Can Portland Support a $50/hr Rental Kitchen?

Yes, I’m back, well at least for now. Time will tell. As you can see, something incited me to put fingers to keyboard. I almost titled this post “The dudette does not abide”, but in the interest of not attracting just Jeff Bridges fans, I thought better of it.

When I was still living in NYC and doing cost analysis for whether it was feasible to get my business off the ground there (which, it wasn’t), commissary (or rentable commercial kitchen) time was running about $25 an hour. Yes, costs have gone up everywhere so I imagine the same space, if it was available would be closer to $50/hr. However, everything is relative to location and what the market will bear.

So let’s do some math, I’m assuming you’re just starting out or have been in business for a short time. Let’s take the $50/hr as a base hourly rent you’re paying for kitchen rental space. Now let’s assume you’ve budgeted rent as 20% of your forecasted income (Note: everyone has their own formula of how much rent/sales ratio should be, I’ve seen it as low as 8% and high as 32%). This means you need to produce $250 an hour of product, outside of additional labor, food costs, and packaging.

Perhaps you’re a cake baker, and selling your cakes wholesale at $25. Can you bake, cool and frost/finish 10 cakes an hour to stay with your budgeted percentage? Say you’re scheduled for a four hour kitchen rental - $200. That’s $1000 of product (or 40 cakes).

The pricing could work a little better if you were a caterer and only needed 4 hours to put together a $1500 event, where your margins tend to be higher than wholesale.

Is there a market demand in the Portland area for this level of pricing? Time will tell, and if so, prepare to have your favorite $2 coffeehouse cookie set you back $4. 

A Recipe to Celebrate a Piece of the Pi…. Caramelized Onion & Apple Feta Pie

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the annual Portland Farmer Chef Connection Conference (try saying that 5 times fast!). It’s a yearly gathering of farmers, producers, restaurateurs and students discussing timely topics and networking. One of the big draws of the event is the community lunch. All attendees are encouraged to bring something to share for the table, and figured this was an opportunity to make something different.

I’m generally a big planner (as many of you know), but it took me until about Saturday eve to figure out what to bring (and you know what I was doing Sunday as the conference was Monday). Clearly my inspiration paid off, since it seemed to be a well received and I’ve gotten a few requests for the recipe.

As I had made/brought 5 pies, I scaled the recipe back to make one pie or a flat 17 x 9 tart (which can be sliced up into bite size appetizers).

One 9” pie crust or piece of puff pastry 17" x 9"

1/2 cup sour cream

1/4 cup best quality feta, small diced or crumbled

1 –2  apples, peeled and cut into 1/2” chunks (if small, use two, you want about a cup)

1 onion, sliced

1 Tbl olive oil (for sautéing, substitute what works for you)

pinch of thyme, rosemary, black pepper

salt to taste

Oven at 375

In a small pan over med high heat sauté onions until brown, reduce heat to med-low and add apples, allowing to cook until softened. Add seasoning (taste and adjust to suit if needed), allow to heat and incorporate. (Note – if using tart apples, you may need to add in a pinch of sugar. Allow to melt through the mixture over the heat)

Take off heat, set aside.

If using puff pastry, prick sheet with a fork at intervals, to reduce the crust fluffing up too much during baking. Use a coated cookie sheet or a silipat on a baking sheet for best results.

Spread the 1/2 cup of sour cream on the base of the pie crust or puff pastry. Sprinkle about half the feta on top. Gently layer the apple & onion mixture over the sour cream and feta. Sprinkle the remaining feta over the top. Bake at 375 for about 30 mins until brown and bubbly. Allow to cool slightly and set. Serve warm & enjoy.

The Figlet Made Me Do It (or What We’ve Been Occupied With)

Holy carp have the holidays landed on us like frozen turkeys falling from the sky and I can’t say I’m complaining (well, my feet might be a bit more tired and there’s certainly less laundry getting done at home, but who really complains about not doing laundry?).

I haven’t abandoned you, my few readers, but the coming weeks will be a bit content scarce as we truck ahead on our projects, like making pies (Pecan, Vegan Pumpkin, Apple Cranberry) for New Seasons Markets.

The photo above is one of the specialty items we’re “trying out” with them. This one is a fig tartlet (smaller format than our regular tarts), with our vegan crust and a spiced fig filling. At the sampling I did back in September, one person remarked that it “tasted like Christmas”. Hopefully customers will enjoy them enough at Thanksgiving we’ll have them through December. It is a little product trial by fire, but I am thankful to have a supportive client that is willing to take a risk.

Upcoming things I’m thinking about (when not scaling pecans or corn syrup in my sleep):

-       Website revamping (or at least updating)

-       Review of goals from the past year (I’m sure I wrote them down somewhere)

-       Goals for the coming year

-       List of cleaning projects around our kitchen (see top parens)

-       A better camera… maybe… someday

So bear with us as single handedly split our kitchen into sweet & savory, which I’ll recap once I unglue my fingers from the sugar and cranberries (and our regular tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms…)

Tart and Sultry

Things are heating up in our world of tarts. Literally and figuratively.

We love summer, we really do. Bright sunny days, our herb garden (eh hem, lone basil plant) sprouting up fragrant leaves. But with the sun comes the heat, and on any given day we assemble and bake hundreds of tarts. Bake. Turn on the ovens and add a few hundred degrees into our quickly sweltering space. Some days it’s like swimming through the waves of heat.

Our current space isn’t partitioned, so whether you’re making dough, assembling tarts or doing admin/paperwork/boss-type things (um, me), there’s not much of a chance of a breather from the ovens. (Of course in January it’s the opposite story, any reason to get the ovens going is a good reason).

I keep us plied with gallons of iced tea, fans and mandatory refrigeration breaks. Conversation tends to drift to topics like whether ice cream sandwiches can be considered dinner (they are sandwiches, right?). Our neighbors next door are nice enough to let us occasionally come sit in their lovely air-conditioned waiting room (chiropractors) and we never arrive without a plate of treats for their staff.

Friends of mine have commented that it must be great to have days when you literally feel like you’ve sweat off 5lbs (and can eat or drink anything as a result). Hmmm… I wonder if I can turn this into the next biggest weight-loss thing. Sweatiest Chef? Doesn’t quite have “that catch” now, does it?

I can’t complain about the heat too much, it’s just part of what we do. Besides, the great summer weather (after drying out the farmland fields finally), is growing some good things for us.