A Kitchen-for-Rent Is a Lifeline for the Laid-Off

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What do laid off hedge fund employees do for a second act?  They make cookies at a commercial kitchen designed to help aspiring cooks and gourmets launch their businesses.

The kitchen, rare in its approach, solves many problems. It offers cooks space they do not have at home, is fully equipped and complies with the city’s health code. The place has also fostered an informal network, where cooks combine purchasing orders for things like butter and olive oil to save money, or rely on one another as taste testers.

But like many of its users, the kitchen suffered when the economy cratered. It used to function as a training ground for unionized workers, available for rental to commercial cooks at night and on weekends. Once grants and donations dried up, though, the Consortium for Worker Education, the union-backed nonprofit group that sustained it, could no longer afford to lease the space.

The kitchen was supposed to close at the end of August, but its manager, Kathrine Gregory, hatched a survival plan and enlisted the cooks to help her.

One made vegan pâté. Another baked Finnish ruis bread. Ms. LaBarbara made sun-dried tomato hummus, and Ms. Angebranndt, of course, baked whoopie pies. The food was laid out before a small group of officials from the city and nonprofit groups who had gone to the kitchen to hear Ms. Gregory’s pitch. They left extending a bailout package worth more than $250,000 and a $1-a-year lease agreement for the equipment.

“The way to a funder’s heart,” Ms. Gregory observed, “is through his stomach.”