London Inc. March/April 2023 - 26

ENT E R P R I SE
James Smith with
Allison McKillop and
Jesse Long of The
Hot Sauce Co.
early-stage food startups. It's meant to serve as a
low-cost kitchen that can be rented daily or weekly
by startups needing access to production equipment,
as well as a bridge into the accelerator network
for companies just starting to get on their feet.
" The Grove is an accelerator, but it also needs
to have the feeder to support the people who are
in basements, small kitchens and are ready to do
something at a larger scale, " Smith says.
" It was designed to help people get to the next
level, and then rally around them and give
them support and connections to services, " he
continues. " It's a daily rental, it's relatively affordable
and you can do large quantities. "
The aim is to have startup food processors use
the resource as a launching pad. " We help these
companies to incubate, grow, expand their offerings
and get to a point where they are hopefully
ready to move on into their own space and dictate
a different level of growth, " Smith says, adding
the five food processing startups have so far
accelerated out of space.
One of the companies that has been making
use of the space is The Hot Sauce Co., founded
by Jesse Long. He's been utilizing some of The
Grove's services since 2020, but it wasn't until
this year that he began moving his production
into the incubator kitchen.
26 | londonincmagazine.ca | MARCH / APRIL 2023
" IN JUST A WEEK'S TIME
WE WERE ABLE TO
PRODUCE ENOUGH
PRODUCT TO SUPPLY
OUR VENDORS AND
CUSTOMERS FOR
THE NEXT COUPLE
MONTHS, WHICH
LEAVES US WITH MORE
TIME TO WORK ON
OUR BUSINESS RATHER
THAN EVERY OTHER
DAY IN THE KITCHEN "
-Jesse Long
" For a business our size - one which wants
to keep production in-house and never with a
co-packer - where we have 150-plus retailers to
supply, it was perfect, " Long says. " In just a week's
time we were able to produce enough product to
supply our vendors and customers for the next
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London Inc. March/April 2023

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