The Columbia City Council has awarded the CoMo Cooks Shared Kitchen a $250,000 grant for a new kitchen on the Business Loop. This will help us with construction and equipment costs and provide funding for scholarships for minority-owned, food-based start ups.
At CoMo Cooks, we believe all good cooks deserve a chance to turn their recipes into reality, regardless of background, income, or status. Our mission is to provide an accessible, diverse, and affordable kitchen space for local food-based businesses and small-batch producers. CoMo Cooks helps create quality jobs and careers by providing an affordable startup space for food industry workers who have been displaced or who are shifting to a post-COVID business model.
This new shared space is part of our larger economic development plan focused on makers and small-scale manufacturers. By investing in a space and needed equipment, we can lower the barrier to entry to new business start-ups. A traditional kitchen costs between $275,000 and $500,000 to build and equip. Our clients can start a business for about $1500 plus $17/hour or less.
We're in the planning stages right now and this assist from the City of Columbia is a game changer for our efforts. Interested in learning more about our kitchen? Read about our efforts at comocooks.com and discover all our kitchen clients on our website.
