nothin City Pitches Food Economy Future | New Haven Independent

City Pitches Food Economy Future

Lucy Gellman photo

Micro-biz owner Mubarakah Ibrahim baking bean pies at her home.

Connect local restaurants with nearby farms. Remove regulatory hurdles for food-related micro-businesses. And build an incubator kitchen and community center that caters to New Haven’s culinary entrepreneurs.

Officials proposed those and other food-related economic development initiatives at a food sector-focused meeting of the Development Commission.

Thomas Breen photos

Tuesday’s Development Commission meeting at City Hall.

Around 15 people filled a second-floor meeting room at City Hall on Tuesday morning for the commission’s regularly monthly 8 a.m. meeting.

Acting Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli, Economic Development Officer Karla Lindquist, and newly hired city Food System Policy Director Latha Swamy pitched the commissioners on how the city plans to support both the established veterans and the hungry up-and-comers in New Haven’s bustling food economy.

My grandmother’s sauce is the best sauce ever,” Piscitelli told the commissioners with a smile. But, he said, a lot of New Haveners feel the same way about their own grandmothers’ recipes. One of the city economic development team’s goals, he said, is to ensure that New Haven has the necessary jobs and training and economic infrastructure in place to allow for entrepreneurs to start their own small businesses and make their pitches directly to residents’ tastebuds.

City Economic Development Officer Karla Lindquist.

New Haven already has a robust food economy. Piscitelli said the city is home to 175 restaurants, and that the city’s food economy grosses $130 million in revenue every year. Lindquist said the city’s food-related businesses, from startups like Junzi Kitchen to established restaurants like Claire’s Corner Copia to behind-the-scenes food processors like Onofrio’s Ultimate Foods, employ nearly 25,000 people.

Lindquist said the city is working on a number of economic development initiatives to support small business people looking to enter New Haven’s food economy.

She said the city is working with local nonprofits CitySeed, the New Haven Land Trust, New Haven Farms, and CT Core on a long simmering plan to build an incubator kitchen and community center where local food entrepreneurs can rent commercial kitchen space, set up offices, and take classes on how to get their business ideas off the ground. The city has identified three different potential locations in three different neighborhoods, she said, and is currently doing its due diligence in inspecting each property.

Lindquist hopes to fund the project with a $3 million Advancing Cities grant from the bank JP Morgan Chase. Lindquist said the Economic Development Corporation of New Haven was the lead applicant for the grant, and that the other partners on the application were ConnCAT, CitySeed, New Haven Farms, New Haven Land Trust, and CT-CORE/SOON. If the city is awarded the grant in April, she said, the city will look to purchase a building for the incubator kitchen project by the end of 2019.

She said the city supports a new food business accelerator run by Collab and CitySeed, who currently provide kitchen space and business training for local budding food entrepreneurs out of CitySeed’s Grand Avenue headquarters. The accelerator is in week five of its 10 week program, Collab’s Caroline Smith told the Independent, and 15 different entrepreneurs are participating in the accelerator’s first cohort.

Lindquist said her department is also in support of an ordinance proposed by bean pie businesswoman Mubarakah Ibrahim that would reduce some of the financial hurdles currently in place for people who rent portions of commercial kitchens but still have to pay the city as if they were renting the entire space.

City Food System Policy Director Latha Swamy.

Swamy, a 33-year-old Yale Forestry School graduate who started working for the city in September, said her priorities as the city’s food system policy director are to focus on hunger and food insecurity among New Haven’s poorest residents, and to encourage new and existing food businesses in directions of environmental and economic sustainability.

One idea she plans to push is to connect existing restaurants with local supply chains, so that ingredients that New Haven restaurants used are sourced from nearby farms and distributors as opposed to from across the country or across the world.

That shortens the supply chain,” she said about using locally grown food, and it minimizes economic leakage,” meaning that food-growing jobs, food-distributing jobs, and food preparation and food service jobs are kept in and around New Haven. She said she has been attending meetings of the Board of Education’s food policy committee, and is in conversations with the public school system’s food services coordinator about getting school cafeterias to use food grown in Connecticut.

Development Commission Chair Pedro Soto (right).

Development Commission Chair Pedro Soto asked Lindquist if the incubator kitchen will cater to drink-related small businesses like microbreweries in addition to those looking to make and sell food.

The equipment needed to do bev’ is totally different,” Lindquist said about what is required in a commercial kitchen for people looking to brew and distribute beverages like beer. And the weight of water is a huge issue.” She said this particular incubator kitchen idea will be more for food than for beverage businesses.

Soto asked who will run the proposed kitchen / community center.

The city’s role is to help it launch,” Piscitelli said. But ultimately, the kitchen project will likely be taken over by a private anchor tenant.

Development Commissioner and Sandra’s Next Generation Owner Miguel Pittman.

Development Commissioner Miguel Pittman asked Lindquist and Swamy about what kind of outreach efforts the city has engaged in around these various food business initiatives. As the owner of the 33-year-old Congress Avenue restaurant Sandra’s Next Generation, he said, this is the first time he has heard of any of these proposed projects.

He said he is particularly concerned about the city’s push for local restaurants to buy locally grown and distributed ingredients. He recommended Lindquist, Swamy, and Piscitelli factor in the cost and time required for restaurants to transition from existing food supply relationships to new local ones.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the bottom line,” he said.

He suggested that the city provide some kind of financial incentive like a tax credit for existing businesses that transition their food supply networks to local sources.

The three city officials said they would take Pittman’s recommendation under advisement.

Infrastructure. Sectors. People.

City Acting Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli.

Tuesday morning’s Development Commission meeting was also Piscitelli’s first as the newly appointed Acting Economic Development Administrator. Piscitelli, who is also the city’s acting city plan director, took over the head economic development job after former Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson resigned at the end of November for a job in the private sector.

Piscitelli told the commissioners that he hopes to focus the department’s efforts on connecting residents with employment opportunities in New Haven; on creating places where the city’s economy can grow; and on supporting particular sectors, like the food industry, where New Haven already has an economic advantage over its peers because of a foundation of entrepreneurial spirit, talent, culture and history.

One thing we want to do now and throughout 2019,” he said, is to make sure we touch on all three of those different spaces in each of our commission meetings. What we’re doing in infrastructure, in places; what we’re doing in our sectors; and what we’re doing with people.”

After the meeting, Piscitelli doubled down on those commitments as his priorities for the economic development department. He said he hopes to support both large businesses and small, to bolster employment opportunities in the city particularly with the goal of lifting people out of poverty; and to build out the city’s infrastructure for sustainable economic success by acting on city development plans for Long Wharf, Mill River, and Wooster Square.

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