From punishment to profitability: Commissary kitchens spark Spokane culinary enterprises

When Leo Araiza got in trouble as a kid, he would have to work in the kitchen with his stepmom.

“So I got stuck in there a lot,” he said.

This repeated punishment led to Araiza knowing the family salsa recipe the best, the same recipe that may soon allow him to quit his job as a warehouse manager and focus solely on the new family business, Leo’s Slangin Salsa.

Araiza is using a commissary kitchen to grow his startup into a full -fledged business.

A commissary kitchen is a commercial kitchen that is rented out to different businesses, providing them with equipment, supplies and storage.

Two commissary kitchens in Spokane are River City Kitchen and A Prep Kitchen, both of which say their goal is to make their spaces affordable.

River City Kitchen is a nonprofit, and A Prep Kitchen aims to become one too.

“Our primary clients are caterers, food trucks and people who are doing the farmers market,” said Hemrich, the owner of A Prep Kitchen.

Clay Cerna, the owner of River City Kitchen, said that his kitchen is full of a lot of different chefs and bakers creating a diverse array of food.

“They just happen to have this one thing in common where they need a county- and/or state- and/or federally approved kitchen to operate out of,” Cerna said.

A Prep Kitchen also hosts a vendor market every Thursday. It’s a good place for the businesses from A Prep Kitchen to set up booths or food trucks, and is less expensive than most other markets in Spokane, Humrich said.

“The whole intention is for these businesses to become a big business and get their own place, their own brick and mortar– either a restaurant or their own self -contained food truck or their own packaging facility,” Humrich said.

The latter is exactly what the Araiza family wants to accomplish with Leo’s Slangin Salsa.

Araiza has been making the salsa since he was in grade school, resulting in more than 30 years of experience. He said for the last 20 years, people have been telling him to try to sell his salsa, Last August he finally started Leo’s Slangin Salsa, first taking hold in River City Kitchen before transitioning to A Prep Kitchen and joining a legacy of culinary ventures.

“Right now, I think we have 38,” said Humrich, referring to the number of businesses she hosts.

Araiza and his family started out by making the salsa and delivering it personally to homes. Otherwise, they went to a variety of farmers markets and hosted pop-ups to gain initial traction.

“That’s not something we’ll ever give up,” Araiza said.

Using commissary kitchens, it didn’t take much finances to get it off the ground.

“We started with a grand, literally,” Araiza said.

Now, almost a year later, they have a partnership with Yoke’s to sell salsa in their stores.

“As far as losses go, there’s not a lot, but there’s not a lot of gain at the beginning as well,” Araiza said.

Araiza’s dream entails working for himself and being able to work with employees that he chooses.

“The goal is to get our own kitchen, and to have to order our own stuff in bulk and get things shipped to us, that’s the goal.”

Araiza isn’t necessarily planning for a restaurant. He’s more focused on just selling his salsa, yet he keeps his options open.

“We’ve already talked about smoking some meats and doing it with salsa like a Mexican barbecue,” said Araiza, “or maybe like a salsa bar kind of thing.”

He said A Prep Kitchen is taking care of all of their needs so far, and that they’re still adding more services.

“It’s a good stepping stone in the beginning,” Araiza said, describing A Prep Kitchen as an incubator for growing businesses.

Humrich said that about 40% of businesses operating out of A Prep Kitchen are oriented to sell their product to stores like Leo’s Slangin Salsa. She said another 30% “would love to be a restaurant.”

Good ’Dilla, at one point, wanted just that.

Zack Robertson started Good ’Dilla, a quesadilla restaurant, as a tent with his wife in 2021. “Essentially a temporary food service in farmers markets,” was how he described their “pop-up” model in those early years.

For access to cold storage and a place to prepare food and wash dishes, Robertson decided to use Clay Cerna’s River City Kitchen as their commissary. “Every mobile and temporary operation, or almost all of them, need commissary kitchens to operate out of,” he said.

Also in 2021, Robertson said, “we got our food truck and so we started operating that the following year.”

Good ’Dilla was based out of River City Kitchen, but it mainly operated out of their food truck and tent.

Although tenants like Robertson were able to find success without an online model, Cerna said that some businesses operated exclusively virtually.

“We have had some ghost kitchens start, but to be completely honest with you, they didn’t last very long, they only made it about three to six months,” Cerna said.

“Most people have had a lot of success with people ordering their product in advance and then picking it up at a farmers market … The pickup model does much better.”

One business that used the pickup model while getting started was Skewers, a Mediterranean restaurant.

Humrich said the owner of Skewers would receive orders through social media and make them at A Prep Kitchen.

“He had his grill out front, and he was grilling everything for his customers to come pick it up,” Humrich said.

Skewers also had a food truck that was voted best in Spokane by readers of the Inlander.

Humrich said Skewers would use A Prep Kitchen as a space to prepare food for the truck.

“He started out here at the kitchen, and now he has his own brick -and -mortar restaurant downtown on First Avenue,” Humrich said.

Robertson was able to gain traction without any sort of an online sales model.

“We would just show up and essentially do vending for people walking up and our regular customers and all that kind of stuff,” Robertson said.

“And then last year in 2023, we opened up our store in River Park Square,” he said.

This was so they could run their truck and tent out of their own kitchen instead of a shared one.

“We moved out of River City Kitchen … last July,” he said.

Now that Good ’Dilla has a brick -and -mortar location, Robertson said they did start using online services like DoorDash and Grubhub.

“What I did would have been impossible without a commissary commercial kitchen,” Robertson said.