Bangor's Central Kitchen to cater to food, beverage entrepreneurs
Courtesy / City of Bangor
The 5,000-square-foot space will soon hosts modern commercial-grade kitchen equipment.
The city of Bangor plans to create a collaborative, commercial kitchen space for entrepreneurs in the food and beverage industry with the help of $1.1 million in federal grants and other fundraising.
The project, tentatively called Central Kitchen — Bangor, will be located at 50 Cleveland St. in Bangor in a 5,000-square-foot renovated site.
“Although the city has not finalized the operational details of the Central Kitchen ... there will be some similarities to the Fork Food Lab," in Portland, said Steve Bolduc, economic development officer for the city of Bangor.
“There will be multiple users of the kitchen; it will be targeted for those new to the food and beverage business. It will provide equipment and operational space for its clients and it will have a close relationship to the agricultural producers in the Bangor region,” Bolduc said.
The goal is to have the project underway in 2022, but the exact time table has not been set.
Although the project is still an empty space, Bolduc said the city has already been contacted by a number of people in the food and beverage industry who want to rent the space.
“Bangor is surrounded on farms and there’s been an influx of acreage that’s being farmed over the past five to eight years. We want to work with the local farming community on this,” Bolduc said.
The kitchen could potentially be open 24 hours a day to allow users with different shifts and time sensitivities to rent the space as needed.
“If you ran a food truck or offered breakfast products, you would need really early hours. While someone doing prep for catering a dinner would have different needs,” Bolduc said.
Central Kitchen will have modern, energy efficient equipment, he said.
The kitchen space is interested in having partner projects, such as a focus on women or indigenous people or people newly released from prison who have an interest in the food and beverage business. They could use the space to help each other grow, network, learn best practices and get help with hiring and training, Bolduc said.
These plans are preliminary and could change, but such specialty groups could use the commercial kitchen as a launch pad for growth, he said. Central Kitchen - Bangor will likely seek grants to help launch the specialty groups, he said.
“If this comes together, Central Kitchen could be a great first step to help groups grow in this industry. It could be an incubator for businesses in food and beverage,” Bolduc said.
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