A home for makers: KitchenTown’s co-op and cafe lends itself to kitchen creativity

The building, a sea foam green warehouse labeled in bold block letters across the facade, is nestled in an industrial neighborhood on the eastern terminus of Howard Avenue. At a passing glance, it could be the bakery where your grandmother worked her way through the Great Depression, and in truth, it actually might be.

KitchenTown’s location was once exclusively home to Anna’s, a Danish cookie bakery that has served the San Francisco area since 1938. As luck would have it, Anna’s was looking to sell the business and the warehouse just as longtime friends, and co-founders of KitchenTown, Rusty Schwartz and Alberto Solis were looking for a home to nurture their game-changing concept.

So KitchenTown was born. While Anna’s remains a staple brand on the KitchenTown roster, the warehouse space was totally renovated and fitted with all manner of industrial cooking equipment, from standard ovens to a chocolatier assembly line, all of which can be reconfigured at a moment’s notice to accommodate the needs of the various other makers that use the kitchen.

“I think the only thing that’s bolted in place is the sinks,” said Shelley Kieran, director of marketing and communications for KitchenTown. “The setup is very versatile so a maker can come in and set things up the way they like to work.”

At the front of the building is a chic, modern cafe that redefines the term “open kitchen.” Floor-to-ceiling glass doors separate diners from the bustling expanse of polished steel machinery and wood slabs beyond. Kitchen activity ranges from a few cooks artfully preparing your sandwich, to teams of makers baking granola or dipping caramel corn for distribution to local markets. The strangely pleasant thing about this is the glass doors are essentially soundproof, creating a Zen quiet that lends itself to finishing the crossword puzzle over a buttery croissant and a cup of coffee. This is not a noisy peek over the bar at a harried short-order cook. This is dinner and a show like you’ve never seen before.

“Customers are kind of surprised to see it and they end up liking it,” Schwartz said. “Actually a lot of people like to sit facing the kitchen and just watch the action while they’re here.”

Even the building can be reconfigured to an extent.

“The doors open up and we can turn this into one big space,” Kieran said. “So we can use both areas at once for events like classes, and popups for local chefs.”

The people working in the kitchen are not just cooking for the cafe. In fact, they are mostly cooking for themselves, or for their own businesses, rather. KitchenTown’s facilities are home to 19 locally distributed makers including Anna’s cookies, Three Trees almond milk and Mammoth energy bars are among the growing client list. Schwartz’s and Solis’ idea was for anyone who wants to turn a passion for cooking into a business to have a place to start. Each maker, once properly certified, can pay the dues, $30 an hour plus $150 a month, and schedule time to use KitchenTown’s facilities and employees to make their products.

The KitchenTown model intends for makers to graduate out by growing large enough, or stable enough, to stand on their own feet and allow room for new makers.

“The idea is to support small makers who maybe don’t have the capacity to get bigger, or maybe don’t want to get bigger,” Schwartz said. “Maybe you do a couple of farmers’ markets a week, and the reality is you don’t need a full kitchen seven days a week, you just need a place where you can pop in and do a couple of batches or work a couple of days a week to meet your demand. You can do that here.”

Even novice makers are welcomed. Schwartz’s son Sam didn’t truly discover his love of bread making until he got a taste for the KitchenTown community experience.

“With limited experience, I just started baking bread every day,” Sam Schwartz said. “It’s been incredible getting to meet customers here and getting their feedback on bread. It’s been a really big hit, so now I have the little bit of demand here and I need to supply for it.”

That was the idea when Solis and Schwartz set out to make KitchenTown a reality. They wanted to build a home to nurture and support local artisans, to enhance the flavors that already existed, so to speak, and make food from the community and for the community.

“For most people, the best loaf of bread that they’ve ever tasted was probably a gift from a neighbor or something that they got from a family friend,” Sam Schwartz said. “That’s what I want to bring back here.”

As Sam Schwartz waxes poetic about his breads, he begins speaking almost in metaphors for KitchenTown itself.

“I love when it looks like it was maybe a mistake, but you cut right into it and it has a really tender crumb, and it smells really nice,” Sam Schwartz said. “That’s the fun of starting out is you get all kinds of interesting looking breads, and figuring out what a good one is. You can’t tell from the outside necessarily, but the more interesting it looks the more it calls you to taste it.”

KitchenTown is at 1007 Howard Ave. in San Mateo. The cross street is North Humboldt Street. For more information go to kitchentowncentral.com or call (650) 458-8080.