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New Businesses in Florida
What were these small businesses thinking?
Amid one of the nation's worst recessions, these entrepreneurs forged ahead.
Cindy Pickering
Your Pro Kitchen, Largo (Pinellas County)
Startup costs: $70,000
Cooking Up a Business
 Cindy Pickering's Your Pro Kitchen provides commercial kitchen rentals for food service entrepreneurs.[Photo: Mark Wemple] |
Pickering had learned how to run a small food business when she launched a salsa business in 2003. "You can't do it out of your house. You need to be in a certified commercial kitchen," she says.
Pickering used $70,000 of the proceeds from the sale of the salsa business to launch her shared kitchen concept. Today, more than 50 customers — including pastry chefs, caterers and food truck operators — work out of her 3,500-sq.-ft. facility, which has already expanded. Tenants sign a minimum six-month lease and agree to use the facilities for at least eight hours each month, which costs $125. Dry storage space is also available for $25 per month. Michael and Doris Leonardo turned to Your Pro Kitchen to save their 20-year-old catering company when they could no longer afford to pay the rent on their Dunedin storefront. "It was meant to be," says Michael Leonardo.
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