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Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Network (WEN) partners throughout the state are working hard to create opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses. WEN partner Rick Terrien, director of the Iowa County Economic Development Corp., is excited about his role in the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point.
On July 11, 2010 more than 600 people attended the grand opening of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen, anticipated to be a reproducible platform for Wisconsin entrepreneurs looking to start and grow food-related businesses. This 10,000-square-foot facility is the largest community-access commercial kitchen in Wisconsin and the only fully staffed facility in the nation. 
"It’s a food Ferrari,” says Terrien. “There are approximately 47 trillion ways for this facility to be used.”
Terrien has moved his office into the facility and made it part of his job to identify those uses and assist entrepreneurs and businesses that wish to partner with the Kitchen.
The Kitchen is an expansion of the Hodan Center, a center supporting adults with disabilities, which five years ago began a highly successful food line, Papa Pat’s Farmhouse Recipes, which is carried by over 700 stores in 26 states.
That success will continue in the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen, expanding the current line as well as the services it can offer existing food-related businesses and entrepreneurs that require special equipment and expertise to launch a business. It can also be utilized for food demonstrations and cooking classes. Even non-food businesses and fundraisers can partner with the Kitchen to process, package and label Wisconsin products.
But Terrien says his first primary partner program targets existing small food businesses, including family farms, who now have a facility to assist them in adding value to their crops and vegetables.
“We tell them to do value added, but no one gives them a way to do it,” notes Terrien.
The Kitchen makes that possible, with the added benefit of in-house staff.
“They can bring in a specialty crop, perhaps an heirloom strawberry or pear, and let the innovation kitchen staff process it. They have the capability to do the preparation, the processing, the packaging, the labeling, the storage. They will even do the distribution and sales,” explains Terrien. “You could run a business out of the Kitchen and never go there.”
Others who can benefit from utilizing the Kitchen include grocers, food distributors, restaurants, caterers, farmer’s market entrepreneurs and more.
The Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program helped the Hodan Center secure a $750,000 Community Development Block Grant from the Department of Commerce to fund about half of the costs of this $1.5 million facility. Terrien says he has already had a lot of interest in the Kitchen and expects it will not only bring more work for Hodan Center employees, but also lead to job creation throughout southwest Wisconsin and ultimately to similar efforts in other parts of the state.
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