Kitchen Incubator Launches the First Center for Culinary Entrepreneurship in Texas

HOUSTON, TX October 28, 2010 (Press-News.org) Kitchen Incubator, A Center for Culinary Entrepreneurship, opened its doors on October 16 as part of downtown's "A Night in Market Square." The first of it's kind in Texas, Kitchen Incubator ("Kitchen Inc") combines commercial kitchens for rent with a unique multi-chef cafe, cooking school and culinary event venue. An extravagant grand opening, Kitchen Inc celebrated with a full day of chef demonstrations and tastings, an edible artisan market and culinary crafts. Over 1,000 guests were estimated to have attended the event throughout the evening.

Prior to settling in Houston, founder Lucrece Borrego was an investment banker at J.P.Morgan in New York City. Inspired by late night cooking therapy in her Hell's Kitchen apartment, she quit banking to work in pastry cook at Michelin-starred Country Restaurant. A native of the Southwest, Borrego arrived in Houston later that year with the desire to make a fresh start in something, but not quite sure what. One morning, while perusing a local chef forum, she stumbled upon a rental kitchen concept under construction in Austin. Immediately, Borrego realized she'd found her calling - an innovative business marrying a passion for food with business savvy and a background in entrepreneurship. A few hours of Internet research later, Kitchen Incubator was born. The inception, initial website, and company were all formed in a single afternoon.

Borrego began the path to Kitchen Inc at just eleven years old when she started her first food business, a chain of concession stands at local sports games. "My mom was incredibly supportive. Every week she would help me procure supplies and deliver to our sites. She taught me how to manage the books and forced me to put most of my earnings in a college savings account." That savings account went untouched when Borrego received a full scholarship. At age 25, she finally began to draw upon the account to build Kitchen Incubator.

A graduate of the Nation's leading program in Entrepreneurship at Babson College, Kitchen Inc is a natural extension of Borrego's background. While at Babson, she lead a group that taught secondary school students across Boston to start their own small businesses. She received her first taste of consulting in the food industry when she was accepted to be part of a team that created a market penetration strategy for an Ecuadorian chocolate company just entering the U.S. Since then, Borrego has provided advisory services to start-up food businesses as far as London. At home in Houston, her popular "Out to Launch" Food Business Boot Camps walk new culinary entrepreneurs through everything they need to launch their business, start to finish, in a single 4-hour streamlined session.

Food businesses at Kitchen Inc vary from artisan bread to creative salads and even low calorie margarita mixes. Clients are global, bringing culinary backgrounds from as far away as Argentina and Spain. Both aspects serve to create the most eclectic culinary venue in the City.

Now that the kitchens are open and new food businesses are moving in, Borrego plans on focusing on building her advisory services and culinary event programming. "I offer start-up packages to all of our clients," says Borrego, "from graphic and web design to more complex services such as business plan writing and financial projections. The point is to provide these not only at a reasonable price, but to make sure they are performed with a thorough understanding of the local market and the food industry." Event programming at Kitchen Inc offers customized cooking parties, culinary corporate team building and a variety of cooking classes. "The immediate goals," Borrego declares "are to fill the calendar with as many cooking events as we can. We want to establish Kitchen Inc as a destination for food lovers living in and visiting Houston, and with our central location, I think that can happen very fast."

Kitchen Incubator is located at 907 Franklin St in historic downtown Houston, TX. Upcoming cooking classes and events are scheduled daily with the Cafe to debut in December, 2010 with a Holiday Edible Market. For more information, please visit http://www.kitchenincubator.com or email info@kitchenincubator.com.