Mid-Continent Public Library is dishing up an unconventional offering for a library — a culinary literacy center.
In addition to cooking demonstrations and educational classes, the roughly 5,900-square-foot center in Kansas City will include commercial-grade incubator kitchens to help area food-based businesses thrive.
"Right now, it seems really odd that you would build a culinary center into a library," culinary literacy center Director Xander Winkel said. "I would like to make it a personal mission of mine that in the future, maybe it's taken for granted that library systems would have that culinary literacy component built into them because of how universal food is and how it touches all those other resources that libraries offer."
Mid-Continent drew inspiration from a similar concept at The Free Library of Philadelphia but is taking it a step further with the incubator kitchens and space for food trucks to park while the owners/chefs prep and cook food before hitting the road.
The culinary center fits the library system's focus on creating special interest libraries in every county it serves. Some existing examples include the Midwest Genealogy Center in Jackson County and the Story Center in Clay County.
"Conceptually, it's a lot like destination shopping," Mid-Continent Director Steven Potter said. "There's something special there that draws you."
The culinary center will be housed inside the new Green Hills Library Center at 8581 N. Green Hills Road which is slated to open in the summer. Winkel hopes to launch programming on the culinary side by late summer or early fall.
For the cooking demonstrations, Mid-Continent isn't looking to transform a patron into America's next top chef, Potter said. Instead, it wants to cover practical topics, such as knife skills, how to make five-minute healthy breakfasts or how to eat healthy on a budget. The site also will include plant beds with vegetables and herbs to use for cooking demos.
"You begin to get the relationship back to where it needs to be with the person and the food — not the drive-thru window," Potter said.
Mid-Continent also wants to put a spotlight on Kansas City's melting pot of cultures by inviting local presenters to use food to share family stories and cultural lessons.
On the entrepreneur side, the culinary center helps fill a gap in the metro of access to commercial-grade kitchens. Library employees also want to help the food businesses flourish by arming entrepreneurs with resources and information they need, such as how to scale, set pricing and navigate regulations.
Winkel, who most recently was executive director of Independence food business development incubator Ennovation Center, said he'd accomplished his goals for the center and was ready to take on a new challenge.
"I'm an entrepreneurial-minded person, so I was very attracted to this new opportunity to take the groundwork that has been established for this idea ... and make sure this will be amazing," Winkel said. "I take the most pleasure from helping folks that maybe think that this idea or dream that they've had is not possible, whether it is a business where they've got grandma's recipe for jam or they just really enjoy cooking but they think there's too much to take on to make this really happen. The part I love the absolute most is when I can sit down with somebody and go over what it will take for them to go from that idea to an actual business and for them to make that connection of, 'Wait, I can do this. This is absolutely possible.'"
