21 kitchens, 55 food businesses, one collective

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The shared kitchen at The Kitchen Collective.
Photo: Supplied

It was an idea born out of the first lockdown. Adam Rickett had been a chef for more than 20 years, but it wasn’t until an online pub quiz with friends from around the world he found his true calling.

“They were talking about pasty deliveries. I hadn’t had a pasty in a long time, so I made some that day and I was just like: ‘this is the product, this is this is what I can build’.”

Chef Adam Rickett at the Kitchen Collective.
Photo: Supplied

Rickett said at the time he had been “surreptitiously” looking for a product that he could sell at supermarkets, and that’s when he started the Ansum Pasty Company.

“I spent the first two years on my kitchen work bench at home.”

He did not have much equipment and had to make everything by hand, but by September 2022, his small business got too big for his home kitchen.

So he moved his operations to a shared space in West Auckland called The Kitchen Collective.

Founder Harrison Stott
Photo: Supplied

Founder Harrison Stott had worked on a similar concept in the UK and decided to bring it to Aotearoa.

“We’ve got 21 kitchens that are located in here, 20 of them are private kitchens and they’ve got one shared space.”

The private kitchens are for well-established businesses or those looking to grow even further, and the shared space works on a shift basis.

In a busy week, as many as 55 food businesses work out of The Kitchen Collective.

Inside the Kitchen Collective
Photo: supplied

One of them is Amy Klitscher’s catering business – Sustainable Food Co.

She said people were usually surprised when they heard about the idea of working out of a shared kitchen complex.

“They go ‘oh, what’s that?’.

“And so I explain to them that most businesses here just need the commercial kitchen itself and not the retail component or the street front component.”

Klitscher said it was perfect for her business.

“And it’s also neat because you get to know the pizza people, the chocolate people, we know the people in the Thai kitchen. And so it’s there’s a little bit of that social element.”

But the space wasn’t just for large-scale food production.

“We’re lucky because we have a like, very diverse set of tenants, so collection kitchens, catering, delivery only [and] market stalls.”

Kitchen space at the The Kitchen Collective.
Photo: Supplied

Shalini Ali ran Hebrew Cafe and Catering.

She rented three kitchen spaces to make school lunches for five primary schools and one college during term time.

“We produce up to 1500 to 3000 lunches per day. It’s burgers, lasagne and it’s the kind of foods that kids like.”

The Kitchen Collective started out as a delivery only platform – for businesses that sell via Uber Eats or Door Dash

Stott said he designed it so kitchens had driver windows.

“They open up so that way you can drop the food out for the drivers.

“So that way the food can arrive to the customer really, really hot, but we also have click and click options in here so people can order on the website or we can use the tablets to order directly from the tenants themselves.”

He said The Kitchen Collective – like the rest of the country – has felt the pinch of the cost of living crisis.

But Stott believed that was all the more reason for food businesses to think about renting a kitchen.

“There’s no cap-ex for them to move in from day one with regards to the actual space itself. So it gives them the best opportunity. “