After graduating from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, Jeffrey Devereux could’ve gone anywhere. A highly motivated and enterprising 20-something, Devereux could’ve followed his ambition to New York, Chicago, L.A., or any of the other major markets in the country. Instead he created the Know Good Market in Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood.

“I saw opportunity in Hartford where other people would see opportunity in New York or Boston,” Devereux says. “There’s a lot of places where there’s a need to create new things and create more value in a place. That’s what I saw in Hartford. As an entrepreneur, that’s how I stubbornly chose to think about it.”

The Know Good Market is a monthly food and craft festival celebrating the local food, art and music scene. Devereux started it more than a year ago to give entrepreneurs and ambitious chefs an opportunity and space to test their enterprises.

Know Good Market, photo by Erik Williams, Black Frame Vision

So far, so very good. “We’ve gotten [Know Good] to a place where the vendors are doing really great and the community seems to like it,” Devereux says. When the first one launched in the fall of 2015, it was just a couple of food trucks and craft vendors, and a couple hundred people in attendance. Now, the festival, comprising about eight food trucks, about as many craft vendors, craft brewers and, most recently, a live music stage, draws between 500 and 600 people. That’s good for the local businesses operating out of trucks and from behind tables each month at Know Good.

“One of the things we always wanted to do is make sure there’s strong pathways for local people who wanted to start a food business,” Devereux says. He’s a founder and partner of Breakfast Lunch and Dinner, the venture-building firm behind Know Good, which located in an adjacent building to the market. Breakfast Lunch and Dinner specializes in social enterprise, public art projects, community events, and other forms of entrepreneurship in Hartford. “We’re a place where businesses can be incubated,” he says.

Photo by Erik Williams

“That’s what we’re in the middle of creating now,” Devereux says. “We’re really excited about creating that economic pathway. We’re not going to make people lots of money overnight. But the food business is a good business if you can figure out what you’re doing and find your market. If our vendors are doing well, then we’re doing well.”

Know Good Market
Hartford, Connecticut
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Top image by Erik Williams, Black Frame Vision

The post The Good Stuff appeared first on Take Magazine.

During his time as CEO at Urban Farm Fermentory, Neil Spillane ran a collective of kitchens in East Bayside; this was his first experience running a quasi food hub. He ultimately realized the concept needed a full-time organization just to run the kitchens and coordinate collaborations. “That was the genesis for Fork Food Lab—a shared kitchen on steroids,” says Spillane.

Spillane and his partner, Eric Holstein, founded Fork Food Lab in July 2016 as a shared kitchen and tasting room. Located in Portland’s West Bayside neighborhood, Fork Food Lab is a community space that connects food makers with food lovers.

“We have 27 companies operating out of the incubator, the community forming is very tight and passionate, and our ticketed events have been selling out almost every time,” Spillane says. Fork Food Lab has hosted a wide range of events since opening, including a Friendsgiving feast, pop-up brunch, buyers market, and pig butchery class.

Fork Food Lab owners Neil Spillane and Eric Holstein 

“The community is very supportive of local food, there is always a pipeline of ambitious people looking to launch food businesses, and I was lucky enough to find a building close to downtown that was perfect,” Spillane says.

Fork’s member group is as diverse as there are types of carrots. Current members include specialty food producers, food trucks, bakeries, and catering companies. Between them, they produce products from kale chips to fried seafood to maple syrup and gluten-free bread. “It’s food with a story,” Spillane says. “That difference is huge in how diners are thinking about where to spend the cash.”

Apart from the commercial kitchen space, the tasting room has been another important factor in the Lab’s success. An event-driven flex space for members, as well as the community, to use, the tasting room has hosted pop-ups, private parties, classes, and marketplaces. Recently the Lab hosted a brunch in the tasting room; all four seatings were sold out. “The model is to use member products from Fork in all of the dishes,” Spillane says. “In this case, it was 10 different companies represented on the menu, with a couple even helping out on the line in the kitchen.

Fork Food Lab event 

Spillane has lived in Portland for five years now and says he wouldn’t want to live anywhere else (a common theme amongst Portlanders). When he was thinking about launching this concept, he knew it would be buoyed by the strong food industry in the area.

“I have grown up hearing people say the pace of life is slower here in Maine, and that is true,” says Spillane. “What I’ve come to learn is that the time people spend on work relative to play is different here and in New England as a whole. People really like to enrich their time on Earth here, and shape their behavior and work habits to match those ideals.”

Neil Spillane – Founder/CEO at Fork Food Lab
Portland, Maine
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Images courtesy Fork Food Lab

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