Branchfood member Ian Pasquarelli has always had a passion for supporting, educating, and empowering the communities he lives and works in. Coming from a small town in Aroostook County, Maine, he developed a strong work ethic and sense of community that’s driven him to where he is today. As the founder and owner of The Kitchen Network, a Boston-based food business consultancy, Ian knows that there is no greater way to connect than through food.

The Kitchen Network was founded on the premise of becoming a resource to help food industry entrepreneurs and early stage businesses overcome barriers to success. As a comprehensive resource for every stage of business growth, The Kitchen Network is here to solve problems, navigate regulatory pathways, and support local business in any way they can to help entrepreneurs achieve success.

Read on to learn what inspired Ian to launch his business, how he navigated a major pivot, and why The Kitchen Network sets entrepreneurs up for success in the food industry.

Prior to founding The Kitchen Network, you spent over a decade working in every aspect of the food industry. What about those experiences inspired you to launch The Kitchen Network and how did you decide your focus?

If I were to put a label on my current occupation, I guess I would consider myself a food industry “generalist”. To be honest, I wouldn’t say there was any special quality, skill, educational degree, or career path that has driven me to where I am today. Rather, it is the variety of occupational opportunities I have had in the past and a strong entrepreneurial drive that has empowered me to get here.

I started my path towards working “in food” as a volunteer in high school, helping my mother teach healthy cooking classes to elementary kids after school. I went on to study food science and nutrition at the University of Maine, and then eventually obtained a graduate degree in agriculture and food safety from Virginia Tech. Throughout this educational timeline I worked in restaurants, public health non-profit organizations, and institutional foodservice operations.

Eventually I became heavily involved in agriculture and CPG industry assistance while working for Virginia Tech. It was here that I realized how much impact we could have on early stage businesses who really needed a leg-up to get to the next stage and scale their businesses. I simply took a step back and thought about how I could make an impact with the skills and knowledge that I had obtained over the years. I identified what I believed was white space in the industry and decided that I would start a business to make it happen.

The Kitchen Network started as a platform to connect food entrepreneurs with underutilized commercial kitchen space. Today, The Kitchen Network is a food business consultancy that provides insights on everything from product development, strategy, funding, food safety, and more. How did you navigate that shift, and do you have any advice for other founders whose companies are pivoting?

I would like to say that this pivot came from a deep analysis of market demand and specific insight into where we could have the greatest impact, but to be honest, it came mostly out of necessity, as I’m sure many other pivots and big decisions have come with other companies. I was moving to Boston in 2017, I had just completed an incubator program at the UVA Venture Lab, and had an offer for angel investment for my company. Then I decided to turn the offer down, shut down the online portal, and go back to the drawing board.

I realized that I was attempting to build a food tech company, with 100% knowledge of food, and 0% knowledge of tech, with no co-founders to pick up my slack. The financial runway was short, and the business was not growing as quickly as I had hoped for, or as quickly as I needed it to. Student loans and other bills were stacking up, and I realized it was time to pull the plug before I dug the hole any deeper. As they say in entrepreneurship, if you are going to fail, fail fast.

I took another job with a local start-up and spent every night when I got home building out my plan for what I would do next. I realized over the next few months that a majority of what I had spent my time doing over the past year was assisting my clients with other challenges they were facing: helping make their products shelf-stable, assisting with scale-up formulations, designing packaging for regulatory compliance, building out HACCP and comprehensive food safety plans, building pitch decks, and connecting with investors. I was doing all of this work, just so I could then help my clients rent kitchen space on my platform. The answer was right in front of me, but I just hadn’t realized the opportunity until then.

Advice for other companies who are pivoting: Make sure to decide whether you are making a pivot or simply getting distracted. Sometimes, it can be exciting to pursue a new opportunity, or a new product that you think will make a big splash in the market. But unless you and your team are fully committed to the new direction, you risk becoming splintered and distracted, which can draw your focus, time, and energy away from your ultimate goals. As long as you are all on the same page and pushing in the same direction, you will be much more likely to achieve success. Being able to distinguish between opportunity and distractions can be difficult, but you always have to ask yourself those questions before pushing forward, no matter how hard they can be to answer.

The Kitchen Network works with a wide range of clients, from local food startups to Fortune 500 companies. How do you give your clients a competitive edge that sets them up for success in the food industry?

Our team is unique in that we each have the “generalist” background spanning multiple types of food and beverage product development. In addition to our main project operatives, we also have an extended network of food scientists, professional chefs, and other industry professionals who we can call on for specific industry expertise and insight. We often find that the main value in our company comes from the varied background of our professional experience and that of our extended networks. The ability to cross over between beverage, salty snack, confectionery, refrigerated, and frozen product development areas keeps us up to date on all aspects of food industry trends and directions. The ability to think and operate outside the confines of a single product line or shopping aisle allows us to draw inspiration from the entire retail food environment, and we bring that wealth of knowledge to each of our projects.

You’ve worked extensively in food safety, which has been an area of rising concern since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. How have you seen entrepreneurs address this challenge, and do you foresee any lasting changes to how businesses implement food safety planning?

Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs are doing whatever they can to stay afloat, depending on the industry. Some CPG producers are maxing out their production capacity due to increased demand, while some food trucks and small restaurateurs have closed down for the foreseeable future. Many CPG companies attempting to scale-up have had trouble finding co-packers and co-manufacturers due to decreased hours of operation for safety precautions, increased demand overall, or other factory shut-downs due to exposure or employee illnesses.

Online and direct to consumer sales have skyrocketed, so many entrepreneurs are doing their best to boost their online presence and e-commerce operations. It has become very difficult to launch a new product at retail because consumers have either severely limited their browsing time in stores, or are simply shopping online in which case they are usually purchasing products they are already familiar with, rather than trying new ones.

To my knowledge, the virus does not pose a specifically dangerous threat to food itself as far as consumption goes. If that is the case, then I actually do not expect to see significant changes to food safety planning in regards to any manufacturing production or back-of-house operations, apart from some type of potential capacity restrictions for employees. As for front-of-house and service positions, I think there will certainly be long-lasting changes and guidelines, but again, nothing that I would consider specific to food safety planning such as HACCP or GMP’s.

How has being a Branchfood member helped you to connect with the New England food community?

When I moved up to Boston, Lauren Abda and the Branchfood community were my first contacts in the area. I was so excited to see such an amazing ecosystem of food entrepreneurs all congregated in one area. Branchfood became an instant sense of community for me in a new city, and since coming here I have been lucky enough to connect and collaborate with multiple members in the group. I really enjoy attending Community Table and offering whatever advice I can to the new and exciting businesses that filter through each month, and I am so thankful that this resource exists for all food businesses here in Boston.

How can our audience connect with the Kitchen Network?

You can check us out at: www.kitchennetworking.com or follow us on Instagram @kitchennetworking.

Thank you to Ian of The Kitchen Network for being this week’s Member Monday spotlight. Are you interested in how a Branchfood membership can help you succeed? Learn more about our membership benefits, and stay informed with our newsletter. Be sure to follow us on Instagram for our next Member Monday takeover!