entre­pre­neurs from cre­at­ing suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able small busi­nesses.  By pro­vid­ing shared resources and an array of industry-specific ser­vices, busi­ness incu­ba­tors ensure small busi­nesses can succeed.

“La Cocina has been fun­da­men­tal in my being able to run my busi­ness by the fact that it sup­plies a won­der­ful com­mer­cial kitchen at low-market rates, and all of the work, tech­ni­cal assis­tance and vol­un­teers and address­ing the needs of my busi­ness as a start-up.”

—Cristina Besher, Owner, Kika’s Treats

Pro­vid­ing Resources La Cocina pro­vides com­mer­cial kitchen space and tech­ni­cal assis­tance to low-income entre­pre­neurs who are launch­ing, grow­ing and for­mal­iz­ing food businesses.

Break­ing Down Bar­ri­ers The food indus­try has a noto­ri­ously high cost of entry: the fees for licensed and insured com­mer­cial kitchen space, the start-up costs to open a restau­rant, the stan­dards set to com­pete for shelf space at spe­cialty stores and large retail­ers. Such restric­tive bar­ri­ers to entry often dis­cour­age bur­geon­ing food entre­pre­neurs from launch­ing a busi­ness. Those who do face an uphill bat­tle for suc­cess in an over­whelm­ing and incred­i­bly crowded marketplace.

La Cocina pro­vides a plat­form for these moti­vated entre­pre­neurs to hone their skills and suc­cess­fully tran­si­tion into the highly reg­u­lated and com­pet­i­tive food industry.

The Fam­ily Tree, A Story of La Cocina La Cocina (pro­nounced la co-see-nah, mean­ing “The Kitchen” in Span­ish) was inspired by its cur­rent home, San Francisco’s Mis­sion Dis­trict, an eth­ni­cally diverse and eco­nom­i­cally vul­ner­a­ble neigh­bor­hood that thrives in part due to the many small infor­mal busi­nesses that serve the com­mu­nity. As is the case in many cities, food lies at the heart of this com­mu­nity, and you don’t have to look far to find hid­den entre­pre­neurs in the kitchens of many homes.

Rec­og­niz­ing a need to for­mal­ize these food businesses-and the oppor­tu­nity cre­ated when you turn incon­sis­tent and ille­gal home restau­rants into sus­tain­able legal businesses-organizations like Arriba Jun­tos, The Women’s Ini­tia­tive for Self-Employment and The Women’s Foun­da­tion of Cal­i­for­nia and one very spe­cial and vision­ary anony­mous donor cre­ated La Cocina. La Cocina is both the space-a mod­ern build­ing and com­mer­cial kitchen that has been fea­tured in Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine—and the program—an inno­v­a­tive busi­ness incu­ba­tor that sup­ports a grow­ing ros­ter of small businesses.

La Cocina was born out of a belief that a com­mu­nity of nat­ural entre­pre­neurs, given the right resources, can cre­ate self-sufficient busi­nesses that ben­e­fit them­selves, their fam­i­lies, their com­mu­nity, and the whole city. The food that has come out of this kitchen since 2005 reflects that aspi­ra­tion and, quite sim­ply, tastes amazing.

The La Cocina Fam­ily

La Cocina is a home for 20 fledg­ling busi­nesses and a grow­ing ros­ter of grad­u­ates, rep­re­sent­ing all aspects of local food from gourmet cater­ing to spe­cialty prod­ucts to farm­ers mar­ket stands.  As a result of these busi­nesses and La Cocina’s sup­port, com­mu­nity jobs have been cre­ated and thou­sands have been intro­duced to the fla­vors of the world.

As a tes­ta­ment to their qual­ity, the busi­nesses of La Cocina sell their prod­ucts locally, region­ally, nation­ally, and even internationally.

You can find those prod­ucts in the Bay Area at the fol­low­ing stores (among oth­ers!):

• Andronico’s
• Bi-Rite
• Rain­bow Grocery
• Whole Foods Markets
• Berke­ley Bowl
• Blue Fog Markets
• Vil­lage Market
• Local Farm­ers Markets
• And, of course, our booth at the Ferry Plaza Farm­ers Market

La Cocina busi­nesses have been fea­tured in these pub­li­ca­tions:

• Saveur
• 7x7
• San Fran­cisco Magazine
• New York Times
• Sun­set Magazine
• NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams
• Dia­blo Magazine
• San Fran­cisco Chronicle
• Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Monitor
• Oak­land Tribune