Remain's latest buzz

Written by Antonia DePace and Bruce A. Percelay
Photography by Kit Noble

At the Nantucket Island Center for Entrepreneurship in the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce offices we're doing a lot of coaching of small food-related businesses. We had the idea of giving cooks and chefs commercial kitchen space while also combining it with support for entrepreneurs, including educational opportunities to learn about growing an idea and turning it into a full-fledged business. When we found 5 Amelia Drive, it had two existing, big, beautiful kitchens. We added four kitchens. They’re varying sizes and outfitted with a wide variety of equipment. We see the kitchens working for the innovation folks, people who are developing small products like jars of pickles or sweets, as well as those who have existing catering businesses.

Wendy Schmidt: What we did here was to make the scale appropriate and utilize this building to its full potential. It has two apartment units on the top floor for housing, which is also an important need on Nantucket. We plan to have a take-out business there, so there will be food outside. The building is fully electrified, meaning that in a conventional traditional setup, you would have gas firing everything, but because we’re working on renewable energy, we put induction into five out of the six kitchens. The air quality will be great; it’ll be a healthy environment for people to work in and visit.

Can you explain specifically how it works?

Cecil Barron Jensen: The plan is to have two opportunities for people to pick up food when they’re visiting The Hive. One is with the food lockers. If chefs are making meals in the building— for instance, if a caterer is cooking a giant menu for a party and they have the ability to cook 10 extra meals— they can list it through an online ordering platform managed by our operator. You and I could go in and say, ‘Oh, I’d really like to have that beef tenderloin tonight,’ or whatever it is that they’re cooking. The meals can be reserved and picked up in the food lockers. And then there will be vending machines, where you can purchase stable, packaged food. If somebody is making jams or chocolates or pasta that’s in a package, they can use the vending machine for people to purchase.

What are some of the benefits of the shared space model?

Wendy Schmidt: We are trying to use all of the newest technologies in this building, both in the customer experience and also in the production side of things. The other great advantage of having people in a shared space this way is how you can achieve economies of scale. We can dig into sustainable packaging and share all of those resources among everybody who uses this. As a single producer, you might work there twice a week for three hours, but the arrangement allows for lots of food producers. So it’s not just six people we’re talking about here; we’re talking about many producers working in these spaces.

Will there be any eating spaces at The Hive?

Wendy Schmidt: There’s going to be some comfortable seating on the porch. It’s not really like a restaurant, but honestly, just down the street at Pip & Anchor, you can purchase prepared food in a setting with seating to eat on-site. The Hive is not intended to be a place where there’s going to be food service, but people are welcome to come inside and watch what’s going on through the large windows into the kitchens—to see how the sausage is made and to make food purchases.

Is there an educational component to The Hive?

Cecil Barron Jensen: One of the more important things is the Maker to Maker learning. I think there’ll be tons of opportunities in the building for makers to support each other, and that’s something that our operator, Karen Macumber, will definitely facilitate. She’ll make sure that there are lots of educational opportunities. The makers will be able to have conversations about how to market their products, how to package, and distribute them.

When it comes to food insecurity on the island, are there any programs or initiatives that you’ve worked on that will be able to reach that part of the community as well?

Cecil Barron Jensen: Remain has had a wonderful relationship with the nonprofit Nantucket Food Fuel Rental Assistance, which operates the Nantucket Food Pantry. They are housed in the Greenhound Building, which was owned by Remain until 2021. We’ve also funded a number of studies, which have informed how organizations can meet the needs of the community. Our tenants at Pip & Anchor, in partnership with Nantucket Resource Partnership, are significant players with their Nourishing Nantucket boxes. To date, they’ve distributed more than 6,500 boxes of fresh, local, nutritious food, feeding 80 families. Families weekly on the island who are experiencing food insecurity. So we’ve definitely been in conversations with them, and what we’re hearing is that people who are providing for food insecure individuals need commercial kitchen space, especially for products that are grown on the island. Our hope is that The Hive and its makers will become an important resource in the community to help support local farmers and food-insecure families.

How many local businesses are you projecting to be able to support during the summer season?

Wendy Schmidt: We plan to start with 12, but ideally, we’re going to grow the program as we learn the system, as we get comfortable with the procedures and the policies, and as we figure out how to manage these kitchens and also meet Board of Health requirements.

Health standards. So the target number right now is 12. But that’s a starting point for us, and we’d love to be able to accommodate more in the future.

I imagine it also opens up a lot of opportunity to have different types of food on the island; we only have so many restaurants because we only have so much space.

Wendy Schmidt: Local opportunities are often out of reach for a lot of people who would like to participate in the food business. But The Hive brings together people with talents, skills, abilities, and provides coaching on different ways to build their own businesses and livelihoods.

What other educational programs could be happening at The Hive, whether it’s for those makers or maybe even for the Nantucket community to learn more about healthy food?

Wendy Schmidt: There’s so much potential. One of the programs at our foundation focuses on healthy food and agriculture, agroecology, and the mysteries of mycelium in mushrooms. There’s so much to learn—for example, let’s learn about bees, what’s at risk in the world right now because of climate change, and how we can become part of the solution instead of the problem. What is in soil? What soil grows healthy food? All soil in the world doesn’t grow food, and people don’t understand that. There are lots of topics that we could bring into the public conversation in that space, and I think we’re very open to all these conversations. It’s a great public service.

Where do you see The Hive growing in the next five years?

Wendy Schmidt: I think in five years’ time, we will have not only proven the concept but it’ll also be a well-oiled machine. It’ll be an island resource people know about from the time they’re young. They’ll know that if they want to do this, there’s a place where they can start. And by then, you would have people who had succeeded through the system who could mentor newcomers. It could become a real engine on the island in five years’ time.

Cecil Barron Jensen: It goes back to that idea of The Hive as an incubator. You can imagine all these little baby businesses growing up in The Hive and then flying off. Maybe they will become brick-and-mortar restaurants, or maybe they will go the food truck route, or maybe they will take their business off-island where they’re co-packing some wonderful food that started on Nantucket and is being sold in grocery stores all over New England. You just never know, so I love the idea of being able to really grow businesses and see it happening right in The Hive.

Is there anything that we didn’t touch on that you would like to add?

Cecil Barron Jensen: I just want to make sure that all the credit goes to Wendy and her incredible vision for this work. I can see how it will make a difference on Nantucket. It’s going to change the way people think about how to make food on Nantucket, how it’s grown, and how it’s sold. And I think that’s really exciting. Credit to Wendy for the vision for that.

Wendy Schmidt: That’s very kind, Cecil. Vision is one thing, and bringing it to life takes a dedicated team working through thick and thin to fit all the pieces together. We have a talented team at Remain under Cecil’s leadership, who have taken this project through all aspects—from the construction to the financing to the running of it and the nuts and bolts of how it’s all going to work, interfacing with the health department and getting new electrical panels and on and on and on. It’s taken skills, and we’re lucky to have them. We’re also grateful to the talented team at Gary McBournie Design, Matt MacEachern at Emeritus Architecture, and Gerard Clarke with Clarke Brothers Construction