BayPoint Benefits is excited to announce our non-profit of the month – La Cocina, Cultivating Food Entrepreneurs. As we enter the holiday season our minds drift towards delicious festive foods. What are you going to have on your Thanksgiving table? What is your holiday appetizer going to be? Do you want to learn how to cook “Pan de Muerto”? You can with La Cocina! Join Chef Luis Vazquez from Chaac Mool on October 26th and celebrate the ancient and delicious tradition. Sign up here – http://pandelmuertocookingclass.eventbrite.com/?ref=ebtn
La Cocina is San Francisco’s first Incubator Kitchen. La Cocina was designed to reduce the obstacles that often prevent entrepreneurs from creating successful and sustainable small businesses. By providing shared resources and an array of industry-specific services, business incubators ensure small businesses can succeed. La Cocina follows this model by providing commercial kitchen space and technical assistance to low-income entrepreneurs who are launching, growing and formalizing food businesses.
Let us tell you more about La Cocina:
La Cocina’s Mission Statement
The mission of La Cocina is to cultivate low-income food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses by providing affordable commercial kitchen space, industry-specific technical assistance and access to market opportunities. We focus primarily on women from communities of color and immigrant 
communities. Our vision is that entrepreneurs will become economically self-sufficient and contribute to a vibrant economy doing what they love to do.
The Story of La Cocina
La Cocina (pronounced la co-see-nah, meaning “The Kitchen” in Spanish) was inspired by its current home, San Francisco’s Mission District. It is located in an ethnically diverse and economically vulnerable neighborhood that thrives in part due to the many small informal businesses that serve the community. As is the case in many cities, food lies at the heart of this community, and you don’t have to look far to find hidden entrepreneurs in the kitchens of many homes.
Recognizing a need to formalize these food businesses and the opportunity created when you turn inconsistent and illegal home restaurants into sustainable legal businesses, organizations like Arriba Juntos, The Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment and The Women’s Foundation of California and one 
very special and visionary anonymous donor created La Cocina. La Cocina is both the space-a modern building and commercial kitchen that has been featured in Metropolis Magazine—and the program—an innovative business incubator that supports a growing roster of small businesses.
La Cocina was born out of a belief that a community of natural entrepreneurs, given the right resources, can create self-sufficient businesses that benefit themselves, their families, their community, and the whole city. The food that has come out of this kitchen since 2005 reflects that aspiration and, quite simply, tastes amazing.
Breaking Down Barriers
The food industry has a notoriously high cost of entry: the fees for licensed and insured commercial kitchen space, the start-up costs to open a restaurant, the standards set to compete for shelf space at specialty stores and large retailers. Such restrictive barriers to entry often discourage burgeoning food entrepreneurs from launching a business. Those who do face an uphill battle for success in an overwhelming and incredibly crowded marketplace.
La Cocina provides a platform for these motivated entrepreneurs to hone their skills and successfully transition into the highly regulated and competitive food industry.
For more information on La Cocina and their programs check out the website: http://www.lacocinasf.org
