We recently connected with Elizabeth Frame Ellison and have shared our conversation below.
Elizabeth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Kitchen 66, a kickstart incubator for food entrepreneurs, and its sister development Mother Road Market, a nonprofit food hall on Route 66, were born from my own experience opening a food business. After graduating from Law School in 2009, I started a side hustle cupcake bakery called Hi, Cupcake. My experience starting and operating Hi, Cupcake exposed me to the challenges in the restaurant industry more broadly: First, affordable, licensed commercial kitchen space was non-existent and the startup costs associated with building out a kitchen are often insurmountable (a vent hood, for example, runs about $20,000.) Additionally, access to startup capital was impossible to obtain without existing sales data or collateral and business leaders I approached for advice were dismissive of the restaurant industry as a viable pathway to profitability.
My day job at this time was running the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation. At that time, our organization was in the early stages of ecosystem building for our entrepreneurial community in Tulsa. As we worked to construct 36 Degrees North as a basecamp for entrepreneurs, we weren’t building space to support small business entrepreneurs as they startup, test and scale their concepts. I also learned 90% of Tulsa food businesses failed within the first five years. Believing there was a positive correlation between support and success of aspiring food entrepreneurs, I began to study ways to increase the likelihood of a food businesses’ existence beyond five years.. As I better understood the challenges the food industry faced, I was able to build a model that addresses the top reasons food businesses fail in the first five years.
I set out to build Kitchen 66 as a space for food entrepreneurs to go from idea to market in a way that allowed the businesses to learn startup methodology heavily used in tech startups in order to “fail fast” and pivot to a model that will increase success. The Kitchen 66 launch program, now taught in Spanish and English, helps entrepreneurs learn the business side of starting a food company while providing affordable commercial space and several pop up opportunities at its sister program, Mother Road Market.
Mother Road Market, Oklahoma’s first food hall, opened as a nonprofit in November, 2018. Mother Road Market is a vibrant community space, allowing Tulsans and tourists alike to do good, eat well and shop locally at over 20 different business concepts, all under one roof. Mother Road Market decreases barriers by providing entrepreneurs with the opportunity to use a small shop model to test and scale their latest concept without the financial risk of opening a full-scale brick-and-mortar business. In addition to providing life-changing career opportunities for food entrepreneurs, the parent company of both programs, Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation, also offers need based scholarship programs for participation in the Launch business training program and to Kitchen 66 graduates moving into a shop at Mother Road Market.
While the last 2.5 years have certainly been full of challenges and new opportunities for growth, I am so thankful we were able to provide resources to support our businesses even when the pandemic forced us to close for several weeks at a time.
Elizabeth, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I was recently appointed Board Chair of the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation (LTFF) in Tulsa, Oklahoma and I am a passionate advocate for economic opportunity and entrepreneurship. In thirteen years leading LTFF as President and CEO, I founded Oklahoma’s FIRST food hall, Mother Road Market (2018) as well as Tulsa’s kickstart kitchen incubator, Kitchen 66 (2016). I was also a founding partner of 36 Degrees North (2016), a co-workspace and basecamp for entrepreneurs in Tulsa’s Arts District. I also had the pleasure of running the Tulsa Startup Series (2006, a bi-monthly, categorized pitch competition culminating in a demo day during Global Entrepreneurship Week), produced the State of Entrepreneurship Report for Tulsa and partnered with Kiva International to create Kiva Tulsa (2017).
This year I was honored to be recognized as a Creativity Ambassador for the State of Oklahoma, was previously named one of Oklahoma’s 40 under 40 and served as a panelist at a Google conference on the future of food in 2017. I received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Classical Culture in 2004 and worked for Dan Boren for Congress as the deputy finance director before joining Congressman Boren (OK Dist. 2) as a Legislative Assistant covering small business and women’s issues. In 2006, I received an unpaid job offer I couldn’t refuse when my mother, Kathy Taylor, decided to run for Mayor and asked for campaign help. After a successful campaign, I entered Law School at The University of Oklahoma. As the class President, I was honored to give the commencement address at Law School graduation. In 2012, I was elected to serve as a school board representative for Tulsa
Technology Center.
When I’m not working, I enjoy traveling, dabbling in the Sonoma wine business, culinary exploration, reading, music and athletic activity alongside my husband Chris and our boys Taylor (11) and Wyatt (8). I live in Tulsa and the Bay Area.
If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?
Most people don’t realize that nonprofit organizations can produce revenue! While a nonprofit cannot distribute profits to individuals as dividends, nonprofits like Mother Road Market and Kitchen 66 use revenue to offset the operating costs of running the program. Like a B-corp that prioritized purpose and profit, an income producing nonprofit prioritizes mission and revenue. It is our goal to be financially sustainable within ten years of operating Kitchen 66 and Mother Road Market, making a case for replicating the model in other places and thus expanding the Mother Road Market and Kitchen 66 distribution network to increase the economic impact of supporting small businesses. Kitchen 66 produces revenue primarily through commercial kitchen rental and leasing pop up spaces. Kitchen members can rent commercial kitchen space by the station and the hour. This decreases operating costs for entrepreneurs and increases the number of businesses that can work simultaneously in the kitchen space thereby increasing Kitchen 66’s revenue opportunity. Kitchen 66 operates three pop up spaces within Mother Road Market. To keep costs accessible for small businesses, entrepreneurs pay a small percentage of sales to pop-up in our locations. This also helps entrepreneurs forecast actual operating costs for future leases.
Mother Road Market has several revenue streams. The most predictable revenue stream is lease income from the 22 Mother Road Market food and retail tenants. The most surprising source of income has been our 9 hole Route 66 themed mini golf course! At $3 per person, the course brings in an average of $500 per week! Mother Road Market also operates The WEL Bar, retaining revenue from alcohol sales in the space as well as a General Store featuring locally made consumer packaged foods and an Info Booth selling Mother Road Market themed merchandise. Recently, Mother Road Market increased opportunities for private event rental, adding another revenue stream to the market.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
On Mother Road Market’s opening day (November 2, 2018) we were happily overwhelmed by the number of guests walking through the door to support local businesses! The crowds continued throughout the week, and we were so busy that I had to beg my husband, my kids, my parents and my friends to volunteer their time washing dishes, bussing tables and emptying trash just so we could continue to turn tables and provide trays and silverware to our merchants! Before the market opened, we spent a great deal of time developing operating systems we would employ to train staff, manage inventory and keep track of revenue. One such system involved counting the cash from the tills from Mother Road Market’s registers each night, adding them to the credit card transactions to create a total daily revenue count, and then depositing the cash in a safe until it could be deposited at the bank the following morning.
Mother Road Market’s hours when it first opened were 9am-11pm, six days per week. Because our opening staff was lean and our hours were long, the executive leadership took turns serving as Manager on Duty for the market, including opening and closing tasks like the nightly cash count.
We were awake until two or three o’clock each morning counting the cash! Don’t get me wrong, we were thankful for the popularity of our new food hall, but the amount of time it took to count cash from four different tills was too much.
On day six, we decided to make Mother Road Market a cashless food hall. Because we knew some people in the community are unable to use a credit or debit card for their purchases, and a core value of Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation was building equity in the community, we developed a work around by allowing cash only for gift card purchases at one location. The gift cards could be used like cash. This small change saved hours in nightly closing duties and, as it turned out, was a benefit a few years later when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many other food businesses to make this shift.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.elizabethframeellison.com/
- Instagram: @elizabethframeellison
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabethframeellison
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethframeellison
- Twitter: @efellison
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8wfkaCcQe0
- Other: Mother Road Market : www.motherroadmarket.com Kitchen 66: kitchen66tulsa.com
Image Credits
Valerie Wei Hass (headshot, food photo & food truck photo) MKSK (streetscape rendering) HCM (NOMA rendering) Forsyth Creative (patio & marquee photo)
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