Category — adventures in detroit

Some quick thoughts jotted down this afternoon

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Social movements can be difficult to observe and describe because they tend to be “fuzzy and fluid phenomena often without clear boundaries” (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Different approaches to describing social movements may focus on the way movements mobilize resources, formal social movement organizations (SMOs), the interaction of movements with external agents, or the way that movement actors construct their identities.

Regardless of the specific approach, movements can be said to be organized to some degree and can perhaps be understood best as networks or networks of networks (Diani, 2003). One of the ways of understanding these networks is through the movement’s online identity, which is becoming an increasingly important part of new social movements (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Online identity can be understood by analyzing a variety of online media created by popular media, SMOs themselves, or individual movement actors, including websites, blog posts and articles, email archives, and online listservs.

The Good Food Movement is no exception to the slippery nature of new social movements. Despite attempts by practitioners and academics to characterize, “pin-down,” and evaluate the success of the movement with comprehensive goals and indicators (see, for example the Vivid Picture Project, Soule 2008),  the movement remains a moving target; some argue that coming to a consensus on movement goals is neither a necessary nor particularly useful exercise (Hamm 2009). As Starr (2010) writes:

Movement critics (academic and activist) tend to write like restaurant reviewers, assessing the worth of a movement’s “product” (always expected already to be running at peak performance). I have recently come to see social movements are long, stuttering conversations in which conversants do not begin with the same mother tongue but over time develop both linguistic and cultural literacy. I see social movement culture functioning as a process of recognition, query, and expansion, repetitious, slow, but growing bigger in each conversation.

Online listservs offer one glimpse into this “stuttering conversation.” Despite their obvious limitations (e.g. various “digital divides” means that low-income and rural contingents might be less represented in online conversations), listservs offer one view into the way the good food movement constructs its identity through movement “frames.”

The COMFOOD listserv was founded in 1997 by Hugh Joseph, a significant leader in the good food movement. Joseph cofounded the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC), the New England Sustainable Ag Working Group (NESAWG), Boston Food and Fitness Initiative, and the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project at Tufts. Joseph was also instrumental in starting the Community Food Projects and Farmers Market Promotion Program, two USDA grant programs.

According to Joseph, “When Comfood started in 1997, it was envisioned as a straightforward national networking vehicle on community food security topics. Now it’s become a repository for most food-related issues” (Qtd in Starkman 2008).

As of November 6, 2011, the listserv had 5333 members, which may make it the largest online network of food activists and food movement organizations. In contrast, two of the most popular movement-related listservs after COMFOOD are ASFS (created in 2001 by the Association for the Study of Food and Society) with 1829 members and SANE-T (created in 1991 as a discussion group about sustainable agriculture) with 822 members.

Generally, the list is made up of practitioners, activists, academics, students, policy-makers and other individuals. A description of the listserv on the Community Food Security Coalition website explains that “Postings by any subscriber may include, but are not limited to:

• Broad or specific discussions on the issues and strategies relating to community food security; similarly, articles of general interest;
• Requests for information, contacts, or assistance on topics related to CFS research or programs;
• Requests for information about organizations working in specific areas (for example, which groups in a region are doing entrepreneurial gardening programs);
• Requests for technical assistance or related help in designing or implementing projects;
• Descriptions of new activities your organization is initiating;
• Announcements of CFS-related activities – workshops, training sessions, conferences;
• Job notices or internship opportunities”

The listserv is open for anyone to join and to post; it is unmoderated (anyone can post to the list and posts are not screened), and governed by a peer-policing system along a set guidelines.

I was particularly interested in using COMFOOD to begin to understand the role of entrepreneurship within the movement. I’m aware that there are limitations to using the COMFOOD list as a proxy for the “good food movement” as a whole, but I see this as a place to start.

The chart below shows the number of total posts and the number of posts that include the word “entrepreneur” on the COMFOOD listserve from January 2008 to June 2011. I tabulated posts at six month intervals from the COMFOOD archives. Over this time period, there were an average of 374 posts each month and 12.5 posts (or 3.3%) of posts included the word “entrepreneurship.” Overall posting volume has increased over the 42 month period, and the use of the word “entrepreneur” has followed this general upward trend.

The next step in analysis will be to read and code instances of the use of the term “entrepreneur” and “entrepreneurship” in a randomly selected sample of 50 emails over a 12-month period from Nov 1, 2011 to Oct 31, 2011.

A draft of a paper thinking through how we might apply some of the growing body of lit on social entrepreneurship to the Good Food Movement. I wrote this back in April and my thinking’s evolved quite a bit since then. I’m not sure “social entrepreneurship” is a useful category given what I’m actually trying to get at: the role of entrepreneurship (of all types) in the good food movement (and potentially in other movements).

Rather, I’m starting to rephrase  to ask: What role does entrepreneurship (whether defined as a series of processes — e.g. innovation, a stage in business development — e.g. startup, particular characteristics, etc.) have to play in food systems change? How is it conceived in the good food movement by entrepreneurs themselves? How and when is entrepreneurship discourse invoked? What are its “real” and perceived opportunities & limitations?  What does this say about the movement itself?

Check out the MindMap for some of my questions from back in September.

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Social Entrepreneurship in the Sustainable Food Movement

“The food movement […] may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn’t just about reform — it’s about revolution.” (Walsh, 2011).

1. The Rise of Entrepreneurship as a tactic in the Sustainable Food Movement

The sustainable food movement has been characterized in the popular media as a “big, lumpy tent” that coalesces around “the recognition that today’s food and farming economy is ‘unsustainable’ – that it can’t go on in its current form much longer without courting a breakdown of some kind, whether environmental, economic, or both” (Pollan, 2010). Policies and organizations that make up the movement have increasingly promoted socially and environmentally-motivated entrepreneurship as a strategy for change.

The 2008 Farm Bill created the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development Center to support food enterprises that aim to increase access to healthy, affordable, locally sourced foods to underserved communities (CSREES 2009). The USDA’s Community Food Projects Program which aims to “meet the food needs of low-income individuals [and] increase the self-reliance of communities in providing for the food needs of communities,” gives preference to proposals that “support the development of entrepreneurial projects” (NIFA 2010). A study that interviewed 37 urban and rural alternative food initiatives in California found that entrepreneurial programs dominated their activities (Allen, FitzSimmons, Goodman & Warner 2003). In the past five to ten years, a growing number of consultants have emerged who specifically support sustainable food and agriculture business development[1]. At the same time, academics like Hamm and Baron (1999) have described small-scale microenterprises as “prerequisites for sustainable food systems” (p. 57). Donald & Blay-Palmer (2006) come to a similar conclusion in their analysis of a 5-year study on food enterprises in Toronto. Based on extensive content analysis and key informant interviews, they find evidence that alternative food capitalism in Toronto offers an opportunity for change towards a more “socially inclusive and sustainable urban development model” (Donald & Blay-Palmer 2006, p.1902).

Despite growing momentum on the ground, and a general golden glow around entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, researchers have yet to critically examine entrepreneurship in the sustainable food systems movement. Herein lies an untapped opportunity to develop more effective theories on how and to what extent and in what forms entrepreneurship is a useful strategy to move us toward a more healthy, more sustainable food system. As Donald & Blay-Palmer point out,

The strength of the firm-centred approach is in its ability to understand better the complex multidimensional and multi-scalar interdependencies between, on the one hand, the internal innovative dynamics of firms and, on the other hand, the broader institutional – as well as social, environmental and cultural – setting within which we all operate. (Donald 2008)

Specifically, emerging theory about social entrepreneurship may provide a framework for developing useful hypotheses about the process by which individuals and organizations can produce social, environmental, cultural and economic transformation within the context of the goals of the sustainable food movement. As Peredo & McLean point out, if social entrepreneurship is a “promising instrument,” academic inquiry into its processes can produce knowledge for policy-makers and practitioners to inform effective legislative support, social policy, and best practices in development and management (2006, p. 57).

For the rest of the paper, click here to download the PDF.

I’m sitting in Chapelure, an adorable coffee and Asian-inspired pastry shop in East Lansing not far from MSU’s campus. It’s one of the places I often camp out on Tuesdays to do work. The coffee’s good, the staff is friendly, the music is not too distracting, the background chatter is soothing since it’s usually in Korean or Chinese, and the green tea madeleines, quiche, and egg sandwiches are scrumptious.  It’s always too hot in here, and I have a sort of irrational dislike of their grey cafe hard-cornered tables,  but I’m willing to endure those very minor points for the overall effect.

Today though, I was sitting next to a pretty blond girl dressed in professional clothes, hair tied back in a sleek ponytail. She looked like an upperclassman — too fresh-faced to be an overworked grad student, but with a certain measure of confidence. After a bit, her beau came in and sat down at the table with her. They started talking about the places where she was planning to apply for jobs.

After talking through a few other options, Beau suggested that she look into the Detroit Athletic Club — he’d heard they were hiring for a food and beverage service manager and said it was one of the top-rated clubs in the States. Her response: “Oh really, interesting… But I hate Detroit.”

His response to this: “Well you don’t have to live there. You could live outside the city.”

I know this is how many people think. I know many many people downtown and live in the suburbs — it’s impossible to ignore the very clear traffic patterns — folks coming in to the city in the morning and rushing out in the evenings – but I guess I tend to hang out with so many Detroit-die-hards and am constantly contacted by folks who are dreaming about moving into the city that I forget what this attitude looks and sounds like — the texture and color and reality of people like this…

I wanted to keep my mouth shut. I was busy and I didn’t really want to get into it with this girl who I didn’t know from Methusalah, and I wasn’t sure if I even cared to engage with someone who would say something so … silly? careless? uninformed? But I couldn’t keep quiet. I told her what I loved about living in Detroit. I told her how it was hard sometimes, but that it was a place unlike anywhere else, where creative people are engaged and participating in building the kind of city they want to see, where young adults can step up and make an impact in a way they can’t necessarily in other places…

She was open. She listened. I don’t know what she took away from the very very short interaction, but I know it made me wonder if there are parts of my life where I’m similarly blinded by perception and make statements or decisions based on flawed and incomplete assumptions. Is it possible to avoid this? Perhaps it’s all a matter of degree.

In response to a post by an inspiring friend:

I’ve been thinking about this a whole lot lately in the context of my own work and life here in Detroit. I moved here in part for a sense of *community* and connectedness and I find that many of the people close to me are drawn & remain in the city for that reason — and yet that interdependence, that rich social web, that “deep participation” is so complicated, and often a source of discomfort.

I wonder how to motivate and manage participation, collaboration, decision-making in “flatter” systems and networks…. how greater interdependence & “richness and diversity of one’s experiences and the strength of one’s social bonds,” while magical on the surface, can be exhausting in practice… the constant give/take/brokering of our values/needs/actions within our networks is a lot in itself. Given our technology as a species, we are no longer operating at the scale of tribes, so we’re negotiating an ever increasing number of connections at varying scales… not to mention the fact that different people are able/willing to “enroll” to different degrees and those who have stronger ties end up being asked to give more than they can sustain as individuals or businesses or organizations (e.g. studies on entrepreneurs with stronger family ties being alternately a blessing and a burden on the business)…

So I guess I just wonder how we deal with this complexity?

When we move out of more bureaucratic, hierarchical command-based approaches to leadership to more participatory, emancipatory, democratic, distributed/chaordic models … and when we move from linear, cumulative models of progress or development to a systems approach focusing on sustainability and resiliency, what are the new kinds of tools (technological, cognitive, emotional, social, political) that we need to manage these changes?

Network modeling? Systems analysis? Ethnography? Facilitative leadership skills?

Spirituality and religion!?

Amory Starr’s “17-point guide to graduate school” or “phds for radicals in the humanities and social sciences.”

Some incredibly sage and practical advice. I need to make my schedule less busy so I can put more of it into practice. (e.g. learn to be a plumber and find a non-academic partner… though maybe that’s less of an issue since I’m not convinced I’m going to be an academic at all )

I feel like a poor excuse for a “Radical” or “Activist”… I don’t know if I fit that role necessarily, but I’m pretty clear that I want my life to be about figuring out how to contribute to/participate in creating a more just and equitable world and specifically supporting people to feel useful and fulfilled … and I want to be able to do this without driving myself insane… in fact do it in a way that’s generative and full of joy…

Click here to read the rest.

“Activists experience the intellectual-political work of scholarship as part of the struggle. It’s a war. We have to fight. I’ve come to understand the academy as a place where I do some outreach and networking, and sometimes try to transform the institutions to be more liberatory, but for the most part my job is not part of THE struggle. This job is a way to support me and the work I want to do.”

Last week, I moved into a cozy little cottage in Hamtramck. Hamtramck is a city-island, independent-from, but completely surrounded by Detroit. I have room on the second floor near the front of the house. It’s 9-by-8 or 8-by-8-feet or so, maybe half the size of the room I lived in from last November until now, and it’s perfect.

My little Ikea futon takes up 2/3rds of the floor space.  Chocolately open-frame shelves match the dark wood doors and look lovely up against the burnt orange walls. Above the light switch, there’s a gilded Klimt-esque painting that my childhood best friend Lauren gifted me long ago; above the head of my bed, a round paper lantern with red  blossoms and black branches. The light and the bed are in perfect symmetry with the front window, which is dressed in a green-gold textured panel curtain my mom sewed as a gift for our old apartment in San Francisco. My yellow banana-tulip trashcan, picture-mobile, and bottle of Grand-Dad Whiskey round out my nest.

I’d like to install some sort of wall-mounted two-shelf-system nestled between my bed and the wall, so I can stand and work on my laptop in the mornings and enjoy that early light, or plop on a stool to dash off a letter or write in my journal before bedtime. Perhaps next to that, near the door, a system of twine and clothespins and tacks to hang pictures, letters, relics from the week: a shrine to the ordinary inspiration of everyday life. Underneath, beside the white checkerboard heating grate, might be a small space to sit and meditate on the black barley-husk cushion from my retreat in Millersburg, Ohio (on the same trip, where I had the best meal of this year).  And somewhere, mirrors, positioned, of course, for good feng shui. In the meantime, my poppy-stenciled corkboard is patiently propped up against that wall, waiting for its side of the room to be realized.

Being in this room feels nice already, like being hugged.

Being in the whole house is nice especially because of my roommates, Siri and Marcia. We had our first weekly family dinner tonight. Barley and Kimchi-freezer-soup and RSA-animate videos. So great.

Basic recipe: Mince and fry garlic in a touch of olive oil. Toss in 1/500th of our overabundant chili powder stash and fry until Siri coughs. Sprinkle in furikake because it’s there. Throw in frozen puck of wonton sauce from an old Neighborhood Noodle event. Meanwhile, in microwave, defrost gallon bag of frozen chicken stock made from thigh bones leftover from satay-making, frozen fishballs & fake crab from epic Chinese New Year party, and mysterious frozen bean curd.

Hack semifrozen stock into chunks, add to chili-sauce concoction, and patiently bring to boil. (While waiting, consider sipping some chamomile-anise tea). Cut up defrosted seafood & beancurd with kitchen scissors and add, then add 1/4 bag of leftover frozen spinach, 6 frozen pork-leek dumplings and Noodle dumplings that accompanied the sauce. Add 2 cups of homemade cabbage-carrot-daikon kimchi. Bring again to boil. Add fish sauce, sugar, and sesame oil to taste. Throw a tablespoon or so of cornstarch in a bowl, scoop out some broth, whisk it up with a fork, then slowly add back into the big pot to thicken. Bring to a boil again, then beat up a couple of eggs and drop in so they form swirly clouds. Serve atop barley.

Finish off with peaches, watermelon, good roomie musing on social change, and a good RSA-Animate classic.

Here’s another fun concept map of class today where we talked about Commodity Systems Analysis. I’m loving this Soc course on Structure and Change in the American Agrifood System. Very dedicated three-professor team with diverse backgrounds — all ask great questions and challenge students without being threatening… that plus great, clever classmates make for lively discussion.

click it to enlarge

So I’ve been struggling for the past few months with what it is that I’m actually going to study in my dissertation.

We have some pretty awesome plans in the works with the Metro Detroit Good Food Entrepreneurs. I’m excited about the business plan bootcamp we’re putting on in January, February and March… and website development and the idea of developing training/resource modules around starting a good food business in Detroit, and a mentorship program, and networking together commercial kitchens, and all kinds of other good stuff. And supposedly I have IRB approval to start my research with the group and approved consent forms and all that, but my questions are still murky (or perhaps myriad is a better “m” word to describe where I’m at… myriad, multitudinous…)

So I’d tried talking it out and I’d tried writing it out in a linear fashion and neither of those things were working very well, so I decided to make a little mindmap. This is still a bit confusing. As you can see, lines cross each other every which-way, but I think it’s helping me come to some sort of peace about how different elements are connected, and what needs to be put to one side or demoted to a secondary or tertiary focus.

click it to make it bigger!

The essay below represents a mid-point in the evolution of my research to where it is today. When I first moved to Detroit to live and work and pursue a graduate degree, I thought I’d focus on alternative food distribution/delivery models that were getting produce and other healthy foods directly to consumers in Detroit: things like the Fresh Food Shares, Healthy Corner Store initiatives, and mobile produce trucks. Folks in town who were doing the work wanted more information on which of these models were most effective and which if any could become financially self-sustaining.

The evaluation project I was going to join never really panned out, so I continued working on my own little project related to food distribution and in the meantime, started a small project-slowly-evolving-into-an-enterprise which put me smack in the middle of a whole bunch of folks who were trying to start food businesses in Detroit. Lots of these people were not starting businesses just to create something or to make money or to have more freedom or to fill a need for some specific yummy food they couldn’t get (some primary reasons entrepreneurship lit mentions), but also because they thought of their business as a means of some kind of social change or transformation.

Soon all I could think about was how to support these businesses. I wanted to be in Detroit and I wanted to eat good gelato and bagel and pickles and I also wanted to see what other kinds of cool things these businesses could make happen. Could they really support more urban market farmers? Reinvent Jewish culture? Increase awareness about healthy eating and our bountiful SE Michigan foodshed? Could they do these things while making a profit?

I started to wonder, what resources were out there to help people like me and these others get started? Detroiters were super supportive and there were ostensibly resources in town for small businesses and entrepreneurs, but nothing seemed like a good fit. What was missing? I started looking into kitchen incubators and then began to wonder — how effective are they in actually getting businesses off the ground? Food businesses are fun and trendy, and they provide opportunity for self-employment and self-determination for folks who might not start other kinds of businesses (see, for instance, how involved immigrants are in a the retail food economy in major cities), but can spending on incubators be justified? How and when?

I still think these are interesting and important questions, but a few things happened that changed the directions of my questions. More on that to come… for now, some thoughts on incubators…

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Small business incubators have become increasingly popular economic development tools over the past 25 years. More recently, groups focused on community development and local food systems have developed kitchen-based incubators to foster food processing and specialty food entrepreneurs.  These spaces generally provide shared-use commercial kitchen facilities, marketing, operations, and technical training, and opportunities for networking and cooperation on logistical details like procurement or distribution.

While research on small business incubators is relatively robust, little formal research has been conducted to assess the economic and social impact of kitchen incubators, or to come to conclusions about factors for their success. Most of the existing literature exists in the form of case-studies, feasibility studies (e.g. Sakakeeny, 2007), technical guides (e.g. Wold & Sumner, 2002), or project reports to funders, and most of this literature tends to focus on particular kitchens within particular contexts.

This dearth of academic literature make sense for a variety of reasons: as of 2007, UK researcher Benjamin Dent (2008) identified only 57 kitchen incubators in the US. Many of these were still within the first few years of operation, and they varied in terms of location, size, services, organizational structure, and other criteria. Thus, the sample has been small and diverse, so it may not have been practical to develop generalized conclusions. Also, the impact of kitchen incubators can be difficult to measure because many espouse explicit social goals including poverty alleviation, “empowerment” or quality-of-life, in addition to economic development goals (Sakakeeny, 2007).

However, as demand for locally produced goods continues to grow (King, et. al., 2010), it appears that local communities and organizations are increasingly looking to kitchen incubators as a tool for local economic and local food systems development. As of October 2010, the University of Wisconsin Extension’s Food Business Incubator Network lists sixteen projects in Wisconsin alone. As private organizations and policy-makers consider investments in local food systems work, it will become more important to measure and describe the potential impact of kitchen incubators relative to other tools, as well as outline the internal and external factors that determine the success of a project.

There are a number of elements to this question, but one in particular stands out in current literature:  to what extent is the success of a kitchen incubator dependent on demand for local specialty products in the region and a marketing and distribution system, and to what extent can incubators take a role in helping to develop this market demand and distribution infrastructure?

An Iowa State University study of 3,500 consumers in the US showed that consumers are willing to pay a premium for place-based products regardless of origin, and that they are willing to pay even more for products from their state (DeCarlo, Frank, & Pirog, 2005). This study did not analyze the data by region, but it would not be surprising to find disparities between individual consumers’ willingness to pay. Despite national trends, research makes it clear that overall demand for local food varies both by region and by the product in question (King, et.al., 2010). Would these differences affect the success of a kitchen incubator project? In the evaluation of a pilot incubator project in New Hampshire, Sakakeeny (2007) notes that “an incubator will not succeed if the tenants do not have a product that will sell or a market to sell to” (p.46). This seems like common sense, but to what extent can an incubator overcome an ostensible “lack” of a market by making connections with local retailers and helping entrepreneurs develop their brands?

Similarly, what role does distribution infrastructure have to play in the success of kitchen incubators? According to Dent’s (2008) survey of 57 incubator managers, distribution is the most significant for micro-scale food enterprises, even before access to facilities. The Economic Research Service’s report on local food supply chains sought to understand local food supply chains in order to identify barriers to expanding markets for local foods (King, et.al., 2010). The existence of adequate distribution infrastructure and logistics may be intimately tied to the size of the market for locally produced goods, and both may play a major role in whether or not a particular kitchen incubator is successful. In order to better direct public dollars and to help guide the development of incubator kitchens, we should examine the role of market demand and distribution systems in the success of existing kitchens, and also seek to understand to what extent kitchens were able to play a role in that success by actually developing demand and/or distribution capabilities.

Works Cited

DeCarlo, T.E., Frank, V.J., & Pirog, R. (2005, October). Consumer Perceptions of place-based foods, food chain profit distribution, and family farms. (Report prepared for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture). Ames, IA: Iowa State University College of Business,.

Dent, B. (2008). The Potential for Kitchen Incubators to Assist Food Processing Enterprises. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business. 6(3). 496-511.

King, R. P., Hand, M.S., DiGiacomo, G., Clancy, K., Gomez, M.I., Hardesty, S.D., Lev, L., & McLaughlin, E.W. (2010, June). Comparing the Structure, Size, and Performance of Local and Mainstream Food Supply Chains, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.

Sakakeeny, Kria (2007, April). The Common Kitchen: A Culinary Incubator. Unpublished Masters Thesis.  Manchester, NH: School of Community Economic Development, Southern New Hampshire University.

Wold, C. and Sumner, H. (Eds.). (2002). Establishing a Shared-use Commercial Kitchen, Revised 1st ed., United States: NxLevel Education Foundation.

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A (partially) annotated bibliography

Case Studies, feasibility studies, and technical reports on kitchen incubators

Buckley, J., Peterson, H. C., & Bingen, J. (2011). The Starting Block: A Case Study of an Incubator Kitchen. Michigan State University.

A case-study of the Starting Block incubator kitchen facility in Hart, Michigan, based on 15 semi-structured interviews with incubator staff, clients, and community partners. The case-study covers kitchen startup, general operations and some detail about the participating businesses.

Clark, S., Howard, H., & Rossi, V. S. V. (2009). Exploratory Study for a Kitchen Incubator in West Memphis, Arkansas. University of Arkansas: Clinton School of Public Service.

This exploratory study was conducted by a team of students from the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas in order to provide background data for a local development agency to understand the potential benefits and risks of establishing a kitchen incubator in West Memphis, AR. The report mostly draws from technical literature on establishing incubator kitchens in order to provide recommendations for further project development. The recommendations do an excellent job of drawing together best practices from multiple technical sources, many of which are provided in the appendices. Unfortunately, none of the recommendations include an academic citation, likely because little academic research has been done to demonstrate the effects of these best practices on success of a kitchen. The report does not direclty address the distinction between a rurally-based and urban-based incubator kitchen. .

Dent, B. (2008). The Potential for Kitchen Incubators to Assist Food-Processing Enterprises. International Journal of Enterpreneurship and Small Business, 6(3), 496-512.

Dent’s peer-reviewed article appears to be the only academic study in the literature which surveys a large sample of incubators in the US (57). The author uses data from the survey and financial projections of a “model incubator” to determine the financial feasibility and potential impact of a rural-based incubator in the UK. The study determines that most kitchen incubators do not break even on operating costs, do not tend to attract farmer-clients, and often attract clientele who are not interested in expanding beyond the capacity of a shared-use kitchen space. According to Dent, incubators may be more likely to achieve financial sustainability in urban areas where the concentration of entrepreneurs is greater and there is greater potential for a diverse clientele base, or if they employ alternative strategies like co-packing arrangements to increase profitability. The author concludes by noting that incubators must be seen as one part of a complex food system. They must take into account marketing and distribution challenges in addition to business planning and capital access, and economic and financial indicators may not be sufficient measures of the true impacts of an incubator.

Hall, E. (2007). Measuring the Economic Impact of the Nonprofit Small Business Incubator: A Case Study of Nuestra Culinary Ventures. Masters thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Urban Studies Program (Senior Seminar Papers).

This undergraduate senior thesis attempts to analyze the economic impact of a non-profit urban incubator kitchen in Boston, Massachusetts. The researcher began the study as an intern at the incubator, Nuestra Culinary Ventures (NCV), and developed her research questions based on her experiences there. Analysis is based on six months of financial statements and survey results from 17 current incubatees and three former program participants. The study concludes that NCV is financially “unsustainable” because it does not generate enough income to cover operating expenses and recommended that NCV either close or seriously overhaul its program structure to more effectively meet its goals of creating employment opportunities and economic benefit to local residents. It does not explicitly generalize these results to apply to other non-profit kitchen incubators, but does tend to employ strong polarizing rhetoric that implies that kitchen incubators might be poor choices as tools for economic development. While the study’s analysis seems accurate, it falls outside the scope of the paper to explore the reasons for NCV’s failure to achieve its goals. Besides a perfunctory nod to measuring the effect of the incubator on ‘”diversity,” the paper also does not go into metrics beyond a few direct economic measures: full-time-equivalent jobs created, sales, expenses versus income, and finally cost-per-job-created. The limitations of the study speak to the need for a mixed methods approach to research on kitchen incubators. The recommendations presented at the end of the study (increasing staff, diversifying the base of entrepreneurs, improving the screening process, and expanding NCV’s network) give useful clues for areas of future research.

Hollyer, J., Castro, L., Salgado, C., Cox, L., Hodgson, A., Thom, W., Yurth, C., Kam, P., & Kwok, M. (2000). Some Costs and Considerations for Establishing an Entrepreneurial Community Shared-Use Kitchen or “Test-Kitchen Incubator”. Cooperative Extension Service, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Sakakeeny, K. (2007). The Common Kitchen: A Culinary Incubator. Masters thesis, School of Community Economic Development, Southern New Hampshire University.

This report details the background, objectives, design and implementation of a pilot culinary incubator at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) and provides recommendations for the continuation of the program. The author, a Masters student in community economic development at SNHU, was not only a researcher, but also one of the three main project organizers. The study does not attempt to generalize its findings to other incubator situations, but is intended to inform local stakeholders. The most useful sections of the report are the detailed descriptions of the management challenges associated with a part-time incubator staff and the in-depth profiles on each of the incubatee firms. Different from other case studies on kitchen incubators, Sakakeeny also introduces the concepts of place-making and cultural development and cultural education as outcomes of culinary incubators beyond traditional economic metrics.

Wold, C., Sancho, M. F., Schubert, K., Wojtacha, J., & Hobbs, L. (1997). Establishing a Shared-Use Commercial Kitchen: A NxLeveL Guide.

This manual, edited by Cameron Wold is the “bible” of best practices for establishing a kitchen incubator. Wold has over 25 years of experience providing technical assistance for the establishment of shared-use commercial kitchens in a variety of settings. Cited in nearly every feasibility study and evaluation of community kitchens, this book provides a comprehensive guide to setting up a kitchen incubator from developing a local project team to writing a budget to kitchen design, all the way through to marketing specialty food products. The full second half of the manual is dedicated to appendices which include practical tools like sample tenant application forms and kitchen rules, a case study and sample feasibility study from the Denver Enterprise Center Kitchen Incubator, and a “primer” on the specialty foods market. The report does not draw from academic research, but rather from the lived experience of the six authors.

Impact Analysis, performance evaluation, and best practices for business incubators

Bearse, P. (1998). A Question of Evaluation: NBIA’s Impact Assessment of Business Incubators. Economic Development Quarterly, 12, 322-333.

Hackett, S. M. & Dilts, D. M. (2004). A Real Options-Driven Theory of Business Incubation. Journal of Technology Transfer, 29(1), 41-54.

Lyons, T. S. (1990). Birthing Economic Development: How effective are Michigan’s Business Incubators. Center for the Redevelopment of Industrialized States, Social Science Research Bureau, Michigan State University.

Markley, D. M. & McNamara, K. T. (1994). A Business Incubator: Operating Environment and Measurement of Economic and Fiscal Impacts. Purdue University: Center for Rural Development.

In this study, Markley and McNamara evaluate the impacts of a traditional business incubator in the Midwest by means of personal interviews with the incubator tenants and analysis of each firm’s financial data. The incubator studied was not a kitchen incubator, so the actual numbers were not relevant to my research; however, the authors outline a simple, useful methodology for calculating direct and indirect economic benefits and state tax revenue benefits for the incubator’s operation. The study does not attempt to compare the local economic situation with and without the incubator, but rather uses the economic impact analysis to compare the cost of creating jobs through the incubator with the “cost per job associated with the recruitment of major manufacturing plants.”

Voisey, P., Gornall, L., Jones, P., & Thomas, B. (2006). The Measurement of Success in a Business Incubation Project. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 13(3), 454-468.

The authors of this study employ a single case study methodology to evaluate a business incubator project in Wales with the explicit goal of establishing a more well-rounded set of metrics than the typical “statistical outputs” used to measure regional economic development projects. Based on a review of the existing literature on business incubators, and responses from 30 incubatees, the research concludes that “soft outcomes” such as improved business skills, increased networking, and positive PR should be taken into consideration in addition to the hard measures of profitability, enterprise growth and graduation rates. The study provides an excellent discussion of the difference between “hard output,” “soft outcome,” “hard outcome” and “distance travelled” metrics and includes an excellent graphic that lays out examples of metrics within each of these categories as they apply to business incubators.

I wrote this paper for a class on participatory action research that I took last semester — it ranks among my favorite courses. Rather than focus on practice or methods, this was a review of different strands of participatory research, action research and community-based research, with an emphasis on understanding the similarities and  differences between different approaches situating our own approaches and philosophies.

The concept of “validity” is a tricky one for action researchers and something I’ll continue to grapple with as I embark on my dissertation. I do the work that I do because I’m part of a movement that wants to change our current food system to be more diverse, locally-integrated, environmentally resilient, and equitable. I happen to think that a combination of informed action/experimentation, and rigorous documentation/analysis/evaluation is part of the way to effect that change. But what makes this “research” research? By what criteria should my “results” be judged and deemed “valid”?

Written for a “mini-paper” reading response 4/13/11:

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The concept of validity in social science research originally developed within a positivist paradigm. Since the advent of new approaches to human inquiry that challenge positivist assumptions about the nature of reality and the purpose of research (such as critical theory, constructivism, and participatory research), the concept of validity has stretched beyond its original meaning.
The positivist approach to inquiry assumes truth is observable and testable, that the purpose of research is to explain and predict, and that social science should be objective, value-free, and clearly separated from practice. Within this mode of thinking, asking about the validity of research means asking whether our tests or methods accurately measure “whatever it is that is supposed to be measured” (p. 343, Wolcott, 1990). On the other hand, “transgressive” forms of validity like the crystalline or situated validity embraced by researchers like Laurel Richardson and Patti Lather, seek instead to intentionally “problematize reliability, validity and truth” (Richardson qtd in Guba & Lincoln, 2005). In an article examining both contradictions and blurring between old and new research paradigms, Lincoln and Guba (2005) suggest that in all cases, validity seeks to address the question:

Are these findings sufficiently authentic (isomorphic to some reality, trustworthy, related to the way others construct their social worlds) that I may trust myself in action on their implications? More to the point, would I feel sufficiently secure about these findings to construct social policy of legislation based on them? (p. 205)

Lincoln and Guba (2005) separate validity into two parts: validity of method and validity of interpretation. They posit that traditional positivist definitions of validity like the kind described by Litwin (1995) in “How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity,” deal mostly in the “rigor in the application of method” (Lincoln & Guba, 2005, p. 205). While critical theorists, constructionists, and other “new-paradigm” researchers are not exempt from questions about their methods of observation, they also grapple with questions of how, what, and why we interpret observations.

Wolcott’s 1990 article, “On Seeking – and Rejecting – Validity in Qualitative Research,” is an early example of a struggle to look beyond a concept of validity tied to methodological rigor or procedure and get at valid interpretation, or rigor “in ascribing salience to one interpretation over another and for framing and bounding an interpretative study itself” (Lincoln & Guba, 2005, p. 205). Wolcott starts off describing the tactics he employs to “satisfy the implicit challenge of validity” and “not get it all wrong” (1990, p. 347). He then pushes beyond the concept of validity tied to criteria like internal consistency and the capacity to predict, and proposes instead that ethnographic research should seek to understand social structures that we humans construct. In 1990, Wolcott calls this a ‘rejection’ of validity, but fifteen years later, Lincoln and Guba describe how other new-paradigm researchers have chosen to stretch rather than reject the concept of validity and ask not only about what constitute valid methods of measurement and observation, but also what constitutes valid interpretation. “Can our cocreated constructions be trusted to provide some purchase on some important human phenomenon [what Wolcott might call understanding]?” (2005, p. 206)

The shift in focus from methodological validity to questions about interpretive validity is ultimately rooted in a shift in the ontology and epistemology of new modes of social science. In order to determine whether research findings are authentic to ‘reality’ and to know whether and how our findings engage with ‘reality,’ we must first understand how we view the nature of reality (ontology) and how we acquire knowledge about this reality (epistemology). For example, foundationalists who believe in a transcendental reality might say “real phenomena necessarily imply certain final, ultimate criteria for testing them as truthful” (Lincoln & Guba, 2005, p. 204). On the other hand, antifoundationalists who refute the idea of a truth separate from human perception might argue “agreement regarding what is valid knowledge arises from the relationship between members of some stake-holding community” (Lincoln & Guba, 2005, p. 204). In the latter case, what is valid must always be negotiated because reality only exists as it is constructed between people.

Certain definitions of what is valid go beyond questions about the nature of reality and knowledge into the purpose and ethical obligations associated with inquiry (axiology).

When social inquiry becomes the practice of a form of practical philosophy – a deep questioning about how we shall get on in the world and what we conceive to be the potentials and limits of human knowledge and functioning – then we have some preliminary understanding of what entirely different criteria might be for judging social inquiry. (Lincoln and Guba, 2005, p. 206)

Ontological, educative, catalytic and tactical validities, for example, ask about the outcome of inquiry; specifically, increased awareness or increased capacity or tendency for individual or collective action. These types of validity play a major role in participatory research and action research because these modes of inquiry tend to make social transformation or change their explicit end-goal. Here what research is ‘valid’ becomes less about what mirrors reality and more about what has the capacity to change, form or shape reality.

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Works Cited:

Guba, Egon G. and Lincoln, Yvonna S. 2005. Paradigmatic Controversies, Contradictions, and Emerging Confluences. In: Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Edition, edited by N. Denzin and Y Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Litwin, M.W. 1995. How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity. In The Survey Kit, edited by Arlene Fink. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Wolcott, H. F. 1994. On Seeking – and Rejecting – Validity in Qualitative Research. Chapter 11, in: Transforming Qualitative Data: Description, Analysis, and Interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.