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“It came about after Stacey Abrams had the whole our time is now for voting in Georgia,” Chef Kiah said – but it was more than just a political movement that sparked the initiative.
When Chef Cat started hosting chef meetups in the Baltimore area, she noticed most minority owners were having similar issues with getting their food businesses off the ground.
Oftentimes they would struggle to get a startup loan or even assemble a table to sell their product. So both chefs started brainstorming ideas for a space that could cater to everyone’s needs and thus the recipe for Our Time Kitchen was written.
“It is our time,” said Chef Cat. “It's everybody's time who's been just like sitting in the background waiting for their moment.”
The first floor of the multi-tiered commissary kitchen will be entirely food-focused, filled with cooking stations, preparation stations and spaces for owners to promote their business onsite.
Owners can rent the spaces out by the hour or buy a membership that books them 40 hours each month. Chef Kiah said this creates a "sliding scale" of options for
“Our hope for this is that we can help a lot of the smaller businesses that experience a lot of these hurdles or barriers, or red lines skip over that step,” she said.
The second and third floors are seasoned with several rentable office spaces, a conference room and social media staging area.
The building is undergoing final inspections and the duo hopes to open Our Time Kitchen by June 1 – a date that both women say cannot come any sooner.
“The heart of our mission [is] to help women and these specific target audiences,” Chef Cat said. “To see their dreams actualize is going to be pretty amazing.”
“I'm super excited to be able to create classes that focus on the things that were really hard for us throughout this process,” Chef Kiah said. “Just helping people figure out kind of the best fit for their business and how to grow.”
Updates about Our Time's opening will be posted on the kitchen's Instagram.
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