Aspiring food entrepreneurs can rent a professional kitchen to start their business. (Photo: Isabelle Schäfer)

By ISABELLE SCHÄFER

“I started baking brownies while running through the lines of my acting performances,” says Laura Siner, sitting in her favorite bakery in Midtown Manhattan and eating a blueberry muffin. The freshly married freelance financial consultant and actress started her brownie business two years ago.

At first baking was just a way of getting away from work, but she says she quickly realized she could do more with it. She brought her extra brownies to her theater and they sold during intermissions. “People would save room for their intermission brownie and would be really disappointed if I hadn’t baked any,” Siner says.

The Columbia business school alum started thinking about branding, packaging and different flavors. But the first big obstacle she faced was to find a kitchen where she could bake her brownies. “There are all sorts of licenses you need and you have to get checked by an inspector,” the young baker explains.

She found a solution in Kathrine Gregory’s company “Mi Kitchen es su Kitchen.”  Since 1996, the experienced restaurant manager has given aspiring food manufacturers the opportunity to rent a kitchen where they can start their business.

“Years ago I was mentoring for free two young girls who wanted to enter the catering business,” Gregory says. “I realized they needed a kitchen to achieve their goals.” When she asked restaurant owners if they would rent out their kitchens, she got not one positive response. “I saw there was a great necessity,” she says.

Now she offers professional kitchen leases that the clients can use with a flexible time schedule. They then can legally produce and sell their products. The service includes the inspections needed to be able to start a business in the food world.

Since the economic downturn, the demand has risen. “I get more and more calls from people interested in starting a new business,” Gregory says.

She says she is the only company in New York City that offers such a service to aspiring entrepreneurs.  She has partnerships with three locations throughout town. For someone like Laura Siner, she recommends the smaller kitchen on 35th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. “It’s more comfortable for baking pastries,” Gregory says.

The location belongs to Jon Chazen. The tall man, dressed in a dark blue shirt and jeans, oversees from his desk the whole 1,400 square feet kitchen space. Tin boxes full of cookies lie on one side of the table, while a watermelon-sized batch of cookie dough is waiting to be processed on the other side. The smell lingers in the air.

“I rent out my kitchen because I want to give back to other bakers,” Chazen says. He was selling shoes at Barney’s when he decided to start his cookie company, “Dough Ray Me.” At the beginning, a friend who owned a restaurant let him use his prep kitchen. Now he says he wants to do the same thing. He has been renting out his space through “Mi Kitchen es su Kitchen” for a year.

He is not concerned about the recession or about helping potential competitors. “There are still lots of opportunities in the food business. You have to help each other. More competition means more people interested in your product, so more clients,” Chazen says.

For $285, it is possible to use the place for a day, with a kitchen assistant included. The room has two ovens, a fridge, a freezer and mixers. “It’s not very big, but you can bake quite a lot in here,” Chazen says.

Laura Siner comes to Chazen’s kitchen when she needs to, which is once or twice a month. She mostly sells online, for weddings and theaters. Her specialty is including one of about 700 quotations in each brownie, most about art. To advertise herself, she organizes online flavor contests, where people can send her new recipe ideas. The winners get a brownie named after them and free samples. “I got much more entries than I thought I would have,” Siner says.

Every month she creates a new special brownie. During September, she proposes a “Cappuccino” flavor. One of her brownies cost about $3, but she offers a variety of brownie boxes that can go from two items for $8.50 to a box to a large brownie tray with 92 brownies for $59. “As the money comes, I take the next step,” Siner says. Eventually, she wants to open her own brownie bakery. “That will be scary,” she admits. She is looking at the area south of 42nd Street, because new theaters are opening there and the rents are reasonable.

But until then, she will continue renting the kitchen. And ponder on her favorite brownie quote by May Sarton, which she says she has pinned near her desk at home: “Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.”