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2026 Shared Kitchen Summit Agenda
Three days of sessions sourced from the operator community, with fresh ideas and new perspectives every year.
Full agenda coming soon. Session details and speaker announcements will be added as they're confirmed. Sign up for updates to be the first to know.
Key
Summit Sessions
Networking & Social
Field Experience
Awards
Check-in
Sunday, October 11
Early Summit Check-In
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Get a head start on the Summit — grab your swag bag early and kick off the week with fellow attendees before the main event begins.
Monday, October 12
Shared Kitchen Summit
8:00 AM – 4:00 PM
The Summit kicks off with an impactful keynote and a full day of insightful sessions designed to help you chart your course.
The Platformed Kitchen: Why the Future of Food Is Distributed, Local, and Shared
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Beyond Capacity: How Hartford Is Building a Kitchen Matchmaking Network
When Hartford's shared kitchen community reached capacity, Molly Reynolds and Mary Cockram didn't wait for new infrastructure — they built a network. Together, with their experience bringing Hands On Hartford's shared kitchen to life and with the backing of the Hartford Culinary Collaborative, they launched a pilot connecting food entrepreneurs to underutilized kitchens in churches and community centers across the region. This is a live case study from practitioners actively building the model.
Attendees will leave able to:
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No Filter: Unscripted Answers from the Operators Who've Been There
Some of the most valuable conference conversations happen when the format gets out of the way. This session puts two experienced shared kitchen operators in the hot seat and hands the floor to you. Between them, DeAndre Wilson and Sarabjit Sawhney bring decades of hands-on experience launching kitchens, supporting food entrepreneurs, navigating licensing and grants, building community partnerships, and scaling operations. No presentations, no scripts — just rapid-fire questions and straight answers.
Attendees will leave able to:
DeAndre Wilson
Sarabjit Sawhney
More sessions to be announced. Sign up for updates →
Resource Happy Hour
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Connect with Summit sponsors and discover how they can be valuable partners for your operation. A great chance to build relationships in a relaxed setting.
Tuesday, October 13
Shared Kitchen Summit
8:00 AM – 12:00 PM
The learning continues with expert-led panels and interactive discussions — bringing the room's collective experience to the table.
Food as Infrastructure: The Missing Link in Local Economic Development
Girard Newkirk
Co-Founder and CEO, Genesis Block · author of Newkirknomics: The Blueprint to Build the Neighborhood
From Cash Flow to Buyer Connections: Hope & Main's Three-Tier Model for Co-Packing Member Support
Supporting food entrepreneurs through co-packing requires more than kitchen access. It takes financial literacy, production efficiency, and real pathways to market. Hope & Main has developed a three-tiered approach that addresses all of it — from in-depth cash flow projections that help members understand their lendability through the Seedlings program, to Kaizen and lean manufacturing training delivered through a local Manufacturing Extension Partnership, to the RI Tabletop Show, Rhode Island's only B2B trade show connecting food makers with buyers. This session walks through how each tier was built, how they work together, and what operators can learn from Hope & Main's model for structuring layered member support that moves businesses forward at every stage.
Attendees will leave able to:
Pulling Out Your Hair: The Different Phases of Being a Commercial Kitchen Operator
Every shared kitchen operator has a story about the thing they did not see coming. Max Kunik, founder of Wingman Kitchens and winner of the 2025 Shared Kitchen of the Year award, has been collecting those stories for over seven years while building and expanding shared kitchen services across Texas. In this session, Max walks through the real phases of kitchen operation — from planning and buildout through landlord negotiations, equipment failures, contractor headaches, and the growth problems nobody warns you about. The delivery is honest, the tone is light, and the content will resonate whether you are still in the planning phase or deep in the weeds of running an established operation. Sometimes the best thing you can do is laugh, learn, and keep going.
Attendees will leave able to:
More sessions to be announced. Sign up for updates →
Providence Shared Kitchen Bus Tour
12:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Step outside the conference room and into real shared kitchens. Explore Providence's shared kitchen landscape and local food ecosystem up close.
Wednesday, October 14
Shared Kitchen Summit
8:00 AM – 3:00 PM
The show's not over yet — a full day of actionable workshops and thought-provoking sessions to send you home with a clear plan forward.
The Backpedal That Built Trust: Lessons from Restructuring Kitchen Pricing
When you're the new manager of a shared kitchen with no predecessor to shadow, no kitchen experience, and a user base that's been there longer than you have, the last thing you want to do is change the pricing. But that's exactly what needed to happen. This QuickFire covers what went wrong, what worked, and the communication framework that came out of restructuring pricing at NoCo Community Kitchen, a shared-use commercial kitchen operated by Prescott Farmers Market in Prescott, Arizona. Expect honest takeaways about building trust before asking people to accept change, and a one-page framework you can bring back to your own kitchen.
Abby Herman
From Idea to Pre-Development: What Nobody Tells You About Starting a Shared Kitchen
Every shared kitchen starts somewhere, and the earliest decisions often have the longest reach. In this QuickFire, Peter Fliri, Founder and Executive Director of Altru Kitchen Company, shares what he has learned navigating the pre-development phase of building a nonprofit shared-use commercial kitchen and culinary incubator in Southeastern Connecticut. From choosing an organizational structure to moving from concept to a defined development plan, Peter brings an honest, in-progress perspective on the early challenges that rarely make it into the success stories.
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Peter Fliri
Aisle to Incubator: Running a Shared Kitchen Inside a Grocery Store
What happens when the shared kitchen and the store shelf are under the same roof? Zachary Paige leads the Food Business Lab and shared kitchen at Manna Food Co-op in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota — a model that integrates kitchen production directly into a grocery retail environment, creating a practical pathway for food entrepreneurs to produce, comply, and sell in one connected system. In this QuickFire, Zachary shares early lessons from aligning kitchen activity with retail sales, what works, what requires more thinking, and what other operators in rural food systems can take from the model.
Zachary Paige
How We Built It: The Team Behind CitySeed's Shared Kitchen
Developing a shared kitchen from the ground up requires more than a good idea. It takes strategic planning, community input, financial creativity, and a team that can hold it all together across disciplines and timelines. Moderated by Emily Paul of Food Works Group, this panel brings together the cross-disciplinary team behind CitySeed's shared-use kitchen in New Haven, Connecticut — including Executive Director Sarah Miller, Director of Food Business Sasha Fay, and construction consultant Brian Wessels of Intent Built. Together they walk through the full arc of the project, from community needs assessment and feasibility through facility design, capital stack assembly, and operational planning for launch. This is a candid, behind-the-scenes case study in equity-centered kitchen development from the people who built it.
Attendees will leave able to:
Emily Paul
Small Market, Big Impact: Supporting Shared Kitchen Development in Small Cities and Rural Regions
Shared kitchen development in small cities and rural regions comes with a distinct set of challenges that urban models rarely account for, and service providers supporting those regions play a critical role in making viable projects happen. Yonatan Weinberg and R. Valentino Zubia lead food business and value-added production support through UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and the F3 Local initiative, where they have helped dozens of food entrepreneurs and farmers access shared kitchens, permits, and funding across underserved California communities. In semi-rural regions, shared kitchens serve a dual purpose: supporting food entrepreneurs and creating direct connections between local farmers and the businesses that can turn their products into market-ready goods. This session draws from their on-the-ground experience to explore how economic development practitioners, nonprofits, and technical assistance providers can catalyze shared kitchen development where resources are thin, leverage kitchens as bridges between farmers and food entrepreneurs, and build the local value chains that drive real regional economic development.
Attendees will leave able to:
Yonatan Weinberg & R. Valentino Zubia
The CEO Shift: Moving from Daily Operator to Strategic Leader
Many shared kitchen owners start with a passion for food and community and find themselves years later still answering every scheduling request, troubleshooting every equipment issue, and making every operational call. The kitchen is running, but the business is not growing. This session combines two perspectives on the same critical shift: moving from the daily grind of kitchen management into the strategic mindset of a CEO. Attendees will explore what it means to think like a business leader rather than a kitchen operator, and walk through the practical steps of building the team, systems, and leadership structure that allow a kitchen business to scale without the owner in every decision. Whether you are a food entrepreneur growing into ownership or an established operator ready to step back from daily operations, this session offers a clear framework for building a business that runs beyond you.
Attendees will leave able to:
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Chef Deb Oxman
Mission and Margin: Balancing Purpose and Revenue in a Shared Kitchen Business
Every shared kitchen operator navigates the tension between mission and margin, but the way that balance gets struck looks very different depending on whether your kitchen runs as a nonprofit, a for-profit, or something in between. This panel brings together operators with distinct models and hard-won perspective. Sally, Commercial Kitchen Manager at Empower in Wichita and owner of El Gusto food truck, offers a rare dual viewpoint as both operator and entrepreneur. John Vadnais has spent nearly a decade refining pricing and operations at Cherry Street Kitchen in Trenton, New Jersey with a focus on keeping the kitchen viable without pricing out the businesses it serves. Together they explore what it actually takes to build a kitchen that sustains itself financially while staying true to the community it was built for.
Attendees will leave able to:
Sally Aguilar
Say It So They Hear It: Enforcing Rules Without Escalating Conflict
Developing a shared kitchen from the ground up requires more than a good idea. It takes strategic planning, community input, financial creativity, and a team that can hold it all together across disciplines and timelines. Moderated by Emily Paul of Food Works Group, this panel brings together the cross-disciplinary team behind CitySeed's shared-use kitchen in New Haven, Connecticut — including Executive Director Sarah Miller, Director of Food Business Sasha Fay, and construction consultant Brian Wessels of Intent Built. Together they walk through the full arc of the project, from community needs assessment and feasibility through facility design, capital stack assembly, and operational planning for launch. This is a candid, behind-the-scenes case study in equity-centered kitchen development from the people who built it.
Attendees will leave able to:
More sessions to be announced. Sign up for updates →
3rd Annual Golden Whisk Awards
6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Our grand finale — an evening celebrating the visionaries, operators, and unsung heroes of the shared kitchen community. A night not to miss.