Overview

The Cambridge Food Lab's mission is to foster and support food entrepreneurs in Massachusetts and to create sustainable food jobs for low-income Cambridge residents. The Cambridge Food Lab aims to bridge communities through food, cooking, and entrepreneurship. The Cambridge Food Lab also explores, uses, supports, and promotes new clean and environmentally friendly food technologies, ingredients, and devices. What is the Cambridge Food Lab (CFL) and Taco Nation? The Cambridge Food Lab and Taco Nation are a hybrid non-profit / for-profit organization. Both entities will be under the 501c3 status of the Cambridge Food Lab, meaning the Cambridge Food Lab owns Taco Nation. Taco Nation reason of existence is to develop revenue for the non-profit operations of the Cambridge Food Lab while developing jobs for Cambridge residents. The Cambridge Food Lab is a restaurant incubator that helps entrepreneurs to develop their food ventures and introduce new technologies to the kitchen. Other non-profit organizations follow this aggressive financial Self-sufficiency model, e.g. Homeboy Industries: a bakery located in L.A. that reinvest its revenue in providing job training to former gang members and ex-inmates, Goodwill Industries: sales used donated items to support job training programs for the youth or most foundations that reinvest their endowment's profits in the non-profits they fund. Our Approach on Financial Sustainability Financial Sustainability is the backbone of any healthy non-profit organization. At CFL, we start our venture with a restaurant intended to generate revenue so we can focus on executing our mission instead of fundraising. With a tool such as Taco Nation, CFL could count every year with 250K-400K for its non-profit operations. Supporting Non-Traditional Entrepreneurship In Cambridge, whether it’s biotech, robotics, or R&D, there is no shortage of capital for investments in these industries. However, it is extremely difficult to raise support and capital investment for food entrepreneurs. The Cambridge Food Lab helps non-traditional Massachusetts entrepreneurs bringing an option for support outside their own limited resources and communities. Taco Nation; CFL Unique Financial Self-Sufficiency Tool The CFL makes a point on its own financial self-sufficiency as a way to set a model for stakeholders and the community. For this CFL owns a restaurant, Taco Nation, that had been conceived to develop revenue for the Cambridge Food Lab and jobs for Cambridge’s low-income community. Taco Nation follows a restaurant business model that has proven very successful in college markets: Mexican / Burrito QSRs (quick service restaurant). This model, at the local level, emulates the successful chain Anna’s Taqueria restaurant that sells large amounts of fresh, fast, healthy, and affordable food to young professionals and college students.