CropCircle Kitchen is now CommonWealth Kitchen!

In May 2015, CropCircle Kitchen formally changed its name to CommonWealth Kitchen to better describe and brand the scale and scope of our work. CropCircle Kitchen is now CommonWealth Kitchen.

CommonWealth Kitchen began operations as CropCircle Kitchen, Boston’s only non-profit food business incubator, in 2009. CropCircle Kitchen took over operations of the former Nuestra Culinary Ventures kitchen, located in the Brewery Small Business Complex in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.

Even before becoming CommonWealth Kitchen, CropCircle Kitchen focused on supporting low-income individuals with little business experience and limited access to capital to:

• Develop new, self-sustaining, and profitable food businesses as a means to build assets and create sustainable employment in the Boston-area food industry;
• Enhance revenue and profitability of existing food businesses as a means to strengthen the local economy and create jobs; and
• Promote use of local ingredients to strengthen the regional food economy.
• Within a few months of opening the Jamaica Plain facility, the CropCircle Kitchen team realized that the current kitchen space did not work well for scaling multiple food manufacturers. The JP kitchen lacked large-volume production equipment and cold and frozen storage space needed. Additionally, as CropCircle Kitchen, the JP kitchen was not large enough to generate the earned income needed to fully support the incubator model. Without a larger space, CropCircle Kitchen was forced to rely heavily on grant funding to support programming, which was counter to the CropCircle Kitchen mission.

In 2011, first as CropCircle Kitchen, our team partnered with Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation on the redevelopment of the former Pearl meats factory in Dorchester. The Pearl project is an integral part of the City of Boston HUD CHOICE Neighborhoods initiative, and is central to the Fairmount Indigo Corridor Collaborative, a nationally recognized effort bringing housing, economic development, and transit equity to the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, and Hyde Park.

With support from the City of Boston, HUD, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, LISC, Boston Community Capital, and others, the $15 million redevelopment of the Bornstein and Pearl Food Production Small Business Center was completed in June 2014. Though some have erroneously called it CropCircle Kitchen Pearl, or CCK Pearl, it is now known as by its full name, or simply "Pearl".

No longer CropCircle Kitchen, CommonWealth Kitchen is now the anchor tenant for the Pearl facility, leasing @ 45% of the 36,000 SF building. The opening has allowed CommonWealth Kitchen to more than triple CropCircle Kitchen’s previous operations and expand programming.

CropCircle Kitchen is now CommonWealth Kitchen.