Apply­ing to La Cocina: La Cocina’s pro­gram is lim­ited to a few busi­nesses that are iden­ti­fied as qual­i­fied after com­plet­ing the appli­ca­tion and assess­ment process. Non-qualified busi­nesses may apply as com­mer­cial kitchen. The appli­ca­tion process will go as follows:

1. Attend an Ori­en­ta­tion to La Cocina—Orientations at La Cocina are quar­terly. For 2010–2011, ori­en­ta­tions are April 21st, July 21st, Octo­ber 20th and Jan­u­ary 19th, 2011 (woah). All ori­en­ta­tions are from 6–7:30 PM. You don’t need to RSVP for an ori­en­ta­tion, but it never hurts!
2. Fill out an appli­ca­tion form and pro­vide all of the infor­ma­tion requested includ­ing: your busi­ness plan, cash flow pro­jec­tions, resume and proof of income.
3. After turn­ing in the appli­ca­tion, qual­i­fied appli­cants will be invited to a per­sonal inter­view with La Cocina staff and advi­sory com­mit­tee. For those not qual­i­fied La Cocina will make an effort to pro­vide refer­rals to other orga­ni­za­tion for fur­ther training.
4. If enroll­ment is approved, the prospec­tive pro­gram par­tic­i­pant will receive, from the Pro­gram Asso­ciate, a pre-incubation plan that will include fixed bench­marks and goals for the period of pre-incubation.
5. The for­mal agree­ment will begin by sign­ing La Cocina’s user’s agree­ment at which point appli­cant will become a pro­gram par­tic­i­pant and will begin with offi­cial intake.
6. After all bench­marks in pre-incubation plan have been reached, the pro­gram par­tic­i­pant will move into incu­ba­tion and begin offi­cial pro­duc­tion at the kitchen.

Appli­ca­tion Time­line: As of June, 2009, La Cocina accepts appli­ca­tions on a quar­terly basis, tied to atten­dance at the ori­en­ta­tion of that same quar­ter. Appli­ca­tions will be reviewed and accepted prior to the dead­line, and inter­views sched­uled 2 months after ori­en­ta­tion. The next round of appli­ca­tions will be accepted until June 15th at 5 PM PST. Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Below, you will find infor­ma­tion on how we screen appli­cants to be accepted into the La Cocina incu­ba­tion pro­gram. If you are inter­ested in com­mer­cial kitchen rentals only, or if you don’t qual­ify but are still inter­ested in kitchen space, please see Com­mer­cial Kitchen Rental infor­ma­tion. La Cocina screens appli­cants to the kitchen for a vari­ety of qual­i­fi­ca­tions. The incu­ba­tion process is not for every­one and La Cocina requires that par­tic­i­pants be:

• Flex­i­ble in shar­ing equip­ment and able to work with the peo­ple around them
• Capa­ble of sched­ul­ing their kitchen use times in advance, adher­ing to their own sched­ules and plan­ning realistically
• Will­ing to share finan­cial and busi­ness infor­ma­tion and sta­tis­tics with La Cocina staff
• Will­ing to imple­ment changes and take advice in order to improve their busi­ness or product
• Open to find­ing new ways of doing busi­ness, includ­ing poten­tial part­ner­ships and/or col­lab­o­ra­tions with other tenants
• Recep­tive to La Cocina tech­ni­cal assis­tance and training
• Able to com­ply with La Cocina food safety and san­i­ta­tion policies
• Respon­si­ble for fol­low­ing the rules and reg­u­la­tions of La Cocina

Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Cri­te­ria La Cocina care­fully screens appli­cants in order to find indi­ca­tors that sug­gest an entrepreneur’s busi­ness readi­ness level. A for­mal assess­ment process will look at the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria to select its tenants:

• Income Level: Low and very low-income women will be the high­est pri­or­ity for La Cocina, fol­lowed by moderate-income appli­cants. For income lim­its see the HUD list­ings for your county.
• Busi­ness Stage: Ready-to-Start busi­nesses, that is, qual­i­fied appli­cants who show evi­dence that they are busi­ness and per­son­ally ready, and whose busi­ness shows poten­tial to suc­ceed will be the high­est pri­or­ity. Readi­ness is a per­sonal and busi­ness stage where peo­ple have already taken action to advance in their busi­ness ven­ture, have researched and tested a fea­si­ble busi­ness, have devel­oped some entre­pre­neur­ial skills and have achieved a thresh­old of per­sonal cir­cum­stance favor­able to suc­cess­ful man­age­ment of the busi­ness. La Cocina will also con­sider can­di­dates who need time to achieve busi­ness readi­ness if they show promise.
• Busi­ness Size: Busi­ness of up to 5 peo­ple with below $35,000 in assets will be La Cocina’s high­est pri­or­ity. Busi­nesses that employ more than 5 peo­ple with assets between $35,000 and $50,000 will be con­sid­ered a lower pri­or­ity. La Cocina encour­ages the for­ma­tion of small coop­er­a­tives and will con­sider such col­lab­o­ra­tions as a high priority.
• Skills and Com­pe­ten­cies: La Cocina assesses the applicant’s pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence, entre­pre­neur­ial spirit, open­ness to learn­ing new skills and mak­ing nec­es­sary changes and an abil­ity to coop­er­ate in a chal­leng­ing and busy environment.
• Prod­uct Via­bil­ity: La Cocina staff sam­ples prod­ucts and menu items from each busi­ness to see if the pro­posed prod­uct or con­cept has the poten­tial to be successful.