“This is the boss,” Cristina Besher jokes, introducing her baking assistant Erin Struss, who cuts through espresso-cardamom shortbread dough with a contraption that resembles six pizza cutters stuck together. Besher smiles quickly and turns to grab a box of soy milk, revealing a tiny spiral tattoo on her neck, then stirs the soy milk into an oversized stainless-steel bowl of honey-cake batter with her lean arms.

In front of her, honey slowly drips down two plastic measuring cups, a stark contrast to the rapid-fire pace of her surroundings at La Cocina. Dishes clang as a catering company cleans up from the previous night’s event. Racks of bread sit cooling while people package a heaping table of loaves, and next door in the near-identical second kitchen, a man peels a huge pot of shrimp while women roll rice paper around greens. The air is thick with the smells of the kitchen–spices and honey, baking bread, chlorine from the dish sanitizer–and the energetic buzz of Spanish conversation floats through the space.

Besher’s line of chocolate-covered organic baked goods, called “Kika’s Treats” after her childhood nickname, is one of 17 businesses being “incubated” at La Cocina, a nonprofit commercial kitchen in San Francisco’s Mission district. La Cocina targets low-income Latina and immigrant women (Besher is originally from Brazil) to participate in its incubation program, which provides access to a below-market-rate commercial kitchen, technical assistance and business consultations with Bay Area food-industry volunteers, and helps with the legal aspects of running a food business.

“The goal of La Cocina is to provide economic self-sufficiency for its members,” says Sonia Melara, chair of La Cocina’s board. “In the case of these businesses, they haven’t had the place–or the expertise–to sell their products. Having a facility like this in a low-income area is extremely important. Micro-enterprise and small business is the best way out of poverty.”

The exterior of La Cocina looks distinctly modern, situated on a block of Victorian homes. It’s a rectangular building with clean lines of narrow wood paneling running horizontally across its facade, and lots of metal-framed windows. Metal lettering spells out “La Cocina” on its left side.

Inside, the interior is immaculately clean, with golden walls, a small table with chairs, an office, and double doors leading into the kitchens. Plates of varying sizes, decorated with fruits, and inscribed with the names of companies and individuals who have contributed to the program hang above a staircase to the right.

The groundwork for La Cocina began in 1999 after feasibility studies showed that a large percentage of women graduating from business-planning courses offered through organizations such as the Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment were interested in starting food businesses, but lacked access to a commercial kitchen space. La Cocina opened its doors in 2005 and has been nurturing small businesses since then.

“Food businesses are a really important aspect of communities,” says Program Director Caleb Zigas, “especially to immigrant communities. They are essential to the fabric of a diverse community.”

Besher opens the oven and pulls out a mini-muffin tray of honey cakes. She dumps them unceremoniously onto parchment paper on the table, then goes back and lines them up neatly. Her tiny earrings sparkle under the edge of her red bandanna as she moves rapidly.
Besher moved to San Francisco from Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1999 and soon started working in the food industry to support herself in the expensive new city. She worked as a prep-cook for five months before discovering her passion for pastry.
“I realized it was for me and San Francisco was the place to be to learn about food. It’s such a culinary mecca,” she says. The next few years saw her working as a pastry chef and baker at restaurants, bakeries and catering companies around the city.
In 2005, Besher was introduced to La Cocina by a pastry-chef friend, who was checking out the community kitchen for her own business. Her friend decided not to use the facility, but Besher— whose hunt for a commercial kitchen had been previously halted due to high rents— thought otherwise. She started Kika’s Treats in March 2006, and by the end of July had joined La Cocina. By December she was selling her line of chocolate-covered organic baked goods in stores.

“I never thought of having a food business in Sao Paulo. I never thought it could be an option for me. I worked in marketing and business there and was unhappy. But when I was introduced to La Cocina, that’s when I knew I wanted to do a food business.”
Besher’s original plan was to launch a line of Brazilian honey cakes, both plain and with fruit fillings, like the ones she grew up eating in Brazil. “But since I love eating things covered in chocolate— that’s my favorite, whether it’s a cookie or a cake— I decided on a line of organic chocolate-covered baked goods,” she says. She adapted her mother’s 43-year-old recipe to be dairy-free and egg-free and Kika’s Treats Brazilian Honey Cakes were born.

The line now includes four different chocolate-covered products: honey cakes, caramelized graham crackers, espresso-cardamom shortbread, and cocoa-nib-chocolate shortbread, and can be found throughout the city in stores such as Blue Fog Market and Rainbow Grocery.

“La Cocina is paramount in Kika’s Treats’ life,” she says. “They are the reason I decided to have a business. When I saw all the resources they had–the commercial kitchen, the consultants. They help us connect with all the resources the city has to offer.”
La Cocina is made up of three main parts: a small staff, a board of eight members, and supporters who provide their services at free or reduced rates. The board creates policy for La Cocina, and meets regularly to assess its future, and ensure its financial health.

“I think it’s important when we talk to people about self-sufficiency, we talk about jobs,” says Melara. “I think a business provides people an opportunity to dream and make more money than a dead-end or minimum-wage job. I hope we become a role model for the country.”

Interested applicants attend an orientation and interview with an advisory committee who evaluates their business plan, tastes their product, and assesses its marketability. If they are accepted, they begin a pre-incubation period where they are expected to meet goals set by an advisory committee within six months. After that, they are accepted into the kitchen to begin their incubation period which lasts up to five years. They receive access to the coded, commercial kitchen at rates far below its market value– members pay $7-$15 an hour, versus the $40-an-hour commercial rate La Cocina charges non-members— and a host of services to start their business, from free marketing consultation to subsidized graphic design for packaging.

Despite working 12-14-hour days, Kika’s Treats still isn’t profitable, as Besher has reinvested everything back into the business. She says it needs to grow to a larger scale before it can support her. Still, when asked about the popularity of honey cakes in Brazil, her entrepreneurial pride sparkles, just like her tiny earrings.

“I returned from Brazil three weeks ago,” she says. “I was trying all the honey cakes, and, to be honest, I didn’t find many that were better than mine. Maybe one.”