Town Kitchen Launches Indiegogo Campaign to Empower Youth

Economists and educators have been working to resolve Oakland, Calif.’s endemic poverty problems for years. Almost a third of Oakland’s children live in households in which one or both parents are unemployed, and finding jobs for the city’s youngest employable sector is all the more challenging. But as one young woman demonstrated this year, it isn’t an insurmountable task. It just takes a little creative thinking.

Sabrina Mutukisna, founder of Town Kitchen, came up with a project that pairs the snacking needs of East Bay’s business sector and the drive and ingenuity of Oakland youth. The company employs low-income youth from West Oakland to prepare, box and deliver upscale lunches for businesses in the East Bay area. The company's concept is tailored to fit the needs of the small-to-medium business that wants good, versatile options to choose from for their boardroom meetings or casual office get-togethers.

According to Mutukisna, a lot of thought went into how to satisfy as many palates as possible with the company's daily offerings. Lunches these days aren’t a one-type-fits-all concept. For a business like Town Kitchen, versatility and variety are musts, especially in a world in which consumers' dietary limitations and preferences often shape the menu. To that end, she developed a weekly menu of four options that rotate periodically and can be creatively built upon as they go along.

“Right now we definitely make sure we have a vegetarian option,” Mutukisna said, and that is usually gluten free, “and one has a fish option, and then one is chicken or (other) meat.” She said vegan demand is high at the moment, but the menus are structured to reflect the feedback the company receives from its customers.

The meal preparation is overseen by a head chef, Jefferson Sevilla, who is co-owner of the pop-up Asian street-food restaurant Haro, Arigato in San Francisco and already has a lot of experience planning and overseeing niche lunch concepts. Mutukisna said that the company also plans to feature the talents of local chefs from around the Bay Area as the project grows.

“We are also working with guest chefs who are really excited about creating the menus,” said Mutukisna.

At the moment, the company is in soft-launch mode -- trying the menus out on companies around the area and taking feedback. But Mutukisna says Town Kitchen has bigger plans that include expanding both the size of the kitchen and the potential of its job training program. The team launched an Indiegogo campaign for $40,000 and set their sights on upgrading their program to accommodate the needed preparation stations.

“The right kitchen will allow us to lease a 2,000-square-foot kitchen where 10 youth will work alongside Bay Area superstar chefs to execute up to 600 lunchboxes a day.”

Mutukisna is no stranger to the kitchen or to youth empowerment programs: The brainchild behind specialty bakery Cynically Delicious, she has also been featured on HuffPost for her equal dedication to helping at-risk youth. She admits that Town Kitchen is a melding of these two passions and a reflection of her early years as a child of small-business owners.

And the Indiegogo site reflects this, with a carefully developed chart and stats to show they’ve done their homework in determining the funding that would be needed for each stage of growth. With some powerful support from the Institute for Sustainable Economic, Environmental and Educational Design (I-SEEED) and Youth Social Entrepreneurship for Economic Development (Youth SEED), Impact Hub Oakland, and various artisans like Sugar Knife Sweets and Kika’s Treats, Town Kitchen has been able to create a platform for ongoing expansion.

At Day 18, the company’s campaign is about half-way to the $40,000 mark. Like all campaigns, the team offers several tiers of donation levels with various perks and plenty of enthusiasm. The best perk of all, though, will be the sweet proof that community action and the foresight of one driven entrepreneur can make a difference where it counts.

http://vimeo.com/112294416

Image credit: Rev Stan