CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — You can expect to see a lot more food trucks on the road in the Tennessee Valley, thanks to Launch Chattanooga’s Kitchen Incubator.
Let’s see how they’re driving our economy forward.
“Today it’s extra special because we have a cohort of entrepreneurs, new entrepreneurs who have gone through our 16 week KIC [Kitchen Incubator of Chattanooga] Catalyst program, and that is an entrepreneurship program that is focused specifically for food entrepreneurs,” said DeJuan Jordan, CEO of Launch Chattanooga. “They are graduating today, and they have booths set up where they’re giving out samples and selling their products. We really want to be known as the home for food trucks, and the home for food entrepreneurs.”
“Launch gave us a lot of tools,” said Regina Jackson, owner of Treats By Storm. “I’ve gone to school for entrepreneurship as well, but they gave us more tools and more in depth information that I needed to get started, like our safe certifications, and just keeping us all in check, making sure we got all the knowledge we need to get started.”
“We want to make sure that we’re able to give entrepreneurs who are under represented in entrepreneurship the same access, the same opportunities that many others have,” Jordan said.
“Launch has taught us all how to properly start up a business,” said Joseph Gonzalez, owner of Broken Heart Cheesecakes. “I can’t say without the Kitchen Incubator of Chattanooga I would even be able to accomplish this dream, because it gave us the commercial kitchen use that we would need.”
“We believe here at Launch and the Kitchen Incubator, that entrepreneurship is not just for an elite few, but it’s for anybody that has a dream,” Jordan said. “By supporting these entrepreneurs, standing behind them, I’m giving them the educational training and then the support once the program is over. It helps them to be more successful. It helps them to avoid having to go through a lot of things that entrepreneurs have to go through if they can have somebody with experience and wisdom to kind of help them to bypass those challenges.”