Summary:
CommonWealth Kitchen, a food incubator, faced turmoil with anonymous emails and staff turnover after a post-COVID boom.
Nathalie Lecorps of Gourmet Kreyol won a $1 million contract but struggled with mental health due to the hub's issues.
The hub's challenges included legal threats and high employee churn, impacting entrepreneurs like Lecorps.
Inside the Turmoil: How Commonwealth Kitchen's Post-COVID Boom Turned into Chaos
For an entrepreneur whose business was on the cusp of a breakthrough, Nathalie Lecorps felt closer to having a breakdown.
It was December 2023, and the owner of Gourmet Kreyol was having the busiest months of her career. Her food truck and catering business had won a $1 million contract to feed Haitian refugees. She’d already hired 32 workers — including some migrants themselves — to roast pork and fry plantains out of CommonWealth Kitchen, the acclaimed food incubator in Dorchester where Lecorps was then based.
Yet Lecorps was so despondent she often sat in her car in CommonWealth Kitchen’s parking lot, trying to will herself to walk through its doors.
An anonymous email, a cease-and-desist letter, and constant staff turnover have roiled the Dorchester-based food startup hub, which boomed in the wake of COVID and George Floyd protests.
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