Today we’d like to introduce you to Meredith and Chris Powell.
Orange Door Kitchen is the collaborative venture of husband and wife team, Chris and Meredit. Food, or more so the experience of eating together, is central to their relationship and to the memories that they have created over the years. From their first date in college, to the first meal that they cooked together in their tiny apartment kitchen, to the first World’s Top-50 restaurant that they saved up to splurge on, the highlights of their lives are threaded together by the act of sharing food with the people they love.
As two New Englanders who now grow, cook, eat, and advocate for good food, they are consistently amazed by its power to create community. When they began the Orange Door Supper Club as a hobby in 2015, they wanted to share food and stories with as many people as they could without quitting their day jobs. Every supper they hosted was unique, personal, soul satisfying, and vastly different than anything they had experienced at a traditional restaurant. Their little dining club that began with 8 members has grown to include 70+ people who were once strangers and now are friends.
After a year of operating the club as a hobby, they realized that they actually did want to quit their day jobs to share the Orange Door experience with a larger audience. Thus, Orange Door Hospitality, a small-events catering company, was born! Creating community is central to their mission and they make decisions for their business with the hope that their work – cooking delicious food together – might turn into a special memory for someone else.
Orange Door Kitchen is a place-based extension of this hospitality driven mission. They opened the doors to their shared kitchen, culinary studio, and event space in May 2018 in West Acton to grow a dynamic and thriving community of food-focused makers, professionals, and eaters.
Has it been a smooth road?
Building a business is never 100% smooth sailing, and building a food business comes with a unique set of challenges. That being said, Orange Door Kitchen went from idea to reality in about nine months with very few struggles along the way. We credit the strength, skill, and grit of our small team and network of supporters for making the process of opening our culinary destination more adventure than disaster. All construction projects have their ups and downs and we were fortunate to have Meredith’s previous work experience as a commercial interior designer to help us ride out the downs. She was able to manage the project schedule and control costs when others on the project team dropped the ball.
Now that Orange Door Kitchen is open, our business growth is progressing in tight alignment with our business plan. In the past month, we have found that we overestimated the pace of our growth timeline, but instead of seeing this as a struggle, we’re taking the act of stretching our milestone goals along a longer time horizon as an opportunity to build a core of exceptional hospitality into the everyday business of Orange Door Kitchen.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Orange Door Kitchen – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Orange Door Kitchen is a shared kitchen, culinary studio, and event space. As a shared kitchen, we rent licensed commercial kitchen space to early-stage food entrepreneurs because we believe that sharing resources is a win-win-win solution for caterers, personal chefs, and value-added producers.
As a culinary studio, we host classes, tastings, demos, and pop-up meals to delight and inspire. We partner with creative and talented food, beverage and entertaining experts to provide programming for people to encounter food and drink in an experiential and extraordinary way. Our demonstration kitchen and dining room are blank canvases for something new to do outside Boston.
As an event space, Orange Door Kitchen is the perfect venue for small to medium sized events. From bridal showers to business meetings, our space was built to give renters flexibility, functionality and comfort that few other event sites can offer. Our rates are reasonable and our space feels like home. Our event space is open on weekdays for cafe-style coworking to create a community of businesses around our shared kitchen entrepreneurs.
Taken individually, there are other businesses in the Boston area that are shared kitchens or teaching kitchens or event spaces or coworking spaces. But we stand apart from others because we’ve combined all of these functions under one roof to encourage collaboration, interaction, chance encounters, business growth, and meaningful experiences.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
We love the West Acton Village neighborhood of Acton and are thrilled to be a part of this growing walkable community of fun things to do in the suburbs of Boston. When it comes to being a part of the Boston food scene, we most like that our city is home to a close knit, forward thinking, and supportive food community. We also like that Boston and the surrounding towns are within easy reach of some of the country’s best farms, forests and fisheries. On the flip side, we least like the fact that in this Northeast regional food system full of gems, there are still so many people who don’t have equal access to fresh and affordable food.
Pricing:
- Shared Commercial Kitchen Rentals – start at $25/hour
- Cafe Style Coworking Day Passes – $15/day
- Cafe Style Coworking Monthly Memberships – $75/month
- Event Space Rentals – start at $50/hour
Contact Info:
- Address: 251 Arlington Street
Acton, MA 01720 - Website: orangedoorkitchen.com
- Phone: 978-795-4174
- Email: info@orangedoorkitchen.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orangedoorktchn
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/orangedoorktchn
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/orangedoorktchn
Image Credit:
Elizabeth LaDuca, Meredith Powell
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