A place for small businesses to grow, connect

Rachel Sankey

Staff

August 26, 2024

APPLETON – Alyssa and Austin Durham – owners of Little Birdies Treats & Coffee, a food truck serving coffee and baked goods throughout the Fox Valley – said when they began seeing significant growth in business since opening in 2022, they made the decision to rent commercial kitchen space.

“We needed to have a commercial kitchen for me to do the baking,” Alyssa said.

But after just five or six months, Alyssa said it wasn’t filling the need.

“We weren’t able to get the time needed in there, (and) we didn’t have enough space,” she said. 

As the couple continued to look for a new space, Alyssa said they found there weren’t many options for rentable commercial-kitchen options in the area.

The Durhams said that got them thinking – “well, can we do it?”

That thought, Alyssa said, led to the opening of The Coop (pronounced like a chicken coop) – a shared, rentable and fully-licensed commercial kitchen space located at 400 N. Richmond St., Suite G, in Appleton. 

Getting started

Once the Durhams knew they wanted to make their idea a reality, Alyssa said they began working with a developer to start the process.

However, she said that was quickly cut short.

“The licensing when you get into the City of Appleton is difficult,” she said. “You need a full hood system on anything that’s creating grease, so the developer plans we were working with wouldn’t work because there was no hood.”

Alyssa said this caused them to look at other existing commercial spaces, which led them to their space now – which included an existing hood.

“We came in and made it how we envisioned it,” she said. 

The Coop officially opened April 1.

As of right now, Alyssa said The Coop has six prep stations, a walk-in cooler, a gas stovetop range, two gas ovens and a griddle.

The Coop’s space is “bright and open” with windows everywhere, which Alyssa said is uncommon in a standard commercial kitchen space.

“When you walk into typical (commercial) kitchens, they’re always in the back of some place or are dark and dingy,” she said. “So, renters feel like they still have a life because they can see outside and see what’s going on.”

The renting process

As of right now, Alyssa said 18 businesses are renting a spot at The Coop – though only a maximum of six can utilize the space at a time.

Some of those businesses include Sabee Culinary Services, Golden Poppy Coffee, Comfort City, picnikfoods, High Kaliber BBQ & Catering, Periodic Caramels and Simply Empanada.

All 18 renters have 24/7 access to the kitchen space, and Alyssa said each one lists its hours on a calendar.

“Anybody can pull it up at any time and see who’s in the kitchen when,” she said. “They also put on (the calendar) what equipment they’re going to use. If they know Sabee Culinary Services is in here from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., she’ll be using the stovetop and oven.”

Before renters can get to work making treats, meals and beverages for their business at The Coop, Alyssa said they are required to be licensed.

“We work with the Appleton Health Department closely on that,” she said. “We know our health inspector by his first name… Because this concept isn’t familiar to a lot of people, he knows (and understands) what’s going on in our facility.”

Alyssa said The Coop holds onto the renter’s licenses for them, “and then they’re added on as an extra occupant.”

Once licensing is complete, renters sign a month-to-month lease – then Alyssa said, they have full access to the kitchen.

The renters

At The Coop, Alyssa said each business renting a space offers something unique to the Fox Valley area.

“Sabee Culinary Services – they are culinary geniuses,” she said. “They use local seasonal products to do different heat-and-go meals, but then they do in-home restaurant experiences as well.”

Alyssa said this means Sabee Culinary Services will go into customer’s homes, bring all the food, the dishware, the utensils – “everything” – and then clean up and take everything away when the client is finished. 

Another renter at The Coop, Alyssa said, is Golden Poppy Coffee, which roasts the coffee Little Birdies Treats & Coffee uses to go along with the baked goods she makes. 

“They are a woman-founded, veteran-owned company,” she said. “We get all of our coffee from them.”

High Kaliber BBQ – another The Coop renter – Alyssa said “does amazing barbecue in the Appleton area.”

Then, she said, there’s Periodic Caramels, which makes CBD caramels. 

“There’s a wide range of companies in here,” she said. 

Having various businesses work at The Coop, Alyssa said, has allowed for networking and collaboration.

“When you’re in here with other businesses, you get a lot of knowledge from where their culinary background is or somebody who started because it was a passion for them, and (hearing) their different ideas,” she said. “It’s become this cool, collaborative space for all these food businesses.”

Vicki Kulis, owner of Comfort City, said she couldn’t agree more with Alyssa’s sentiment. 

“Alyssa has helped me a lot, idea-wise, on how I can expand things,” she said. “I come in sometimes, and a couple of the (renters) will be sitting down and we’ll all huddle around and talk about how to promote certain things. So, it’s networking as well, and it’s helped a lot in that department.”

Kulis said she started Comfort City because of her joy of cooking and the area’s lack of basic comfort foods.

“I started with a home bakery,” she said. “Under the laws and everything like that, you can only do bakery at home – I couldn’t cook any food. As soon as The Coop opened, I jumped in there.”

Offering take-and-bake meals, Kulis said, has satisfied both her love of cooking and people’s growing want for a classic, made-from-scratch “Sunday dinner” – without the hassle.

“Many people are working a lot, and they’re busy,” she said. “Who wants to come home and cook an entire four-course meal? I wanted to expand and help out single (parent) families, busy families and people who didn’t want to do all that cooking.”

Kulis said she also plans to start offering a family package where customers will save a few dollars off purchasing family-size portions instead of having to buy individual meals.

Another renter at The Coop is picnikfoods – which Nikki Kriewaldt Fierek and her daughter, Anna, said they started after realizing the lack of catering options in the area.

“My daughter, Anna, got engaged, and as soon as we started looking into catering options for the wedding, we were unhappy with the options out there,” Fierek said. “Even getting caterers to call us back (was difficult).”

With experience in serving food to others under their belts – volunteering at Green Bay Action Sports Organization for several years – Fierek said she and Anna knew they wanted to start their own business, which happens to be centered around charcuterie.

Though Kriewaldt Fierek said Wisconsin is a bit behind the times in terms of the charcuterie trend, Badger State residents have been making their own deconstructed charcuterie boards for a long time.

“Somebody has a fruit plate, somebody has a veggie plate, someone’s bringing cheese and crackers,” she said.

After hearing about The Coop through her sister’s friend – Ross Sabee of Sabee Culinary Services – Fierek said they decided to make the leap and rent a spot at The Coop to start their business.

“The Coop is great for a small business like ourselves,” she said. 

Especially, Fierek said, since picnikfoods doesn’t need a storefront of its own.

“We’re going to your events and setting it up there, so we don’t need a storefront,” she said. 

Supporting small

The Coop, Alyssa said, does what it can to support the entrepreneurial goals of others in the area.

“It supports these small businesses that don’t have the means or funds to go out and start their own kitchen…,” she said. “This allows them to do it at 5% of the cost as a normal brick and mortar would be because you have all these different licenses.”

Sharing Alyssa’s sentiment, Fierek said she doesn’t know where they would be without The Coop.

“It was a huge blowback when we found out what the legal and licensing requirements were for us to do something like this…,” she said. “We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. Alyssa was awesome putting us in touch with the right people at the health department and giving us a checklist of things we needed to have done to be legit and be in that commercial kitchen space.”

By renting affordable commercial kitchen space, Alyssa said, small business owners can build their customer base. 

“And if they continue, they can move forward and… (potentially) open their own space,” she said. 

Having access to a shared, rentable kitchen, Kulis said, has been amazing.

“They have everything available that I need…,” she said. “It wasn’t an opportunity I thought I could have until (Alyssa and Austin) came around. It’s helped in every direction.”

‘Overwhelming’ response

Since opening, Alyssa said the response she and Austin have received from both renters and the community at large has been “overwhelming.”

“When we started this, we were hoping we’d have four people who decided they liked us enough to rent space,” she said. “We’ve been over the moon by the response.”

Alyssa said she and Austin also receive several comments on how clean the space is – which she said is a team effort.

“A lot of kitchens you walk into – as much as you want to think they’re clean, they’re not,” she said. “We make sure everybody has their cleaning lists of what they need to do before they leave each night, including garbage and mopping the floor. We make sure everything stays clean.”

A life around food

As the owner of both a fully licensed, rentable kitchen and a baked goods business, Alyssa said it has been rewarding to watch her dreams come true. 

“I grew up baking with my mom and my grandma,” she said. “It is something I’ve always wanted to do.”

Alyssa said she started doing cottage baking for weddings and birthday parties, but once she graduated college, she got a corporate job.

“My husband then moved here from the Madison area, and there’s not as much of a food scene here as there is in Madison,” she said. “When we met, we talked about how one day we wanted to own our own business.”

Alyssa said she and Austin loved the idea of running a bakery, “but then COVID-19 hit.”

“We realized we didn’t want to be tied down to a brick and mortar that is open every day, like a cafe, and trying to get people to come in,” she said. “We like the idea of being able to pop up as needed and go to where our customers are.”

One thing led to the next, and Alyssa said Little Birdies Treats & Coffee became the first and only coffee and bakery mobile unit in the Fox Cities.

“Everybody else has their bakery brought in if they do it, but we hand make every one of our bakery items, which is what sets us apart,” she said. 

Now, as full-timers in the culinary industry, Alyssa said she and Austin continue to be interested and invested in the area’s food scene. 

“(Austin has) worked in the food industry in the past, so this is something we have always been passionate about,” she said. 

To learn more about The Coop or Little Birdies Treats & Coffee, visit their respective Facebook pages.