Community kitchens in the pipeline

A Cork local authority is to become the first in the country to provide industrial-sized kitchens to help fledgling artisan food producers cook up more business.

Cork County Council is to build three 2,000sq ft (185sq m) kitchens, one each in North, South, and West Cork, and rent them out by the hour.

Ger Power, the council’s head of finance, said the local authority held talks with small-scale food producers and discovered they were being hampered because they did not have the capacity in a normal household kitchen to produce what they needed for markets.

“They [food producers] will soon be able to bring all their ingredients into our kitchens and use large- scale ovens. This will allow them to produce in three hours what would take them three days to do at home,” said Mr Power.

“The locations will be picked in the early new year. They will depend on a number of factors, including their access to local markets. They could be built on our land or in one of our properties, but we have yet to decide on that.”

The council believes it will be able to recoup the money it spends on the project within seven years.

“We plan to charge €35 per hour to rent a kitchen. The price is market-tested. Eventually we plan to outsource the kitchen to an operator who will pay us a lease and deal with the food producers themselves,” said Mr Power.

The council has been involved in promoting small-scale food producers for some time, but the kitchens are seen as a more practical aid.

Mr Power said so-called community kitchens like the ones planned have been developing in the UK, France, and the US.

“We will be the first local authority to develop them in Ireland,” he said.