🔒Cooking up a storm: Fork Food Lab’s next chapter

Salsa, lobster rolls, French macarons, flavored crackers and oatmeal bars are all in production one recent morning at Fork Food Lab, a shared commercial kitchen and food business incubator in Portland’s West Bayside neighborhood.

On the ground floor of the warehouse-like brick building, Chris Fawcett is processing tomatoes for Plucked Fresh Salsa — weekly production is up to 6,000 pounds — as Bill Linnell chops celery for lobster rolls he’ll peddle on his Cap’n Bill’s Lobster red tugboat-on-wheels lunch cart. Linnell also makes crabmeat rolls and whoopie pies from an old family recipe. One floor above, Tara Canaday of Suga Suga is decorating macarons in bright colors as Nina Murray of Mill Cove Baking Co. and Alicia Danielson of Alicia Bars are busy baking.

Fork Food Lab, a hub of culinary creativity and entrepreneurship in Bon Appetit’s 2018 “Restaurant City of the Year,” is home to 45 food-related businesses and set to hit 50 by Oct. 1, a year after a new owner stepped in to keep it from closing. 

But success also brings growing pains. The Sustainability Lab, a Yarmouth-based nonprofit headed by Bill Seretta, bought Fork Food Lab last year from New York-based Pilotworks, the same month that Pilotworks unexpectedly went under. 

After doubling Fork Food Lab’s membership, Seretta is searching for bigger space as he sets out to raise $150,000 from private donations to cover a loss. He’s looking for a building of 10,000 to 12,000 square feet and ideally on one floor that would be better suited to production.

“This is a neat building,” Seretta says, “but it’s not a manufacturing facility.” Having to walk up and down stairs is a hassle for the producers, on top of a shortage of production space, storage areas and parking spaces, and not even a loading dock. 

Seretta, a self-described serial social entrepreneur who comes from a family of people in the restaurant business, hopes to find a solution soon. Between visits to two potential sites within 10 miles of Portland, he tells Mainebiz: “We will be in a new space in some form in the next nine to 12 months.”  He leads a staff of five, whose duties include cleaning, accepting deliveries when members aren’t present and lending a hand where needed.

Packaged s’mores and oodles more

Fork Food has been on Seretta’s radar since winning the Sustainability Lab’s inaugural New England Food System Innovation Challenge in 2015 that allowed it to commence operations the following year. 

Businesses that operate out of the Lab today don’t just share physical space and equipment, they also collaborate on orders from suppliers and retail sales and learn from each other.

“We’re always looking at expanding our product line,” says Fawcett, “so seeing what other people are doing, and what works, is a good business aspect for us.”

When the incubator’s future looked cloudy in 2018, Seretta stepped in to save what he considers critical to developing a food-business system in Maine. Most are micro-enterprises who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford equipment or a production venue of their own. They’ve evolved into a community of small businesses with an economic impact of $5.5 million in gross annual sales and more than 50 employees, according to Seretta.

“This is important,” he says, “because we tend to overlook the value of small, individual companies.”

While about a third of current members like Plucked make packaged consumer goods for wholesale customers, most alumni are food trucks that have gone on to open bricks-and-mortar establishments. Plucked, which Kelly Towle started in her kitchen more than five years ago, joined Fork Food Lab when it opened in 2016 and has grown into the largest producer on site.

It distributes all the way down to New York to wholesale customers including Whole Foods Market and Hannaford Supermarkets. Last year when it looked like Fork Food Lab would close, Plucked acted on a Plan B and worked with a co-packer before returning to Fork Food Lab when Seretta took over.

“It was a huge blessing,” Fawcett says before going back to work.

Plucked and other members use Fork Food as a “lab” in every sense of the word, to test ideas at an early stage with each other and consumers without shouldering huge costs and other commitments that might stand in the way.

The member list is a kaleidoscope of creative ventures from the Marshmallow Cart’s boxed s’mores to Sticky Bud Farms’ Medi-Bone brand cannabis oil-infused dog treats to the brand-new Tootie’s Tempeh, which co-founders Sarah Speare and Barbara Fiore say will be the first producer in North America to package the soy-based product without using plastics. They hope to wake up what Speare calls a “sleepy” market.

About 60% of Fork Food Lab businesses are woman-owned, while 10% are led by immigrants or minorities. Those with full-time jobs build their businesses at Fork Food Lab after work and on weekends, taking advantage of flexible hours and booking prep tables in hourly blocks through an online portal. 

One of the few Fork Food Lab members that’s not a producer is Maddie Purcell’s Fyood Kitchen, which organizes social cooking competitions. Currently at six employees, Fyood hosts 10 to 15 events a month and is starting to think about its next steps, particularly for larger groups.

“We’ve now hit our stride and considering what we do when we need additional space,” Purcell says.

Tweaking the recipe

Complementing Fork Food Lab’s manufacturing profile are retail sales at its home base, through markets and other events organized by general manager Jenn Stein, as well as the Yarmouth Farmers’ Market and pop-ups at local craft breweries.

“We will definitely continue to work with both Foundation and Rising Tide on pop-ups,” Stein says, “and I would love to expand what we’re doing to a full-time snack option when we aren’t there, too.”

As Seretta focuses on finding a new production facility, he plans to introduce a structured incubation program this fall with funding from the Maine Community Foundation, Bangor Savings Bank and others. Though details are still being finalized, the plan is to offer workshops on practical aspects of running a business to two cohorts a year of six to eight.

To keep current members happy, Setetta plans to embark on the $150,000 capital raise right after Labor Day and hopes to leave membership rates unchanged.He’d also like to stay in Portland as he hunts for bigger space though with a host of non-negotiable requirements in terms of size, water access, parking and price.

“If you want to charge current retail pricing or Class A office pricing,” he underscores, “we don’t talk to you.” Regardless of where Fork Food Lab moves he’s all-in for the long term, relishing an atmosphere he calls “organized chaos.”