Food Entrepreneurship Program

We’re catering to the Tompkins County community, allowing you to help us support a diverse range of budding food entrepreneurs overcome the challenges of starting a catering business. The Food Entrepreneurship Program has catered events both large and small at Cornell, in the city, and in local towns while drawing on Extension’s professional support, licensed kitchen and facilities. The long-term goals of this project are to develop a sustainable and scalable framework and infrastructure that provides a realizable pathway out of poverty for small food business owners. This strengthens community commitment to fairness and opportunity in this sector of the local food industry. 

While we are no longer accepting applications for the Food Entrepreneurship Program, we are available to answer questions about starting a catering/food service business or hiring a graduate of the program to cater an event (see contact information below). Also, if you are looking to start a catering or food service business, you may find answers to some of your questions in this guide we developed for new catering businesses in Tompkins County:

Ready-to-Eat Food Business Startup Guide (Archived 1/17/21)

We are also interested in expanding the connections our commercial kitchen has with the greater Tompkins County community. If you are a program with potential use for a commercial kitchen, including workforce development, reach out to cce.kitchens@cornell.edu to discuss possible collaborations. 

Last updated July 21, 2022