Northside Planning Council Receives $75,000 in Grants for Business Incubator

Posted on by Brian Lee

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 28, 2011

Contact: Ellen Barnard

(608) 576-3734

Northside Planning Council Receives $75,000 in Grants for Business Incubator

Start-up money will help build FEED Community Kitchen on north side of Madison

(MADISON, Wis.) – Local food entrepreneurs are a step closer to having a facility to gain job skills and develop their products thanks to more than $75,000 in grants to the Northside Planning Council to construct the Food Enterprise & Economic Development Project (FEED) Community Kitchen & Food Business Incubator, FEED announced recently.

“These grants help us tremendously in our efforts to build our food business incubator,” Ellen Barnard, FEED project coordinator, said. “The benefit extends to the community, which will one day see more locally produced food as a result.”

The Madison Community Foundation’s $55,000 contribution will be used toward building the training and community kitchen, while Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin’s $20,500 grant will be used to purchase processing equipment. The grants follow a $295,400 long-term, deferred-payment loan from the City of Madison that only has to be paid back if the facility is sold, Barnard said.

Construction on the FEED Community Kitchen & Food Business Incubator will begin later this year at 1502 Pankratz Street near the Dane County Regional Airport.

Food Enterprise & Economic Development Project (FEED) Community Kitchen & Food Business Incubator is a 501(c)(3) non-profit social enterprise formed to support food entrepreneurs, provide custom processing of value-added products, enable development of food related employment and increase the availability of local, healthy and affordable food products in the Greater Madison community. For more information, please visit www.feedkitchens.org.

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