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StartUp Kitchen helps local restaurants find their footing
By Abha Bhattarai, Capital Business
October 21, 2012
On paper, Priya Ammu was ready to open a restaurant.
She had the perfect recipe, an extensive business plan and plenty of experience, having spent more than a decade working in commercial kitchens and catering facilities.
But, she said, there were things she wasn’t prepared for. Having to juggle different orders at different times, for example, or the intricacies of picking out table cloths and decorations to evoke a certain mood.
“It’s just so hard to go from a concept to the actual execution,” Ammu, 52, said. “At first, I was just focused on the food and it was like, ‘What about the music? What about printing the menus?’ ”
Six weeks ago, Ammu opened D.C. Dosas, a pop-up restaurant in Petworth that serves a South Indian dish similar to crepes, as part of StartUp Kitchen’s first incubation program.
The initiative, created through a partnership between the nonprofits Think Local First D.C. and Nurish, was housed in Domku, a restaurant in Northwest Washington that is closed on Mondays.
