Finding the right commercial kitchen is instrumental in growing a food-based business. While there are numerous online directories and apps available today, ten years ago it was much more difficult for small business owners to find a suitable space.
Latasha Menon, the owner of Latasha’s Kitchen, experienced the challenge first hand. After running a successful restaurant in Perth for five years, she decided to branch into ready-made curry pastes and condiments to sell at the end of her cooking classes.
“I found that the restaurant had its limitations for what I wanted to do,” explains Latasha.
“I thought maybe there would be contract kitchen out there that wouldn’t mind me coming in and using their facility and cooking my products.”
But after months of searching, Latasha was unable to find a commercial kitchen that was suitable for small batch producers in Western Australia, so she had to look further afield.
Latasha’s curry pastes reflect her Malaysian and Indian heritage. Source: SBS
“I traveled all the way to NSW to do my small batch concentrate sauces because I couldn’t find a kitchen in WA, that would help businesses like myself scale up.”
Despite the travel costs, Latasha has been traveling to Sydney from Perth each month for five years and has no plans to stop anytime soon. She has since closed her restaurant to focus on Latasha’s Kitchen fulltime and now exports her products all over the world.
“The business is growing. We are finding more and more people have no time to cook, so we are looking at constantly making products that make life a lot easier for them.”
Latasha is now experimenting with a new range of products to simplify home-cooking for time-poor target individuals.
Latasha travels from Perth to Sydney each month to cook her curry pastes and condiments. Source: SBS
“We are working on a range of simmer sauces. I’ve been asked to developed hot sauces for overseas markets so we are constantly making new produce.”
