La Cocina

Working class women of color and immigrant women, many of whom are skilled cooks, have traditionally experienced a comparative lack of opportunities in the formal job market, including in the formal foodservice industry. Being excluded from the mainstream job market and the formal food industry has prompted many low-income women to start their own, informal food enterprises. These women, who sell homemade food on the streets or out of their homes, have learned to make their businesses profitable and sustainable on a very small scale. However, as low-income entrepreneurs they face large risks and significant barriers to entry into the formal food industry due to insufficient financial and social capital. These and other barriers deprive working class food entrepreneurs from the opportunity to build assets through formalizing their businesses. This underscores the need for an environment, such as La Cocina, where working class food entrepreneurs can access the resources they need in order to survive the crucial start-up phase and become functioning parts of the local economy. La Cocinas incubator program offers affordable commercial kitchen space and hands-on technical assistance to low-income and immigrant women entrepreneurs who are launching, growing and formalizing food businesses. Creating real and lasting economic change.