Kitchen 66 Graduates Batch Of Tulsa Food Entrepreneurs

It was graduation day at Kitchen 66, and now a new batch of food entrepreneurs are ready to set out on their own.

Kitchen 66 is like an idea incubator - the goal is to help you kick start your good food idea into a real business.

A little mentoring, blended with business training and access to a commercial kitchen, is their recipe for success, and Tuesday was graduation day for some of the food entrepreneurs, like Carla Meneses.

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"I've been working in the cooking and catering business all my life," Meneses said.

But she only came to the states in 2012, and there was a lot to learn.

"I didn't know the market. I'm new in this country, so it's been a lot of help," she said.

Marketing and regulations, networking and mentoring are what Kitchen 66 can provide those in the program.

Kate Jennemann’s company, Garnish, is benefiting from Kitchen 66.

"I have five flavors now. I'm in seven stores," she said.

Jennemann mixes herbs and salt to make flavored finishing salt.

Carter Jarrett said Kitchen 66 is like a foodie support group, "It's a huge help to have people going through the same things," he said.

He and his business partner make carbonated coffee and tea.

There are, of course, other concepts in various stages of development at Kitchen 66, incubating dreams into real businesses.

If you have a great food idea, but you need some help developing it, enrollment is open for the next Kitchen 66 class.