Over €2.1 million in funding has been provided to a project in Dublin city to provide a ‘shared kitchen’ for use by food start-ups.
Minister of State for business, employment and retail, Damien English, performed a sod-turning ceremony for building the shared facility at SPADE (St. Paul’s Area Development Enterprise) Enterprise Centre in North King Street.
The kitchen will provide increased capacity for what is a growing demand from food start-ups.
Speaking at the ceremony yesterday, Minister English said: “The shared kitchen will provide much-needed practical support to all start ups and will build on an already innovative and thriving food scene.”
The new shared kitchen facility is aimed at servicing the growing demand from food start-ups for affordable and flexible kitchen space and it will operate 15 hours/day for 365 days of the year.
The funding for the shared kitchen model will assist start-ups with the high costs of setting up a new food business and thereby prevent early exits from the business.
Multiple food producers simultaneously can be accommodated by the kitchen facilities, along with best practice culinary and nutritional education and sectoral events.
Minister English commented: “This new facility will deliver a key piece of infrastructure for SPADE and will help new food entrepreneurs to enter that market and scale up, so I am delighted that my department has been able to assist this excellent venture with over €2.1 million.”
In other food business news, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine will co-host a webinar with Bord Bia to outline the supports that are available to local, small and micro food businesses and producers.
The webinar will take place this morning.
It will include a presentation on a report commissioned by Bord Bia which examined how other countries have been successful in developing routes to market for family farm producers, as well as the current arrangements in Ireland.
Speaking in advance of the webinar, Minister of State for land use and biodiversity Pippa Hackett said: “I am looking forward to hearing the findings of Bord Bia’s research in this area, which will provide a valuable overview of the kinds of state supports that are available for small food businesses and producers.”