City awards grants to two shared spaces on The Loop

The Columbia City Council has awarded the CoMo Cooks Shared Kitchen a $250,000 grant for a new kitchen on the Business Loop. This will help us with construction and equipment costs and provide funding for scholarships for minority-owned, food-based start ups. 

At CoMo Cooks, we believe all good cooks deserve a chance to turn their recipes into reality, regardless of background, income, or status. Our mission is to provide an accessible, diverse, and affordable kitchen space for local food-based businesses and small-batch producers. CoMo Cooks helps create quality jobs and careers by providing an affordable startup space for food industry workers who have been displaced or who are shifting to a post-COVID business model.

This new shared space is part of our larger economic development plan focused on makers and small-scale manufacturers. By investing in a space and needed equipment, we can lower the barrier to entry to new business start-ups. A traditional kitchen costs between $275,000 and $500,000 to build and equip. Our clients can start a business for about $1500 plus $17/hour or less.

We're in the planning stages right now and this assist from the City of Columbia is a game changer for our efforts. Interested in learning more about our kitchen? Read about our efforts at comocooks.com and discover all our kitchen clients on our website.

CoMo Cooks wasn't the only shared space on The Loop to receive city assistance. Last night the Council also awarded Moberly Area Community College $1,370,339 to:

• Provide scholarships to Columbia Public School students to participate in workforce development programs offered by MACC as part of the CPS Early College partnership.
• Provide scholarships for the MACCLab, provide specialized training to local residents.
• Maintain the the MACCLab and the Mechatronics spaces.

The MACCLab Community Makerspace is another great space on The Loop designed to help lower the barriers to folks looking to start a small business.

Kudos to the City of Columbia for recognizing all our efforts to bring makers and small-manufacturers to the Business Loop!