Over the course of 2020, KK&P worked with Rhode Island’s first food business incubator, Hope & Main, to develop a strategic plan for their next five years of operation. Hope & Main has helped aspiring food entrepreneurs launch and scale their businesses by providing shared-use kitchens, technical and business training, and a community of peers and mentors since opening their doors in Warren in 2014. The strategic plan proposed that the organization lean into its role as a core food asset in Rhode Island, something it has done with remarkable success. More so, Hope & Main has emerged as the center of a food entrepreneurship ecosystem in Rhode Island that continues to grow in scope and ambition under the leadership of Founder Lisa Raiola and Executive Director Luca Carnevale.

During the COVID pandemic and in the years that followed, attendance at Hope & Main’s information sessions more than doubled from pre-pandemic levels. In order to manage the increased demand, Hope & Main developed a boot camp that now moves 15-20 entrepreneurs through their pipeline every six weeks. This meant more people getting beyond dreaming and planning and into actually producing, which is, as Lisa Raiola put it, “when your business really starts.” Today, they have 120 members and represent 25% of consumer packaged goods launches and 15% of food processing licenses in Rhode Island. Up to a dozen members are working in the kitchens at any given time and the facility is running at roughly full capacity. Several of those members have found enduring success, including Big Katz Kitchen, Caribe & Co., Betta Bakes, and Hawt Chocolates.

Hope & Main also provides small-batch co-packing services to some 30 companies, filling a critical gap in the co-manufacturing sector where minimum runs are often measured in the tens of thousands of units and thus inaccessible to small, artisanal brands. In addition, the organization has expanded its footprint in Providence. The Downtown Makers Marketplace, a café and provisions store, opened in 2023 and features hundreds of products from their members. In 2026, they aim to complete an expansion of their commercial kitchen capacity through Hope & Main West End Kitchens.

Thinking more broadly about Hope & Main’s future impact, Raiola describes four pillars for the incubator kitchen model: below market-rate kitchen rentals, business and technical assistance, access to markets, and connections to capital. An incubator needs to provide each for the ecosystem to be effective. However, changes to the funding landscape from federal and other sources call into question the viability of that ecosystem when incubator organizations typically depend on 70-80% contributed revenue (i.e. grants and donations) to operate. Raiola would like to flip that ratio and develop new models of ownership to find a balance between a purely philanthropic approach and sink-or-swim capitalism, such as the cooperative models at Mondragon Corporation or the Fogo Island Co-Operative Society.

She expands further on this vision: “[Incubators] are affordable housing for business. If you go from affordable housing to market-rate housing and nothing else has changed about your life, you just can’t afford market-rate housing. That’s not good for the industry and that’s why it’s more about creating a full economic landscape.” Addressing this “full economic landscape” motivates Lisa’s more recent work with Local Return, a complementary non-profit that works on increasing community wealth in Rhode Island. In concert, Local Return and Hope & Main (as well as a few other associated ones) are aiming to create a model for investment and ownership that bridges opportunities in local food economies and the economic components of stable, resilient communities.

Hope & Main’s success as an incubator kitchen and center of an entrepreneurship ecosystem is an inspiration for people in food systems and workforce development. We look forward to seeing what comes next from them and their hardworking, passionate members.