The California Indian Museum and Cultural Center (CIMCC) is proposing to develop a Traditional Food Culinary Incubator to serve Sonoma County and surrounding areas.

What is a Traditional Food Incubator?

We are gathering input to design a traditional food incubator to give small Native and traditional food businesses a competitive advantage when entering or continuing in the local marketplace by providing an affordable certified kitchen space for food prep, demonstration and sales.

Incubators:

·       Help remove restrictive barriers of high cost capital investment associated with leasing or purchasing a kitchen and kitchen equipment;

·       Allow specialty food businesses like processors, farmers, caterers, food cart vendors, and mobile food trucks the opportunity to start from nothing and grow;

·       Reduce the risk of failure by removing additional start up barriers associated with no, or low skills in the areas of managing and maintaining a commercial kitchen;

·       Provide resources and technical support related to distribution, branding, marketing, accounting, insurance, and financing new products.

CIMCC is committed to the revitalization of traditional foods and the growth of Native food businesses. We are seeking to improve the infrastructure of our tribal food system. According to the Intertribal Food Systems Report for the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative,  “A tribal food system, then, refers to the connectedness of people, culture, politics, law, and economics that allows for a particular tribal community to provide food for all its members.” We are seeking to increase the consumption of traditional and daily foods in our everyday lives, increase the transmission of cultural knowledge and connectivity and improve the health and welfare of our tribal communities.