Despite racking up state and national laurels for its vibrant restaurant scene, Richmond hasn’t had a central hub where its food and drink entrepreneurs can congregate – until now.
This fall, Hatch Kitchen RVA will open as the city’s first large-scale food and drink business incubator, offering culinary-minded locals access to a 9,000-square-foot commercial kitchen, business development programming, storage and refrigeration, and an adaptation of the coworking model to the culinary world.
Co-founder Austin Green said Hatch will help food and beverage entrepreneurs “make less mistakes and achieve their goals faster and smarter.”
The project promises something for everyone, depending on the size and scope of the business and what it lacks. Caterers without enough initial capital to kit out a full professional kitchen might rent a workstation at Hatch. A small-batch producer of honey or hot sauce might be drawn to the facility’s storage or packaging space. A fledgling meal-delivery business might need guidance on sourcing and prepping, or insight from other members of Richmond’s culinary world who have been there and done that.
“You can sort of pick which things you want, and as your company grows, you can add more,” Green said.
Users can select one of four membership tiers – each bearing a restaurant-infused name such as “a la carte” and “prix fixe” – with varying levels of access to the space.
So far, Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches has committed to the space and will be what Green described as an "anchor" business.
No matter their membership tier, all users will have access to Hatch’s programming, mentorship opportunities and educational resources, offered in partnership with Startup Virginia thanks to the involvement of co-founder Brad Cummings. Cummings is a managing partner at Trolley Venture Partners.
Green and Cummings have been working on the Hatch concept for about nine months, Green said, after crossing paths at a food and beverage meetup organized by Cummings. They later connected with development company Lynx Ventures, which got on board with the plans and paired the concept with Clopton Siteworks, a historic 26-building complex off Maury Street in Southside that once was used as a tobacco-drying and storage site by the Blair Tobacco Storage Co. and later Philip Morris USA.
“We’d like to see this Manchester, Southside area become the food hub of the Richmond area.”
Hatch Kitchen RVA will be located in Building 2 of Siteworks, in a 20,000-square-foot space that will also include a café open to the public.
“It’s a really expensive thing to try to build something like this, and it’s not a quick-turn kind of thing to make money,” Green said.
Lynx has paid for the project’s buildout and has put down capital for equipment, costs that Green said would be folded into Hatch’s rent. Outside of the partnership, no external funds have been raised.
And just as the tobacco warehouses once were essential cogs in an industry that drove growth along the Jefferson Davis corridor, Hatch’s creators hope that the incubator will spur job creation and development in the neighborhood today.
“Historically, those were lots of jobs that aren’t there any more,” said Green. He expects Hatch to increase employment opportunities in the neighborhood, and toward that end, the venture is working on a partnership with J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College to give its culinary students some hands-on work.
While originally the pair had hoped to open Hatch Aug. 1, construction delays and a rainy summer have pushed back the timeline to the fall, Green said.
“One of the things we’d like to see is kind of how Scott’s Addition has become the beer hub,” he said. “We’d like to see this Manchester, Southside area become the food hub of the Richmond area.”
