Model and Strategy
La Cocina is a culinary business incubator that cultivates food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses. Based in San Francisco’s Mission District, La Cocina focuses primarily on women from communities of color and immigrant communities. All participants come from low- to very low-income backgrounds and start businesses with less than $5,000 in capital. Many of these talented working-class, BIPOC and immigrant women entrepreneurs have built informal food enterprises that are profitable and sustainable on a micro scale, but face significant risks and barriers to entry to the formal food industry.
In a highly competitive economy, La Cocina’s small business incubation program reduces those barriers and provides a structured, attainable pathway to business ownership, living-wage work, job creation, and economic autonomy. The program includes:
- Industry-specific technical assistance in the areas of marketing, production, operations, finances, and sales.
- Affordable commercial kitchen space for entrepreneurs to grow their businesses’ sales.
- Mentorship, internship, and education opportunities through partnerships with local chefs and food professionals—connecting participants to the industry in a way that elevates their perceptions and builds their culinary social capital.
- Access to market opportunities: starting with catering—where an entrepreneur can create profit, practice menus, and refine their brand—and moving to recurring sales opportunities like farmer’s markets, pop-ups, or meal delivery.
- A network of like-minded business owners.
Upon graduation—when an entrepreneur has reached operational or economic self-sufficiency—La Cocina works with them on an exit plan, helps to locate and negotiate agreements for a brick-and-mortar space or co-packing and production facility, and continues to work with the business for up to three years to ensure stability. At that point, the entrepreneur might rejoin La Cocina as a mentor for other businesses, or the organization’s Board of Directors. Years after completing the incubator program, some graduates continue to receive as-needed technical assistance.
La Cocina currently works with 88 food business owners around the Bay Area. In the next two years, they aim to recruit 8-10 new businesses to the incubator program annually; graduate 3-4 entrepreneurs per year; and broker internships with top-tier restaurants for five entrepreneurs per year.
Impact
La Cocina’s primary goals are to increase inclusivity in the food industry, offer equitable opportunity for living-wage work and asset generation, and promote true economic sustainability for local entrepreneurs, especially working-class women of color and immigrant women.
Since its founding in 2005, La Cocina has launched 130+ food businesses and 43 brick-and-mortar locations throughout the Bay Area. La Cocina entrepreneurs have generated $16MM+ in annual revenue and created 250+ jobs. Graduates have received dozens of industry and media accolades, including Time Magazine's “World’s Greatest Places,” San Francisco Chronicle’s Top Restaurants, Eater’s Restaurant of the Year, and James Beard nominations. In 2023 alone, La Cocina:
- Supported 78 active food businesses
- Provided access to almost $600,000 in catering, retail, and event revenue, and over $371,000 in capital for their entrepreneurs
- Graduated and assisted six program participants secure business leases
- Established a second incubation and training kitchen
La Cocina’s impact has been recognized locally, regionally, and internationally, where it has shared its proven model with organizations from Stockton to New York City, Sydney to Cape Town. La Cocina was named “2023 Nonprofit of the Year” by California Association of Nonprofits, received the 2022 Entrepreneurship Award by the San Francisco Immigrants Rights Commission with special commendation by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and was named “2020 Nonprofit of the Year” by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
"Long term, we strive to diversify who cooks our food and ultimately defines our cities. Income inequality has expanded to dangerous levels in America, and left unchecked will destabilize us all. But entrepreneurship that is truly diversified—which requires creating economic opportunity in communities that have been systematically denied it—is an antidote. We want to build a city that is more vibrant, more economically stable, and more deeply just by putting opportunity in the hands of women of color from every part of the world.” — Leticia Landa, Executive Director
Leadership
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Leticia Landa
Executive Director
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Aniela Valtierra
Deputy Director of Impact
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Emiliana Puyana
Director of Incubator Program