Kitchen incubator helps startup food companies

ST. LOUIS -- Rick Scharper was disgusted with the processed taste of frozen pizza, so he started making his own. First he made them for his family, then for his friends and now he and his wife, Meredith, are making 1,500 a month doing business as Dogtown Pizza.

Heather Wessels' goal in life is to make people happy. So now she's hand-making her Ka-ka-o brand of lavender vanilla truffles, chocolate-dipped caramels and marshmallow pies that would make the crankiest person smile.

Sine Berhanu's black beluga lentil dip has such a following that she couldn't keep up with the demand. So now, at age 63, she's launched her own business to deliver the Azeefa dip to area markets.

While these foods have nothing in common, their creators do. They and seven other fledgling companies share subsidized kitchen space inside a St. Louis Enterprise Center that gives them an otherwise unthinkable shot at success.

"It's a godsend," said Berhanu about the midtown facility on Washington Avenue.

Although the businesses are young, some only a few months old, several already have significant contracts to produce items for restaurants, grocery stores and specialty markets, said Jan DeYoung, executive director of the St. Louis Enterprise Centers. Also, seven of the 10 have been invited to participate in the Best of Missouri Market in October at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The kitchen "incubator" project started at the site in the 3800 block of Washington Avenue about two years ago as part of a program for startup companies sponsored by the city of St. Louis and the St. Louis County Economic Council. The shared-kitchen program, in which entrepreneurs can rent at below-market costs for about four years, is the only one of its type in Missouri, DeYoung said. The rent is based on a formula that includes the amount of space used, the entrepreneur's income stream and the stage of development.

"It would be unlikely these businesses could start up without it," DeYoung said.

"And who knows if we have the next Panera Bread there?" asked Jack Cancila, an adviser to the kitchen incubator project and coordinator of St. Louis University's Hospitality and Food Service Management program at the School for Professional Studies.

Not everyone is eligible for the kitchen incubator program. Administrators look for entrepreneurs who make a first-rate product and hope to grow into employers.

"We're looking for the story and the passion behind the company," DeYoung said. "This is not a lifestyle business, it's not about just creating a job for yourself. You have to be serious about growing the business and hiring people in the community."

For Wessels, the chocolate-making business grew out of a hope to make people feel better. When she was a child, she wanted to be a doctor. As she grew older, she decided social work was a better path. But when she was halfway through a social work masters program, she realized she just couldn't do it for the next 40 years.

"The thing I love about chocolate is that it makes people so happy," she said. "It's not like I'm curing cancer, but it's creating endorphins."

Several members of Wessels' family have been in the candy business, and Wessels, 27, learned to make caramel and divinity from her grandmother. "I have such a passion for it, it's gotten into my blood," she said.

While Wessels makes traditional treats, she also likes to create "edgier" chocolate truffles with such flavor combinations as anise pepper, kumquat rosemary and chile vanilla.

"It's so fun to have the flexibility to try new things and to expand people's ideas of eating," she said.