All in a Name

As we speak, our home is our current work environment, but only for the next two weeks.  Most folks going into the food service industry need a whole lot of money.  With a need for money, you either need to be independantly wealthy, have investors, or a willingness to put yourself in a whole lot of debt.  Four years ago, living off a nature center employee's salary with a new babe, knowing the percentage of food service businesses that fail, we were not in a position for any of these things.  But determined to see this thing through we preservered out of our home.  We started with four members for the first month (October 2007), they spread the word and the next month their were10 (8 of whom are still members today!), and within three months we had 15 members.  By the end of the school year 25.
In the beginning Ben got up at 4 am to cook until 9.  I woke with Asher and then went to my full time job and then returned home for a long lunch and pack out.  Ben took me back to work and Asher napped during deliveries.  It was all a nice package until the prep time on Monday and the timing on Tuesday all had a greater need.  It was a great place to be, I quit my job, we supplemented our income with restaurant work and then summer took our members on vacation.  But then September came around and members recruited more members and we were happily cooking for 30 people every week.  Until that is the economy crashed and people had to make some cuts...
There have been membership ups and downs, but we have never doubted what we started.  All aspects of it seemed too good to be true, but here is was our life.

One of the best things about our business model is that we buy the food we know we need, we cook for the members we know we have.  The only scraps of food leftover are the peels and seeds, all of which our chickens love and use as fuel for eggs and turn into remarkable compost for our gardens.  We finally overcame the part of restaurant work that had us feeling the worse about it: Food Waste.  Unlike a restarant, we know how many people are "walking in the door."  Unlike a restaurant, we only buy the food for the meals we are going to cook, we don't have to have all the ingrediants on hand for what people may order.  And unlike a personal chef, we are affordable.
But unlike a restaurant, we can't advertise, we keep a low profile.  When asked to do interviews for local newspapers, we had to decline.  You see, we walk that line between certified and non.  We have members who pay for a service like a personal chef, but we aren't in their home, we are in ours.
We did have the sense to remodel our home kitchen into a professional one with huge sinks, a commercial range and refridgeration and easy to clean surfaces. 

Luckily our days of home work are numbered, but in homage to the place where we began knowing that we were on the verge of something great, we have named our Community Supported Kitchen after our street address of our first kitchen and as we look towards the future the area code that we hope to succeed beyond our hopes.

608

Starting off as a personal joke, our imaginary speakeasy restaurant was called Six 0h! Ate, but now it is who we are about to truly become: The 608 Community Supported Kitchen.  Thanks for stopping in to preview the start of our journey.