Five South Bay Food Businesses Open Their Doors at Emanuel Baptist Church
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. / October 19, 2026 — Our second Beyond the Kitchen incubator gives five food entrepreneurs a permitted commercial kitchen in a church that wasn’t using the space.
Five South Bay food entrepreneurs started cooking in a compliant commercial kitchen at Emanuel Baptist Church this fall, many of them for the first time. We opened the space in partnership with the church, and it’s the second kitchen incubator we’ve launched through Beyond the Kitchen.
The program takes church kitchens that sit idle and converts them into fully permitted commercial space. Access to a compliant kitchen is one of the biggest costs between a home cook and a licensed food business in Santa Clara County, and the church kitchen takes that cost off the table.
The tenants came out of a training cohort of 38 food entrepreneurs. Over the past year, we taught that cohort in English and Spanish and delivered 362 hours of one-on-one technical assistance. We then selected the five tenants from the group.
Wells Fargo’s seed funding carried the program from the first training session to opening day. It paid for the bilingual training, the one-on-one assistance, and the staff who prepared these operators for the kitchen. Georgette Bhathena, head of Community Relations for Wells Fargo, said the program “can be a blueprint for communities across the country.”
Mayor Matt Mahan joined the tenants, church leadership, our staff, Wells Fargo representatives, and community members at the grand opening. I’m grateful to Emanuel Baptist Church for opening its kitchen to these businesses.