New Year brings opportunity for entrepreneurial growth to Atlanta and the Southeast

New Year brings opportunity for entrepreneurial growth to Atlanta and the Southeast 

ATLANTA (January 29, 2020) — PREP commercial kitchen and culinary accelerator is expanding its footprint in the Atlanta metro area once again to meet the City’s growing entrepreneurial appetite for more dedicated kitchens and multi-user commercial kitchen space. In addition to its current 83,500 square-feet of facilities at 3300 Marjan Drive, 3781 Presidential Parkway and 3795 Presidential Parkway (near the intersection of interstates 85 and 285,) PREP acquired the 63,000 square-foot former Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School property at 1927 Lakeside Parkway in Tucker. Earlier in 2019 PREP also purchased a 55,000 square-foot location in Austin, Texas, which will open Fall 2020. These acquisitions continue to advance PREP’s commitment to providing local and regional food companies next-level food production space. 

Home to the Southeast’s largest group of food entrepreneurs, PREP opened its doors in 2014 and quickly outgrew its facility. Today, PREP is home to more than 200 food producers, caterers, restauranteurs, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, food trucks, meal kit companies, bakers and artisans, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week in a variety of shared and private workspaces. 

“We’ve worked with over 450 culinary professionals from ideation to shelf, and from catering to brick and mortar restaurants,” said Doug Marranci, co-founder of PREP. “The joy we get from seeing our members learn, scale, and thrive, bringing their dreams to life here at PREP – it’s exciting and gratifying to be a part of this creative community.” 

A few highlights from PREP’s recent completed expansion efforts at 3781 Presidential Parkway (aka PREP3) and the new 1927 Lakeside Parkway space: 

  • More dedicated, permit-ready kitchens for o established, expanding and new food producers
    • 
    restaurant central commissary use
    • established catering operations
    • prepared meal production
    • specialty food producers and CPG companies
  • Space for culinary classes, demonstrations and corporate events
  • Additional meeting space for PREP members
  • More room for foodservice innovation – menu testing and corporate kitchen research & development

PREP removes the barriers to entry for small to medium culinary businesses. Members can focus on cooking, baking and packaging, rather than on the challenges of leasing, maintaining and licensing their own kitchens. Commercial kitchens can cost a food startup hundreds of thousands of dollars in upfront investment and come with plenty of design and development nightmares. PREP also creates room to grow, and provides vital resources like value-added services and access to distributors, retailers, financing, marketing, packaging, labor and a host of third-party vendors. 

“We have seen over 60 caterers, specialty food manufacturers and restauranteurs who have outgrown their current kitchens and need more space,” said co-founder Mitch Jaffe. “PREP’s system enabled growth for these companies. We have folks who’ve found that they have the customer base to support opening a production or kitchen space, and we want to support them in that evolution and continue to make PREP the premier destination for culinary growth.” 

About PREP
PREP is the largest multi-user commercial kitchen facility and culinary accelerator in the Southeast, with 83,000 square feet used by entrepreneurs representing approximately 200 companies and housing over 700 jobs. Since its opening in Atlanta in 2014, PREP has helped to launch over 450 culinary businesses including caterers, bakers, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, beverage producers, food trucks, food carts, test kitchens, delivery-only ‘ghost’ restaurants, meal kit companies, central commissary operators, private chefs, prepared meals companies, and more. www.prepatl.com