SF food incubator La Cocina gives 3 aspiring chefs chance to flaunt their food at Outside

SAN FRANCISCO — Outside Lands 2024 has come to a close, but its support for small businesses has lasting effects. For the second year, Outside Lands partnered with La Cocina to support and highlight three up and coming food businesses.

La Cocina is a nonprofit food business incubator in San Francisco that supports talented, low-income entrepreneurs as they grow and formalize their businesses.

“They work with women and people of color to try and help them launch their culinary dreams and so it fits so perfectly with what we’re trying to do at Outside Lands by working with all of the local restaurants. We dont bring in food vendors from outside the Bay Area. It’s all about celebrating the culinary community in the Bay Area and what better way to represent the culinary community in the Bay Area than La Cocina,” said Outside Lands Food Curator, Tanya Kollar.

Suyos Catering, Pacifico Latin American Cuisine, and Tokachi Musubi all shared the La Cocina incubator booth at the three-day festival.

“I’m thrilled to be part of Outside Lands and with La Cocina being here it’s been the greatest support,” said Chef Norka Hernandez of Suyos Catering.

Kollar helped bring this partnership to life. She thought it would be a great opportunity for these entrepreneurs to see what it’s like to work at a festival, which is a unique experience. Kollar made sure they were set up for success, “I work with them very, very closely to make sure we’re looking at everything from their menu to their equipment to how much power they ordered and their fire permitting and how much propane they have,” she said.

“It’s enormous preparation. It’s a lot of steps you have to go through; tasting menus, setting up meetings, make sure everybody knows their role and what we’re doing through the whole thing to make it happen smoothly,” said Hernandez.

The preparation paid off as festival-goers lined up to try the eclectic seafood menu, which fit with the booth’s theme of Sabores del Mar, or Flavors of the Sea.

“What’s really cool is we’ve got three different cultural interpretations of seafood. We’ve got the ikura crab musubi, we’ve got the ceviche, and we also have the ahi tuna nachos,” said Kollar.

The idea behind having three different entrepreneurs in one booth came from the hope that they would support each other all weekend, “It’s really just about bringing them all together to give them this experience and then hopefully next year they’ll apply to be food vendors at Outside Lands and be able to have their own booth,” said Kollar.

Eight La Cocina graduates had their own booths at the festival this year and Hernandez said she hopes she’s next.

“I look forward to participating in another festival. Coming back to Outside Lands, that would be the greatest experience. To any other business, to any other women who want to start a business, don’t just have an idea, make it happen. With the greatest support from La Cocina, you can go through the whole process. It’ll be smooth and just bring the idea from a piece of paper to reality,” she said.

For more information on La Cocina, visit this website.