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Column: Shared kitchen business in Park Forest expands to larger facility in Lynwood
Five years ago, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, entrepreneur Fershawnda Green worried her business might not survive. Since then, her Poppin Plates enterprise has not only survived but expanded and continued assisting other businesses along the way.
Poppin Plates provides licensed commercial shared kitchen space, which helps food service entrepreneurs move to the next level. It began offering 950 square feet of kitchen rental space in Park Forest.
Last month, the culinary incubator held the grand opening at a larger site in Lynwood, a 4,000-square-foot, shared commercial kitchen with private suites and an enclosed parking lot for food truck operators. Green purchased the former Warsaw Inn at 2180 Glenwood-Dyer Road in Lynwood and did a complete renovation.
Poppin Plates offers monthly memberships to renters of its commercial kitchen space. The business also offers culinary classes, workforce development services, food and beverage consulting and catering services.
Green has come a long way since the early months of the pandemic when her incubator members dwindled to as low as two in Park Forest. Today she has 15 members there and five in Lynwood. The new Lynwood location positions her to accommodate 60 members at that site and as many as a total of 85 at the two locations, she said.
Green added the second commercial kitchen space site because the business had outgrown its initial Park Forest location and after listening to the needs and wants of her members.
'We needed a new space, a larger space where everybody has their own private space,' she said.
She added food truck parking to provide her food truck businesses with the private secure parking space they lacked, she said. Her Lynwood site is the only one in the south suburbs with food truck parking and a commissary. She presently has five food trucks and is looking to expand. The site can accommodate 25 food trucks, she said.
Green, who has more than 25 years of experience in the food service business, has worked as a chef's assistant at Norwegian Cruise Line, second chef at the former Argosy Empress Casino and restaurant manager and general manager at Chicago area restaurants.
She launched her first incubator after observing a shortage of commercial cooking space in the south suburbs while providing consulting services to other food service entrepreneurs.
Poppin Plates targets food service entrepreneurs just getting started as well as those looking to scale their businesses. It requires members to have a state of Illinois business license, sanitation manager certificate, appropriate local license, a retail sales tax identification number and proof of liability insurance.
Green started Poppin Plates first incubator roughly a year before the pandemic hit. A decision she made to focus more on securing more corporate catering contracts helped her persevere through the pandemic, she said.
'I was scared back then,' she said with a chuckle. 'But the pandemic took my catering business to another level. It catapulted me to be able to think big to the Lynwood situation of actually owning my own.'
She said her business is teaching others if they run their businesses the right way, they can also be successful.
The catering portion of Poppin Plates works with 300 to 400 clients a year, and 90% of catering revenue now comes from corporate clients, Green said. Among her corporate clients are Advocate South Suburban Hospital, Advocate Trinity Hospital and Advocate Christ Medical Center, Green said.
'They have done catering services for several of our events,' said LaDonna Daniels, manager for medical staff services for Advocate South Suburban and Advocate Trinity. 'They assisted us significantly during COVID when many of our vendors were unable to accommodate. Her and her team were phenomenal. She has been a consistent vendor with our company.'
Green finds it fulfilling helping other businesses grow and succeed.
'Oh my God, it makes me feel real good,' she said, adding roughly 10 businesses that were in her incubator have gone on to start their own brick and mortar enterprises at sites in the Chicago metropolitan area, Phoenix, Arizona and Atlanta.
Sanethia Logan, owner of Logan Prime Executive Catering, is among Poppin Plates' incubator members in Lynwood. Logan Prime Executive Catering provides luxury upscale catering for corporate clients, caters weddings and other private celebrations, and also provides private chef services. She also has a food truck that sells upscale street food at the Lynwood incubator site. She initially operated out of the Park Forest site.
Logan has learned important lessons from Green.
'She taught me food costs, how to price my services and how to scale my business,' she said. 'Menu building that was a big one for me.'
She said Green taught her the importance of having a diversified catering business. Logan initially offered soul food but has expanded to also include other cuisines sought by clients from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, she said.
Saif Hannoush, founder of Noosh Catering, also rented space at the Park Forest site before moving to the Lynwood location. His business caters for corporate and private events and sells ready-to-go boxes for team meetings, gifts and small events. It offers a variety of food but specializes in Mediterranean cuisine and offering 'food styling services' that entail using fruits, vegetables, flowers and risers to creatively design and set up food tables.
He shared the story of how Green helped him when two of the people who'd agreed to assist him with catering a wedding for 200 people, canceled the day before. Green saw him looking stressed and asked what was wrong. She responded by helping him prepare for the event, working with him late that night up until 10 the next morning, he said.
'She's amazing,' he said. 'She's really a good person who likes for everyone to succeed.'
He has observed how she manages people and learned from that, among other lessons.
'She taught me a lot, that you need to work hard and smart and focus on your clients, so they trust you and want to work with you more,' he said.
Besides helping up-and-coming food service entrepreneurs, Green is also focused on sparking interest in the culinary arts among middle school students. She teaches the culinary arts program for sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Dolton Elementary District 149's middle school.
'We do it for the whole school year,' she said. 'Every 10 weeks, we rotate students. They learn basic food knowledge, measurement how to read recipes, how to work safely in the kitchen, proper temperatures' and they cook.
'Once they start cooking, the kids get really excited,' said Kenneth Scott, associate superintendent. 'They have cooked for our board of directors and fed us during a board meeting. It's just good to have kids have exposure to different career paths.'
Green couldn't agree more and is certainly happy with the career path she chose and helping others do the same.
