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

By Betty Shimabukuro
bshimabukuro@starbulletin.com

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.

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."

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 survive 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, has this affinity for food."

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