Flavors: A diversity-focused culinary incubator

Editor’s note: At the start of the year, we look at which young companies have caught our eye for hitting a milestone, bringing in funding or growing its revenue base. This company has made our list of our Startups to Watch for 2023. See them all here.

In 2019, Samia and Chris Bingham were preparing to bring Prince George’s County its first culinary incubator. But Covid-19 shut down the world and deferred the couple’s dream for another few years.

This year, however, the dream is on its way to being fully realized after Flavors received $497,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to expand its incubator programming for the next two years to food growers, farmers and entrepreneurs who are Black, Indigenous or people of color. The grant requires a $132,276 match as well.

Starting in April, Flavors will host three cohorts in a 12-week hybrid culinary business and technical training incubator, with the company’s own members receiving priority. As part of its membership program, which is separate from the formal incubator being backed by the USDA, Flavors counts 34 members, with space now for another 16 businesses. Through that membership program, it offers access to its commercial kitchen and on-site dining rooms for private events and pop-up restaurants.

The goal for the newly funded incubator, however, is to encourage home cooks and those with the vision and tenacity to create a profitable food and beverage business. By including farmers of color in the program, Flavors hopes to keep the dollars circulating through more underserved communities for longer, while it builds an e-learning platform to stretch its curriculum to more people.

“We’d love to support them, even if it’s not from the kitchen standpoint,” Samia Bingham said about local, diverse culinary entrepreneurs. “Since we have this new technical incubator program, having them become a part of that so that we can help them grow and scale. We’d like to see more Black and brown food and beverage brands.”

Its training program was forced to go virtual in 2020. At that time, Samia leaned on her expertise as a former Department of Defense contract specialist to help other food entrepreneurs navigate government certifications and added bureaucracy involved in starting a culinary business. That pandemic experience is what inspired the Binghams to use the USDA grant money toward building a web and app-based virtual education platform. This year, the plan is to formalize “The Flavors University” curriculum with workshops and subject-matter experts in accounting, law, hospitality management, human resources, staffing, marketing and branding.

The duo also plans to expand to a second Flavors location beyond its 3,000-square-foot Hyattsville home at the University Town Center.

The basics