Above photo: Jen Faigel (left) and Sweet Teez Bakery owner Teresa Maynard (right) in the kitchen together. CommonWealth Kitchen.
CommonWealth Kitchen is turning culinary artisans into food manufacturers.
Jen Faigel stood in the production line watching a rush of mini-pies bake to a golden brown. Around her, 10 people stood at different spots, each responsible for a different process: pouring in the apple and blueberry filling, sprinkling a generous helping of crumb topping, sliding the pies in to bake, pulling pies off the cooling rack and into custom-designed packaging. After seven days of baking, it smelled like her grandma’s kitchen.
Teresa Maynard, owner of Sweet Teez Bakery, and her team were busy filling the largest single order they had ever received: 42,000 pies, going to 25 Whole Foods stores. It was a huge milestone for Maynard, and a major success for Faigel.
Faigel is the co-founder and executive director of CommonWealth Kitchen (CWK) in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. The long-time community advocate and non-profit real estate developer is determined to help micro-food entrepreneurs succeed by tackling the two biggest hurdles: manufacturing and distributing artisan food products at scale.
Co-packers, or food manufacturers who produce under contract, have high minimums, and the closed-off distributors’ network wants nothing to do with new micro-enterprises. But her progress over the past nine years running a small-batch co-manufacturing enterprise proves that filling the gap between solo micro-food entrepreneurs and scaling food product businesses can help people build great food businesses and generate household wealth, transforming their lives and their neighborhoods as they move out of generational poverty.
A latch-key kid from New Haven raised by a single mom, Faigel knew firsthand what it meant to be poor. As a city kid attending a suburban high school, she saw classmates with the latest trendy clothes and new shiny cars, while she and her mom watched every penny. Those observations inspired her to help make a change in the lives of those living with even less than her family had.
She jumped in to make a difference, advocating for better housing as a rental housing tenant organizer in Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan. Then, she moved to the supply side, working first in housing construction management and then in real estate development—always focused on affordable housing.
But when an invitation to repurpose an old brewery arose, Faigel realized she could do more than house people: She could help them change their future through entrepreneurship. As the head of the real estate team at the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation in Boston, she transformed that brewery into a space full of small businesses owned by diverse local residents who thrived when given a chance. She found that business ownership truly changed lives.
When the Dorchester Bay Community Development Corporation approached her in 2012 about redeveloping a 36,000-square-foot, long-vacant, former hotdog factory in one of Boston’s lowest-income neighborhoods, she jumped at the opportunity. She listened to community residents and learned that they didn’t want more low-cost housing; they wanted a place with good-paying jobs.
A place to launch and grow locally owned businesses was the answer, and Faigel saw the former factory as a potential incubator that could do exactly that. She went all-in to assemble the financing and renovate the space, pulling in a struggling, nonprofit, shared commercial kitchen as a tenant. Renamed CommonWealth Kitchen, it became just the space that was needed.
In 2014, Faigel was asked to step in as interim director, an initial four-month contract that has lasted nearly a decade. Along the way, she realized that launching food businesses is one thing, but the key to building successful businesses requires helping them scale and gain access to customers and sales by connecting them to retail, wholesale, and institutional markets and distributors.
Later that year, Faigel met Teresa Maynard, an African American mother of three with deep Dorchester roots. While pregnant with her second child, Maynard developed a desperate afternoon craving for sweets, but her peanut allergy made it challenging to find baked goods she could eat. So she started baking her own cookies, brownies and other treats, and wanted to turn that love of baking into a business. Maynard joined CWK’s Food Business 101 program and launched her business in 2015, joining CWK’s shared-use kitchen.
Maynard sold her baked goods at farmers’ markets and directly to friends and family for events. With some early connections from CWK to larger buyers, like Babson College, Maynard’s business grew fast and she learned to produce in larger volumes and add specialty items, like edible printed logos on cookies.
In 2019, Maynard scored big-time when Faigel introduced her to people at Whole Foods; they loved her story and skills, and placed a first order for the 42,000 mini-pies. How would a neighborhood-owned business get the financing, design the packaging, secure the ingredients and handle production to hit that goal? Faigel’s team jumped in to help.
“Being nimble is what’s unique about this place,” Faigel says. “We have chefs, business strategists, and community organizers on staff. That’s our superpower for our businesses.”
Maynard hired 10 employees from the neighborhood. CWK helped her source high-quality, pre-made, pie shells, find packaging, streamline her production line, and secure an $80,000 loan to help manage cash flow. Later that year, Faigel watched in awe as Maynard’s family walked into Whole Foods to see, for the first time, the prominent display of her “Sweet Teez Bakery Pies.” For Faigel, it was a seminal moment to witness the powerful impact of her work.
Success like this didn’t happen overnight. It took years for Faigel and her team to lay the foundation at CommonWealth Kitchen and build two key ingredients for business success along the way.
First, they created a co-packing facility – including a partially automated production and bottling line – on the property. The production capacity gives entrepreneurs a path to scaling, reaching larger accounts, increasing revenue, and staying in the community. Teresa’s team did their own production, but their success was built off of all the efficiencies achieved with the support of CWK’s co-packing team.
Second, Faigel leveraged the new production line to build relationships with large buyers and distributors. If they wanted a new soup for their cafeterias, for instance, CommonWealth Kitchen could produce a vegetarian soup from local farms, with surplus produce purchased from regional farms. This paid off with contracts with hospital systems and Boston Public Schools. Faigel could then negotiate for contracts that included micro-food businesses – and make introductions like one for Sweet Teez Bakery, for a custom pumpkin chai loaf featured in the cafeteria at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
These decisions have paid off for entrepreneurs like Maynard and others including a salsa maker, coffee roaster, food truck owners, and the creative cooks behind grilled chicken products, empanadas, tamales, chutneys, curries, and chai. In the case of Maynard, the flywheel just keeps spinning. Faigel connected her to the New England Patriots football team, a relationship that Maynard now manages directly, delivering custom cakes and cookies to their stadium’s luxury suites. She plans to open her own storefront in the neighborhood this fall.
This is Faigel’s North Star: local business owners making more than “just enough,” making enough to set their families and their communities on a new trajectory.