Angela McKee
Catering and Retail Manager, La Cocina
San Francisco
La Cocina is an organization in San Francisco’s Mission District that helps aspiring, low-income cooks, most of them immigrant women, launch restaurants, catering companies and other food-related businesses. It’s also a place where culinary team building takes with a global twist.
Meetings Focus California: What is the concept behind La Cocina?
Angela McKee: The idea was to create a community “incubator” kitchen that would be accessible to people attempting to start a food-related business. Along with providing a commercial kitchen, we help them develop recipes on a large scale and use industrial equipment. We also help them with marketing and branding and in developing a customer base. They go from creating products in their apartment kitchens to launching a formal business.
MFC: What are some of your success stories?
McKee: One is Veronica Salazar, who was cooking out of her one-bedroom apartment and selling her food at farmers markets. She now owns Huarache Loco, a beautiful restaurant in Larkspur Landing with 21 employees that did over $1 million in sales last year.
There’s also Clare Keane from Ireland, who came to us with an incredible recipe for Irish shortbread cookies. She was baking cookies for families and friends and wanted to launch a business. She now runs Clairesquares, and her products are sold at Whole Foods and other retailers.
MFC: Tell us about the workshops and other culinary activities you offer for meeting groups?
McKee: The sky’s the limit for what we can do. We host team-building classes where you can rent our kitchen and we’ll bring in one of our entrepreneurs. We have 18 of them around the world, everywhere from Russia to Ethiopia. Depending on the dish you want to create, you can learn about Mexican mole or Nepalese dumplings. You can learn to make the dish and have an informal dinner.
We can also do Iron Chef-style competitions, using a secret ingredient like lemon grass. We can host anywhere from five to 40 people.
