A MESSAGE FOR LA COCINA PARTNERS & SUPPORTERS
SUPPORT & CONNECT
After the summer, La Cocina will transform the Municipal Marketplace from a full-service food hall featuring seven businesses to an affordable shared-use incubator kitchen available to the larger entrepreneur community. The La Paloma space will remain open to the public with a smaller-scale cafe featuring pop ups of La Cocina businesses. We aim to retain full flexibility within the space for catered onsite events, community access, and workspace for La Cocina staff, and most importantly, an expanded business incubator program.
Over 18 years, La Cocina has steadily shifted who owns successful food businesses in the Bay Area. With community and funder collaboration and resources, La Cocina has renovated an empty post office into a vibrant community-centered space that has made a meaningful impact on the entrepreneurs, their businesses, and the Tenderloin. Our efforts in community renewal are bearing fruit and will combine with other seeds planted outside our doors to bring about positive activity.
We want to thank and acknowledge our huge community of donors and the partners who have supported La Cocina and La Cocina-born businesses to realize the following successes since we opened in April 2021 (when Covid was a “long way from over”):
Starting in the fall, La Cocina’s 44+ incubator participants will be able to rent the Marketplace kitchen on an hourly basis like they do our incubator kitchen in the Mission District. The La Paloma corner of the Marketplace (entrance at 332 Golden Gate Avenue) will feature a rotating pop up of a La Cocina entrepreneur who will sell directly to the public, gaining valuable experience as they grow their businesses and continuing to serve our neighboring community delicious, wholesome, and culturally relevant food. In addition to the kitchen and cafe, we will also continue to make the space available to partners and community members for event rentals.
This shift refocuses La Cocina on our mission of providing our full community of 84+ talented entrepreneurs with the resources they need to grow and sustain successful businesses, and we welcome your continued support of our work.
While one-third of U.S. small businesses stopped operating during Covid, La Cocina helped to protect 84+ active businesses, including the Marketplace, from permanent closure. While we keep thinking that recovery is around the corner, that corner hasn’t come. These businesses are making 30-50% of their 2019 sales due to loss of events, remote office work, inflation, labor and supply chain issues, and – namely for the Marketplace – open-air drug dealing and crime exacerbated by the pandemic. La Cocina can no longer bear the financial weight of supporting these small businesses under these conditions. Our costs remain largely fixed and high due to an aggressive depreciation schedule, the high cost of security, and staffing and operating costs uniquely related to running a 7,000-sq.-ft. Marketplace.
Meanwhile in the Mission, our 2,000-sq.-ft. commercial kitchen is serving 44 program participants, an increase as we restarted post-pandemic recruitment. The kitchen that has served us for 18 years is over capacity as we work to support late-stage businesses that are ready to graduate or exit into their own brick-and-mortar spaces. Given our current financial position and our deep commitment to our mission, we are adapting the Marketplace to best serve our organization and the community of businesses we support.
This tactical shift will allow us to refocus our limited capital and energy to support more businesses and bolster programmatic impact, lower operating costs, better protect our assets, and maintain our presence in the Tenderloin. We also see an opportunity to perform new work on our graduate services, a need that became more evident during the pandemic.
Our planned timeline is as follows:
We’ve informed current tenants of this plan and will support them in transitioning their businesses to different spaces while we work to re-permit the space to operate primarily as a shared-use commercial kitchen space with continued service to the public at La Paloma.
With regret, we have notified our service and security team members that this change requires a reduction in staff. We are thankful to these staff and security members for their exceptional service to the Marketplace and their hospitality to our community. We are committed to supporting their transition.
We are deeply grateful to the Tenderloin community for their commitment to supporting the Marketplace businesses since we opened. And we are so appreciative for all of our generous Tenderloin community, build, and funding partners who are committed to breaking down barriers for immigrant and BIPOC women small business owners. You have made our work possible in creating and maintaining a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive economic food landscape. We are excited to continue our partnership to create a community space that is enjoyed by Tenderloin residents.
For further questions, contact:
Leticia Landa
Executive Director
leticia@lacocinasf.org
Michelle Magat
Head of Advancement
magat@lacocinasf.org
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