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CitySeed Director of Food Business Development Cara Santino.
To escape from a challenging childhood, I read recipes and watched the Food Network. I consumed any and all information related to food and cooked simple meals whenever my family had ingredients. This passion fueled my dream of opening my own restaurant and led me to culinary school.
Yet on the first day, bright-eyed about a future career doing what I love, our chef instructors told us bluntly: Don’t plan on opening a restaurant. Most operators fail before the seven-year mark. The room fell silent, and no one explained why the failure rates are so high.
It took me 15 years of learning from the successes and failures of others to find the answers.
All food entrepreneurs, and especially those from low-income or immigrant backgrounds, face enormous obstacles beyond their control. Without generational wealth, access to capital is very limited. Plus, advisors who truly understand and uplift culturally diverse entrepreneurs are difficult to come by. It’s also tough to navigate systems that weren’t built with inclusivity in mind, that are geared to business owners with significant financial and social resources. These are just some of the reasons why so many talented entrepreneurs struggle to make their dreams a reality.
In New Haven, it doesn’t need to be this way.
While we have a rich history of welcoming immigrants who shaped our culinary identity, including the New Haven-style pizza introduced by immigrants from Naples in the early 1900s, still just 1 percent of businesses are Black-owned, just 3 percent are Hispanic-owned, and local data for immigrant-run businesses is non-existent.
There are social, economic, and cultural barriers to launching a food business — whether a restaurant, food truck, or catering concept. Limited access to start-up funding, the high costs of business training, insufficient commercial kitchen space, a lack of language-diverse systems, and complex licensing and regulatory processes all present obstacles. Without wraparound support, innovative ideas don’t get off the ground, and many give up early.
We often praise the resilience of entrepreneurs. While that’s a critical trait, a focus on resilience leads us to overlook the role that institutions like city and state governments, grant makers, schools, and community organizations play in business development and viability.
New Haven’s food business ecosystem includes some funding, resources, and training opportunities for entrepreneurs — including the Food Business Accelerator co-led by my organization CitySeed and Collab, as well as the Community Foundation’s NHE3 grants. The rise of the cottage food industry during Covid-19 empowered more small businesses to start from home, reducing barriers to entry for aspiring food entrepreneurs. However, major gaps and inequities persist.
Licensing and permitting processes are decentralized and inconsistent, creating frequent confusion and discouragement among entrepreneurs trying to navigate the system. When resources do exist, too often there is not broad awareness that they exist. Resources and systems available only in the English language are inaccessible to many of the 24 percent of New Haven residents born in a country other than the U.S. Business development initiatives specifically for immigrants are especially scarce. In addition, existing systems do not reflect the needs of many aspiring New Haven food business owners operating with non-traditional models such as ghost kitchens, shared kitchens, cottage food operators, and mobile and pop-up businesses.
Yet we are laying the groundwork for intentional support systems for food entrepreneurs and our city can demonstrate what inclusive entrepreneurial support looks like.
To create a thriving business landscape for all, New Haven must adapt our systems to provide culturally relevant support and allow for nuance. Streamlined communication, expanded access to capital, multilingual resources, and simplified permitting and licensing processes are all critical steps. A multi-stakeholder approach with the collaboration of public and private partners is also needed to remove the barriers and unlock the full potential of diverse entrepreneurs in our city. By identifying what we have, what we’re missing, and the needs of those wanting to bring innovative ideas to life, we can center equity in entrepreneurship.
If you’re a food entrepreneur or small business owner, you are invited to a listening session on regulatory barriers to starting a food business in New Haven. Co-led with Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith and in partnership with the City of New Haven’s Economic Development Administration, City of New Haven Health Department, and Grand Avenue Special Services District (GASSD), we’ll gather your input on how to improve the City of New Haven’s permitting and licensing process for food businesses. Spanish translation will be available.
We’ll meet at CitySeed’s new building at 162 James St. in Fair Haven, on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 6 p.m.
RSVP here and let’s cultivate a Food Haven for All.
Cara Santino is the director of food business development at CitySeed.