How COVID-19 is helping build a foodie scene in this Phoenix-area city

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mesa restaurants were among the most prominent types of businesses requesting relief funds. Now the city plans to establish a permanent program to help up-and-coming food entrepreneurs.

The city will partner with Local First Arizona to open a restaurant incubator downtown using the remaining funds of the American Rescue Plan Act. It’s an effort to maintain and grow local businesses and turn Mesa into a bustling food scene.

The goal is to create a food hall where Mesa small business owners can learn the ins and outs of running a restaurant while building their reputations.

There is a need is to build the foodie destination options throughout the city, said Jeff McVay, the city’s downtown transformation manager. McVay was in charge of providing downtown business owners with COVID-19 relief funds.

With the initial round of pandemic funding, the city gave $4.5 million in financial grants to 525 small businesses to help pay for rent and utility and another roughly $1 million for technical assistance to 250, according to 2021 end-of-the-year finance reporting.

Now, the city is allocating 24% of its ARPA funding to small business assistance.

A city investment

The city has $105 million dollars in APRA funding to obligate by the end of 2024 and so far has spent $47.7 million of that funding.

In August 2022, the city purchased the downtown building that will house the incubator for $1.6 million and will spend $6.5 million toward the project. Any operations and maintenance costs will be paid by Local First Arizona, McVay said.

The historic 12,000-square-foot building has been vacant for roughly eight years. The building was built sometime during the late 1920s that originally housed a Wright's Super Market, based on documents from the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office.

McVay hopes to begin construction at the beginning of 2024 and open the incubator by late summer 2025.

From community kitchen to commercial kitchen

The concept of a commercial kitchen with small business classes and consultation assistance will be a brand new concept for Local First Arizona. The nonprofit has a community kitchen in downtown Mesa that offers shared rentable kitchen space for small restaurant owners.

That’s where they learn the basics of owning a food business. That can be learning permitting, insurance and how to build a menu.

“We help folks with the pieces of food business ownership that frankly aren’t all that glamourous,” said Gabe Gardner, Local First Arizona’s director of food entrepreneurship.

The new space will be for restaurant business owners who have graduated from the community kitchen and are ready to take on the next step.

In the food hall, owners will further refine those skills using real-time data from sales and the retail experience at the incubator. That help newly opened businesses become more sustainable and longer-lasting, Gardner said.

There will be one or two permanent anchor food stalls with another four or five rotating food concepts “so that there is always something new to discover.”

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To qualify to join the food hall, owners will need to be Mesa-based, hold a city business license and be a part of the community, he said. Local First Arizona is also looking for owners that are passionate and have true potential for growth.

Affordable kitchen space is one of the challenges small food business owners face and is why Local First Arizona offers their space at a below-market rate to provide opportunities to a larger pool of people, Gardner said. The nonprofit will do the same with the commercial space at the downtown food incubator to remove those barriers for people who are not often afforded these chances.

“These are people who are working with family recipes,” he said.

Once restaurant owners are ready to graduate out of the incubator the hope is that they have a proven track record when they seek out traditional funding sources to open an independent storefront.

Pop-up owners rely on nonprofits for assistance

Kevin Lebron was a chef in the restaurant industry for more than 20 years until he and his wife banded together to start their own pop-up food stand.

They launched Pachamama in 2018 after Maria decided to go on a plant-based diet and soon learned there weren’t a lot of options for where to go eat. Kevin reached out to Local First Arizona to rent out a space at the Phoenix community kitchen to food prep before they went out to farmers markets.

Kevin said Local First Arizona helped give them assistance and support while they got their bearings. Most recently, Kevin was able to get a certificate for the Health Department at a lower cost because of the classes the nonprofit offers.

“When your budget is kinda tight, all those little savings end up really helping out,” Kevin said. Small business owners have to wear so many hats, he said, and the assistance and programs the nonprofit offers are what they need to thrive.

Pachamama opened a storefront right before the pandemic in 2020 but recently had to close the restaurant and is back to doing pop-up events throughout the Valley.

Kevin agreed that finding strong financial backing has been a challenge for small business owners coming out of the pandemic. He thinks a program like the restaurant incubator will be beneficial for the local food scene to grow.

Kevin’s wish is that residents seek out more locally-owned restaurants to keep money in the community.

“When you go in there and spend $12 to $20 dollars, that $20 is invested back into that person’s dream,” he said. "And in turn we're creating something cool and unique in our city."

Reporter Maritza Dominguez covers Mesa and Gilbert and can be reached at maritza.dominguez@arizonarepublic.com or 480-271-0646. Follow her on Twitter @maritzacdom.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mesa, Local First Arizona partner to help grow restaurant scene