Grant and Laura Wilson
As Nashville’s dining boom continues, most of the attention goes to various splashy new restaurants that are heralded with fanfare and razzmatazz. But a really vital food scene requires other kinds of creativity, including small food businesses launched by individuals who have great ideas — but who often lack the experience or financial means to get into the market.
Those are the people Citizen Kitchens aims to help. Since former chef Laura Wilson opened the company’s first commissary kitchen in West Nashville four years ago, Citizen Incubator Kitchens (as it is now officially known) has provided working space and many other kinds of support to scores of food-biz novices. It has proven wildly successful, so much so that the company just added a second incubator in East Nashville. It’s a huge and meticulously appointed kitchen in the basement of Hunters Station, the soon-to-open dining complex that the Fresh Hospitality restaurant group is launching on the former Hunters Custom Automotive site at 10th and Main streets, in East Nashville’s bustling Five Points neighborhood.
And the new East Side incubator will introduce a special addition: Citizen Market, which will operate on the main floor of the Hunters Station food hall. The market will serve up food made by the Citizen Kitchen entrepreneurs, showcasing their work. It will also include a bar offering coffee and espresso, and once the permits are secured, local beer and canned cocktails. The market should be a good complement to the spots in the works for the Fresh Hospitality food hall: The Grilled Cheeserie, Hugh-Baby’s BBQ and Burger Shop, Tacos Aurora, The Picnic Tap and Vui’s Kitchen. (The food hall is expected to open sometime later this summer.)
Wilson, the energetic force behind Citizen Kitchens, has a background as a fine-dining chef in Nashville and New Orleans. A few years ago she left the frenzied pace and grueling hours of restaurant kitchens to launch her own business, helping smaller food businesses get off the ground.
“I love anything that allows food entrepreneurs to experiment without losing their house,” Wilson says. And that’s no joke. The food business is notoriously perilous, especially to newcomers who don’t have deep pockets — and for whom bankruptcy is a very real threat.
Tacos Aurora
Citizen Kitchens offers a way for people to develop a food venture with a bit less risk than they’d encounter going out into the market solo. But not all clients are newbies; Wilson’s kitchens also work with successful businesses that just need a platform to work out of, including food trucks and caterers.
The West Nashville location now has roughly 100 clients who utilize its 2,800-square-foot space. (The kitchen is busy almost around the clock, since the space can accommodate only about 10 clients at a time. There’s a lot of strategic shoehorning going on.) Meanwhile, the vast, gleaming new East Nashville kitchen, which opened Aug. 1, covers 8,000 square feet and will eventually have a roster of around 250 clients.
“The joke was we were trying to turn a bass boat into a submarine,” says Grant Wilson, referring to the diminutive West Side kitchen. He’s Laura’s husband and the facilities manager for both kitchens. “Now we have the submarine.”
In fact, with all the squeaky-clean stainless steel and chrome, gadgets and dials and shipshape work surfaces, the brand-new main kitchen does look a bit like a submarine (without the claustrophobia). A tour of the facility reveals other resources, like a dedicated room for baking, along with a separate, isolated room for preparing gluten-free items without contamination. There’s also a manufacturers’ space, seven walk-in coolers and more.
So far only a small number of clients have moved in. Laura Wilson says that in a shared kitchen like this, it’s best to introduce new clients in stages. “A commissary kitchen has to provide not just space, but atmosphere,” she says. “The work environment is a piece of equipment to me, just like a jacket kettle.” (Note to non-chefs: A jacket kettle is a large, free-standing, steam-injected stockpot that’s a staple in commercial kitchens. You can see a 40-gallon one in the new workspace.)
Part of Citizen Kitchens’ mission is to help teach newcomers the soft skills notoriously lacking in the so-called pirate culture of restaurant kitchens — the skills that make working in a high-pressure environment enjoyable instead of grueling. Those include courtesy, cleanliness and the ability to exchange fun banter without harassing your co-workers. “Having people who respect you and respect your space and respect your stuff — and are just generally not assholes — is a really positive thing in this,” Wilson says.
She adds that her clients span multiple demographics, including old hands and newcomers to commercial kitchens.
“We have a great mix of old and new businesses,” Wilson says. The experienced chefs can advise the novices, and “the new people keep the chefs from being too pirate-y,” she adds, laughing.
The producers’ work will be carefully showcased at Citizen Market, which is the only spot offering breakfast in the Hunters Station complex. (The market’s planned hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.)
Breakfast options will include biscuits made in house, with local Wedge Oak Farms sausage and pork tenderloin (or a local jam or jelly) as toppings. Local Darla’s Bagels, produced downstairs in the kitchen, will also be featured. The ever-popular local Pied Piper Creamery is moving some of its production to Wilson’s kitchen, and its delicious ice cream will be sold in the market. There will also be lunch specials; Wilson, who spent years cooking in New Orleans, notes that Lynn Jones of Creole Diva will serve up authentic Louisiana specialties. One star producer in the market will be Sam Tucker of Village Provisions — he’s an accomplished chef and a hugely popular baker of breads.
Later in the day, the market will feature local grab-and-go dinner items for people getting off work. Dinner Belle, which delivers fully cooked meals, will have dinner items on hand to grab. MEEL, which offers locally sourced meal kits, will sell its kits at the market as well.
It’s a pretty ambitious operation, and the market has its own general manager, Ali DeArmond, a veteran of Marché and Two Goats catering. DeArmond, who is Laura Wilson’s sister, also has a background in Army procurement, so she’s expected to run a tight ship. The kitchen manager is Alan Horsnell, whom Wilson has known since her days cooking at the late, lamented Ombi bistro on Elliston Place.
Clearly, there’s always going to be something going on at the new Citizen Kitchen. One of the biggest clients, Sifted, moved in on Monday. It’s the large Nashville outpost of a company that caters to tech companies. Sifted’s other markets are Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Denver/Boulder, Colo.; Phoenix; and Seattle.
Wilson’s kitchen is also welcoming “ghost kitchens” as clients — that’s a new category made possible by the advent of online ordering and delivery services. Restaurateurs don’t even rent a storefront; they cook all the food in a commissary kitchen, taking advantage of the fact that many diners now prefer eating a restaurant-quality meal delivered to their home (with its comfy sofa and streaming channels).
But for people looking for a good hangout outside their house, Citizen Market will be welcome when it opens, sometime later in August.
