May 2010 — Jill Litwin, founder and CEO of a healthy frozen-food com­pany for grow­ing kids, is a typ­i­cal entre­pre­neur in many ways. She works (all the time). She gets overtly excited about the launch of her third prod­uct, Peas of Pie pizza with veg­eta­bles baked into the crust (and stresses about it). And, like most small-business own­ers, she has to, by default and nat­ural desire, have her hands, or at least her head, in all aspects of her com­pany, from prod­uct devel­op­ment to check­ing whether the deliv­ery trucks are on run­ning on time. Despite her instinct for con­trol, she has sought help since day one in tak­ing Peas of Mind LLC to the next level. Read more

May 25, 2010 — La Cocina inked its final con­tract for park food sell­ing with Rec and Park today. The Mis­sion non­profit will host two ven­dor venues in Dolores Park. The first ― El Huarache Loco ― plans to sell seven days a week, from a trailer owner Veron­ica Salazar is leas­ing from La Cocina for a full year. The sec­ond spot is week­ends only, and will fea­ture a rotat­ing ros­ter of ven­dors (La Cocina clients and oth­ers), sell­ing from their own push­carts. Expect to see Kika’s Treats, Slow Jams, and the Love & Hum­mus Com­pany, among oth­ers. Read more

A pro­file of the men behind Onig­illy, a La Cocina incu­ba­tor busi­ness, from the Japan­ese Busi­ness Press.

サンフランシスコのミッション地区は南米からの移民が 多く、まるで公用語のようにスペイン語が飛び交うエリアだ。かつては低所得者層が集中して治安が悪かったが、5～7年ほど前から若者が住み着くようにな り、個性的な店やお洒落なレストランが続々と開店している。NPO（NonProfit Organization）やデザインオフィスも越してきた。ラテン文化とトレンドがミックスした、活気あるクリエイティブなコミュニティーをつくってい る。

Read more

May 11, 2010 — In a city of orga­nized work­ers, the ille­gal hot dog ven­dors on Mis­sion Street are some of labor’s last lone rangers. And vul­ner­a­ble ones. They have no per­mits and no rights. They must be on con­stant alert for the cops, who write them tick­ets and even haul away their carts. Yet the ven­dors are tired of oper­at­ing under­ground. And they’re get­ting orga­nized. With the help of La Cocina incu­ba­tor kitchen in the Mis­sion, along with the Mis­sion Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Agency, ille­gal food ven­dors are form­ing the Vende­dores Unidos — the “United Sell­ers” en ingles. Read more

May 6, 2010 — In the small hill­top neigh­bor­hood of Bernal Heights on the south­east­ern side of San Fran­cisco, you can see the mak­ings of an edi­ble renais­sance. It doesn’t have the cutting-edge restau­rant scene of the Mis­sion Dis­trict or the tourist pull of the Ferry Plaza. But an influx of inno­v­a­tive food com­pa­nies, embraced by a com­mu­nity with a fer­vor for locally grown busi­nesses and food, has turned the neigh­bor­hood into some­thing that would have been unthink­able a few years ago: an epi­curean des­ti­na­tion. Read more

May 1, 2010 — In Melissa Ann Mar­tin and San­jit Sethi’s inter­dis­ci­pli­nary community-based design class, stu­dents were jug­gling more than mul­ti­ple dis­ci­plines. By stand­ing in the kitchen and learn­ing to make soup, they’d absorbed the intense and col­or­ful life his­to­ries of women chefs from five dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The five women – from Malaysia, Nige­ria, Mex­ico, El Sal­vador, and the United States – work with La Cocina, a Mission-based orga­ni­za­tion that incu­bates low-income food entre­pre­neurs, low­er­ing the hur­dle to enter the pro­fes­sional food ser­vice. Read more

April 19, 2010 — For most small busi­ness­peo­ple, get­ting a prod­uct into a store like Whole Foods is a dream. But if you’re a one-woman show like Zella’s Soul­ful Kitchen, that dream could lead to insom­nia. Read more

March 9, 2010 — As Kather­ine Gustafson wrote this week in recog­ni­tion of Inter­na­tional Women’s Day, it is not pos­si­ble to address issues of food pro­duc­tion, pur­chase and prepa­ra­tion, or food inse­cu­rity with­out also con­sid­er­ing the sta­tus and role of women. Accord­ing to the Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion of the United Nations, women grow more than half of the world’s food. And in devel­op­ing coun­tries, they grow more than 80 per­cent. Read more

Feb­ru­ary 25, 2010 — As dozens of new licensed and unli­censed mobile ven­dors vie for spaces at San Francisco’s parks and side­walks, and cus­tomers line up for their food, the city is com­ing to grips with the street food phe­nom­e­non. Read more

Jan. 28, 2010 — While oth­ers harp on how unsus­tain­able SF is for small busi­nesses, La Cocina serves as a pos­i­tive model for what’s pos­si­ble. “We need to make oppor­tu­ni­ties for low-income entre­pre­neurs in the food indus­try,” says Caleb Zigas. “They’re good for our city.” Read more

Jan. 26, 2010 — La Cocina has got­ten the ini­tial nod for a con­tract to do push­cart food sales in both Dolores Park and Justin Her­man Plaza, said direc­tor Caleb Zigas. Pend­ing final approval by the seven-member Rec and Park Com­mis­sion, the non­profit food busi­ness incu­ba­tor would be able to oper­ate one cart space in Dolores on week­days, and two on week­ends. Read more

Dec. 7, 2009 — One of the biggest chal­lenges of tran­si­tion­ing from an under­ground culi­nary oper­a­tion to a full-fledged busi­ness is access to com­mer­cial kitchen space—since the cost of out­fit­ting and cer­ti­fy­ing such a kitchen is pro­hib­i­tive to most culi­nary micro-enterprises. As legions of street food ven­dors, under-the-radar cater­ers, and teeny-tiny treat mak­ers strug­gle with legit­i­macy, food incu­ba­tor pro­grams such as San Francisco’s La Cocina project work hard to bring these home­grown entre­pre­neurs up to a fully cre­den­tialed and self-sufficient busi­ness sta­tus. Read more

While the hip­ster street cart ven­dors of the Mis­sion Dis­trict get invited to offi­cial func­tions, many who have long worked the Mission’s streets are more likely to get a $250 ticket than an invi­ta­tion. Read more

Nov. 18, 2009 — Want to get the most bang for your buck? Try can­ning your food. Sim­ple, fun, and with the national unem­ploy­ment rate at 10.2 per­cent — the high­est since 1983 — can­ning can be the answer to anyone’s dwin­dling hol­i­day bud­get. Ask the folks at the Mission’s La Cocina, a kitchen and small busi­ness incu­ba­tor on Fol­som street, and they’ll say the same thing. Read more

Oct. 17, 2009 — Una mañana de mayo, Verónica Salazar rel­len­aba con fri­joles unos huaraches de maíz, con­cen­trán­dose en blo­quear el bul­li­cio de una enorme cocina en Mis­sion Dis­trict. El ruido de cuchil­los picando veg­e­tales con­tribuía al alboroto, ali­men­tado con las sartenes que gol­pea­ban con­tra el equipo de acero inox­id­able, y com­petía con la música de fondo de una estación de radio local en español. Este lugar, cono­cido como La Cocina, no es un restau­rante ni un nego­cio común y cor­ri­ente. Aquí todos los chefs son mujeres y la may­oría son inmi­grantes y tra­ba­jan en ese mismo espa­cio para lograr un obje­tivo en común: entre­narse para empezar su pro­pio nego­cio de comida y, en algunos casos, salir de la pobreza. Read more

Lucero Muñoz, a La Cocina pro­gram par­tic­i­pant, is fea­tured in this Ven­drTV short on San Francisco’s bacon-wrapped hot dogs.

You can see more about Lucero Muñoz in this clip from CNS News (around 16:30)

SFBG TV

July 24, 2009 — In La Cocina’s large, com­mer­cial kitchen, three women joke with each other, their laugh­ter ampli­fied by the room’s high ceil­ings and brushed steel fix­tures. They care­fully dust pow­dered sugar on a fresh batch of alfa­jores, pastry-style cook­ies filled with dulce de leche, a caramel-like fill­ing made from heated milk. Prepar­ing for an upcom­ing local farmer’s mar­ket, these women are part of one of the 22 small food busi­nesses that work with the self-proclaimed “incu­ba­tor kitchen” located in the heart of San Francisco’s Mis­sion Dis­trict. Read more

June 14, 2009 — On a recent Wednes­day, 80 peo­ple came to La Cocina, a com­mu­nity kitchen on Fol­som, to pick up 720 jars of home­made apri­cot jam. More than 20 peo­ple took part in mak­ing it from scratch last Sun­day. Anya Fer­nald who con­ceived the can­ning project,  said she wanted to show peo­ple how they could buy in bulk at afford­able prices and deal with the quan­tity of pro­duce bulk buy­ing means.  For oth­ers, how­ever, the class was sim­ply a way to “con­nect to peo­ple, places, and  times.” Read more

May 26, 2009 — The Creme Brulee Cart is one of many licensed and unli­censed food ven­dors who have recently hit the streets of San Fran­cisco, espe­cially in the Mis­sion Dis­trict. The area’s bars, streets and parks host a car­a­van of food sell­ers who con­nect to their cus­tomers via social net­work­ing Web sites like Face­book and Twit­ter. […] To deal with some of the chal­lenges, street-food entre­pre­neurs can turn to the non­profit orga­ni­za­tion La Cocina for approved com­mer­cial kitchen space. Veron­ica Salazar of El Huarache Loco preps her Mex­ico City-style street food at La Cocina’s kitchen and then sells it from a stall at the week­end Ale­many mar­ket in San Fran­cisco. Read more

Nov. 14, 2008 — The ingre­di­ents for green col­lar eco­nomic renewal via food-based busi­nesses have been stew­ing for a few years in the Mis­sion at La Cocina. Enter­ing its fifth year of oper­a­tion in 2009, La Cocina was founded to pro­vide kitchen space and assis­tance to food entre­pre­neurs – many of them low-income and all of them women – help­ing them in start­ing new busi­nesses or grow their home-based busi­nesses into sta­ble ven­tures. Read more

Aug. 28, 2008 — Los sabores via­jaron con ellas, inmi­grantes todas. Con Dilsa Lugo, de Méx­ico, las rajas de chile poblano; con Rosario Cabr­era, del Perú, la yuca y la papa dulce; con Mieko Raymer, de Japón, esos fideos cono­ci­dos como soba com­bi­na­dos con berros; con Aster Andy­hun, de Etiopía, las lente­jas y el gar­banzo sobre una cama de harina. Read more

June 23, 2007 — One morn­ing in May, Veron­ica Salazar stuffed refried beans into sandal-shaped masa cakes, con­cen­trat­ing to block the com­mo­tion in a cav­ernous kitchen here in the Mis­sion Dis­trict. The chop­ping of veg­eta­bles added to the din as the clang of metal pans against stain­less steel equip­ment com­peted with back­ground music from a local Spanish-language radio sta­tion. Read more

Win­ter 2006 — Walk­ing around in the Mis­sion neigh­bor­hood, one of the first things you notice is the smell of food: Beans, grilled meat, and tor­tillas all waft through the air like one big atom­ized hunger-inducing bur­rito. Around the cor­ner from each other are two orga­ni­za­tions whose kitchens are not only con­tribut­ing to the sen­sory land­scape with heav­enly smells of apple pie and empanadas, they’re actu­ally using those kitchens as a locus for change in the com­mu­nity. Read more

Dec. 12, 2006 —  La Cocina bus­tles with activ­ity. Pots clang. Water gushes from spouts around the indus­trial kitchen. At four large work­sta­tions, cooks chop, mix, bake, and sauté var­i­ous food items. It’s a feast for the senses: The smell of freshly chopped green onions per­me­ates the air in one cor­ner, while the scent of boil­ing straw­berry jam sat­u­rates another. Read more

Oct. 6, 2006 — For 18 years now, we have been cel­e­brat­ing the amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tions of Lati­nos in the Bay Area with our ‘Pro­files of Excel­lence’ show. In honor of His­panic Her­itage Month, the show high­lights the achieve­ments of five local lead­ers. In this report, we intro­duce you to one of those trail­blaz­ers. Few things are as trea­sured in the Latino com­mu­nity as food. It is cen­tral to “la familia” — the fam­ily. Now, a new orga­ni­za­tion called La Cocina is offer­ing hope and oppor­tu­nity to small busi­ness own­ers by pro­vid­ing kitchen space that may help turn fam­ily favorites into fam­ily rev­enue. Read more

April 26, 2006 — Among the many delights which come out of the ovens at La Cocina each day are short­bread cook­ies with dulce de leche which have gone from being com­fort food to a busi­ness for Yumna McCann. Read more

March 15, 2006 — What do dairy-free truf­fles, good-for-you juices, nat­ural jams and Mex­i­can food all have in com­mon? They were all cre­ated at La Cocina, an “incu­ba­tor kitchen” in the Mis­sion Dis­trict. The non­profit orga­ni­za­tion helps local low-income men and women start their own food-related busi­nesses by pro­vid­ing com­mer­cial kitchen and stor­age space, as well as busi­ness and moral sup­port. An open house held last week allowed the com­pa­nies to show off their cre­ations. Here are a few prod­ucts that stood out. Read more

March 1, 2006 — Vale­ria Perez Fer­reiro dis­cusses La Cocina with host Jerry Kay, and Guisell Oso­rio, owner of Sabores del Sur, talks about her expe­ri­ence launch­ing her busi­ness at La Cocina. Lis­ten to the story

Jan. 18, 2006 — You know you’re in the pres­ence of real Mex­i­can food when you run across huaraches — lit­er­ally, “slip­per” or “san­dal.” The long, oval-shaped tor­tilla (pic­tured) — hand pat­ted with a cen­ter of black bean puree and baked on a grid­dle — is the per­fect car­rier for salad-like top­pings, such as nopales (cac­tus). Read more

Dec. 28, 2005 — A non-profit com­mu­nity kitchen in San Fran­cisco is part of a grow­ing move­ment to launch small food busi­nesses around the coun­try. Reporter Pauline Bar­tolone exam­ines La Cocina’s focus on poor immi­grant women. Lis­ten to the story

Sept. 7–13, 2005 — It’s a Mon­day after­noon in the Mis­sion Dis­trict, and the mod­ern, gleam­ing com­mer­cial kitchen La Cocina is bustling with women. A small, mul­ti­cul­tural group, they cheer­fully swap sto­ries and encour­age­ment, though each remains intently focused on her own work. Read more

June 13, 2005 — San Francisco’s Mis­sion Dis­trict — like many low-income neigh­bor­hoods in high-rent cities — is a mix of immi­grants, pri­mar­ily Latin Amer­i­can, and hip­sters. Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion spread rapidly through the area in the late 1990s, dur­ing San Francisco’s dot-com boom, but has slowed post­bust. On the trendier blocks, taque­rias sit along­side sushi-cum-oxygen bars. Live/work lofts and bou­tique retail spaces serv­ing the better-heeled res­i­dents are com­mon­place. But new con­struc­tion that addresses both ends of the eco­nomic spec­trum is rare. Read more

March 25, 2005 — Veron­ica Rivera […] is all cook­ing skills and enthu­si­asm, with lit­tle busi­ness know-how and means. She is the type of bud­ding entre­pre­neur that La Cocina, an incu­ba­tor kitchen in the Mis­sion Dis­trict, is look­ing to men­tor. The startup, which is seek­ing non­profit sta­tus, will help low-income women develop food ser­vice busi­nesses by pro­vid­ing com­mer­cial kitchen and stor­age spaces, men­tor­ship and busi­ness train­ing, as well as moral sup­port. Read more

Feb. 15, 2005 — Con su cocina com­er­cial de 4,400 pies cuadra­dos, la orga­ni­zación piensa ayu­dar a las empre­sarias de bajos ingre­sos a con­seguir y man­tener clientes, uti­lizando unos ingre­di­entes claves. El pro­grama se pro­pone ayu­dar a un grupo de mujeres minori­tarias e inmigrantes—y dará aten­ción espe­cial a las que viven en la Mis­ión. Read more