A place to cook, process, store, develop, and package for your small business seems too good to be true? Believe it or not, such a place does exist. Shared commercial kitchens are an ideal way to take your start-up food production business to a larger customer base. 

Running your own agri-food business is an incredibly rewarding venture. 

Your label is the face of your product: it’s what catches a consumer’s eye and entices them to pick up your product and give it a try. As a natural food entrepreneur you’re passionate about the product you make and you probably have some top-notch ideas for your label. 

As an entrepreneur in the organic food production industry, it’s all on you to hustle hard, make connections, and market your business. And, of course, networking is a key tool to help you do all of that.

If you run a farm-to-table business, chances are most of your operations take place on a farm. You work hard, and farm life is great — the outdoors, early mornings, physical activity, and doing what you love, all beat the 9-5 suit-and-tie office grind — until it’s time to process all that food you’ve harvested. If you don’t have a commercial kitchen or food storage space on site, farm life can begin to feel a little stressful.

You’ve established yourself as a local farmers’ market favourite. Now you’re ready to take the next step to a larger operation. You want to see the products from your small-batch food production business in local supermarkets. You’re passionate, motivated, and you have great ideas for business expansion. But your business can’t thrive on passion alone. 

You run a local food production business so you understand the value of the “Support Local” movement. Supporting local businesses puts money and jobs back into your community — and adds character. It also generates capital for more local businesses. If you’re interested in supporting local businesses with your small food production start-up, here are some tips.

There's more to the beverage and food production than just producing good, local, fresh food and drink (though that is, of course, important); it's still a business with practical realities. At Ontario Agri-Food Venture Centre (OAFVC) we have more than just a commercial kitchen to meet the needs of a small food production business, offering services from packaging your product to marketing and business consulting.

Congratulations! Your customer base is expanding and you’re filling larger and larger orders. Finally, all the hard work and sacrifice is paying off. But with bigger volume food production comes bigger volume problems, like: how do you know when to move your small-batch food production to a commercial kitchen?