In this new series, we highlight accelerators and incubators that are offering assistance to food startups across the country. Here, we feature Brooklyn FoodWorks, which provides state-of-the-art kitchens to help entrepreneurs prototype, launch or grow food enterprises. We talked with Managing Director Edie Feinstein.

What type of companies do you assist?

Brooklyn FoodWorks: We work with any food company that requires a commercial kitchen space for any reason. The bulk of our members are caterers, bakers and packaged goods, but we also work with restaurants that need extra kitchen space, a school lunch business, etc. We try to be flexible and accommodate all needs.

What’s your mission in doing this work?

BF: Our mission is to empower our community of food entrepreneurs to start and grow quality brands. We want to be the premier space for food entrepreneurship both physically with our incubator location in Brooklyn (hopefully more soon), and virtually through resources to help entrepreneurs around the world. 

What attributes are you looking for in applicants?

BF: We want applicants who are willing to work hard and are serious about starting or growing a food business. As long as their production needs fit with our facility and they have all their legally required paperwork in order, we can generally work with any kind of applicant.

What one piece of advice do you have for entrepreneurs?

BF: Starting a food business is really hard! I think a lot of people are naturally excited to make their dreams a reality, but forget that a lot of time and money is necessary to make that happen. While anything is possible, it requires dedication and hustle before you’ll turn a profit.

What is your favorite project to come out of your accelerator?

BF: That’s like asking someone to pick their favorite child! We currently work with about 100 businesses, each of which are unique and doing something really cool. Several businesses are growing like crazy like Zesty Z, MetaBrew and Jalapa Jar, which is really fun to see.