Kitchen Incubator Fund

My Name is Reka Amarlingam, Home base baker and caterer. Reason for me to be here is to get support to fund an idea for my business. Setting up community "Kitchen incubator" to benefit the startup business of production food, catering and bakery entrepreneurs

As Malaysia is shrouded by economic uncertainties which have resulted to increase in higher unemployment from the public and private sectors. To sustain their livelihood many has opted to petty trading and food business. Any startup of business will require funding and relevant certification which takes a lot of time. Especially for food business there are various requirements that required by the health department and local council. Highest costing will be health fitness certification on the entrepreneur and their premise, utensils, premise rental, storage facility, cold room, freezers, dry storage and other necessity and etc.

My objective here is to be able to create a kind of kitchen incubator platform which can cater the need of this entrepreneurs and meeting up the health and safety requirements of the local authority and fitting them the necessary equipment and tools. Our objective is to create a commercial grade certified affordable food production platform which can benefit the startup entrepreneurs in our community.

This is how we plan to do. Our set up will have 8 mini kitchens which can be operated simultaneously at any time. 5 kitchens are for catering and cooking where one of it is dedicated for vegetarian preparation exclusively. 3 kitchens will dedicated for bakery related operation. A total of 3000 square feet of estimated space. To support this we will install proper electricity supplies, commercial grade electric and gas ovens, gas stoves, commercial grade utensils, cold storage facilities and a diesel generator.

To bring down the cost of raw materials, we are planning to provide centralized procurement assistance, where the participating entrepreneurs can provide the list of raw materials they require and able to purchase from us with discounts as we will be able to get wholesale pricing and transfer that discount to the entrepreneurs. Time to time we will invite industry experts to provide talks and programs goverment agencies that could benefit the entrepreneurs to improve their understanding and requirements of the industry. By participating with our kitchen program all our participants will be instilled with a high level of hygiene practices and food production responsibilities as we strive proper food preparation standards.

To support this operation we intend to charge an affordable fee which covers the basics like electricity, water, gas, maintenance, health safety (PPE), Fire protection systems and liability & Fire insurance and facility management and operations.

Imagine the kind of cost that the entrepreneurs will have to fork out if they wanted to build this facility on their own and that if only if they can finance it individually. Rest assured our aim is to catapult them to be able to build their own independent operations once their business is able to sustain and pay for itself.

In recent year this kind of community enrichment programmed usually gets major support from our government. As most people already knew from the main stream media that Malaysia was plagued by various financial misappropriating by the previous regime. We don’t feel this is the right time requesting aid from our new government hence we are turning to the people themselves locally and internationally. We hope the supporters here could understand our aspiration to succeed and able to provide the means for many to build a better life with this program. Our promise is to open the program to everyone without any bias practice as long legal local regulations are strictly adhered .

To give a visual idea of how we would like to build our ‘Kitchen Incubator’ I have attached some pictures as reference that could fit our expectation. In order to bring down major cost significantly we will purchase most of our appliances, kitchen furnishing like storage racks and equipment from reputable second hand or refurbished sources. Another benefit for us our rental rate in Ipoh can be considered one of the lowest among the major cities in Malaysia. The rest of cost like Utility which includes electricity, water and gas can only be expected based on actual usage during operation. Other factoring cost will be included base on the general request of our participating partners (Entrepreneurs).

Once we accumulate some initial funds . We will be registering this "kitchen Incubator" with the Malaysia Registrar of Company and SME Corporation of Malaysia which will enable us to gain more support from various platform for improvements and expansion. Apart from Financial support I am also open for other non financial aid from anyone who wants to contribute to this program. Anyone with relevant Industrial experience are welcome to support and advice us.