County Pulls Funding For Upstart Kitchen

Opening of UpStart Kitchen. Photo by Ethan Duran.

Plans for a restaurant incubator and cafe in the Hillside neighborhood will not move forward.

In 2023, Milwaukee County agreed to provide approximately $400,000 to UpStart Kitchen, a food-service business incubator, for a planned expansion that included building out a new commercial kitchen and cafe at the county’s Housing Division building, 600 W. Walnut St.

But the project never got off the ground. The funds were taken out of the federal stimulus package the county received through the American Rescue Plan Act. The funds must be allocated by the end of 2024 and spent by the end of 2026; otherwise, they must be returned to the federal government. With the project stalled out, according to the county budget office, the funds are being used to close the county’s 2024 budget gap.

UpStart Kitchen was created by Prism Economic Development Corporation (EDC) and opened its first incubator kitchen in 2020 at 4325 W. Fond Du Lac Rd. in Sherman Park.

“In 2022, PRISM entertained the idea of expansion by launching a cafe on 6th and Walnut, in partnership with the Milwaukee County Housing Division and the Haywood Group,  after PRISM secured a federal ARPA grant to build out the cafe space at that location,” said Bishop Walter Harvey, Prism EDC executive director. “However, the operations funds for this project were more of a challenge for our organization to secure.”

The organization is refocusing its resources and the existing kitchen, community meals program and youth hydroponics program, and no longer participating in the cafe planned for the corner of N. 6th St. and W. Walnut St.

The UpStart Kitchen incubator gives local entrepreneurs a code-compliant commercial kitchen to launch their businesses, training, mentoring, and assistance in business planning and proposal writing. Working with the entrepreneurs in their incubator, UpStart Kitchen began a community meals program providing thousands of meals to families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The county’s Housing Division started working with UpStart Kitchen through the community meals program, contracting with the business incubator to provide meals to homeless individuals.

A piece of the UpStart Kitchen project planned for the Housing Division headquarters was a job skills and employment program, giving individuals working to overcome homelessness jobs and training in the kitchen.

UpStart Kitchen and the building owner, B C Management LLC, could not come to an agreement for the new kitchen and the project never moved forward, according to a report from the county’s Office of Strategy, Budget and Performance. The $412,500 allocation was officially pulled following a vote by the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors on a resolution designed to close the 2024 budget.

Update: This story has been updated to include information from Prism EDC Executive Director Bishop Walter Harvey.