Local Bake Shop Mixes Day Job with Night Job for a Fun Event

We have mentioned Kelly Provost before. She started as Treats Bakery in the Food Fort Kitchens and then rebranded to Local Bake Shop. She spends some evenings and weekends here creating her inspired baked treats for catered events, farmers markets and more. During the day, she lives in the world of IT. In this episode of when World Collide, Kelly decided to use the Fort Fort as an event space for a team building event for her co-workers from her IT department. Many people have been using our space as a small event space and having fun mixing business with pleasure. It sounds like Kelly and company enjoyed their time in the kitchen.

This is the “field report” from Kelly.

The IT BA and PM team had a team building event. We took over commercial kitchen space at the Food Fort to organize into teams and bake four different, multi-step items within a set period of time. As a twist, each team had varying levels of “requirements” with their recipes. We learned some things about baking, about how we work together, about different kinds of requirements and decision-making, and we enjoyed some delicious treats!

(There were caveman sugar cookies, compliments of Blind Mice Bakery in the Lavender Lounge this morning.) 

Team Three Blind Mice (AKA Blind Mice Bakery) and their Koulourakia/Halal/Caveman Sugar Cookies

Team Tart (Sweet, Savory, and Pop) with sweet blueberry tarts and savory cheese and tomato tarts

The Pipers and their cream cheese filled chocolate cupcakes

Team Puff and their Cream Puffs

Enjoying treats!

We had great time!!!

It Takes a Village to Serve an OH! Burger

We have a collaborative community at the Food Fort. We see it everyday as members share ideas, pass on recipe hints and brainstorm with each other on the next special or business concept. This past week, we saw true team spirit shine through.

Brian Thornton from OH! Burgers had the transmission die on his food truck. It would take $2500 and three or more days to fix the problem. In the meantime, the key to have a profitable mobile food business is to have the ability to…..move. We thought of some different solutions: attaching a horse or mule team to the truck, borrowing another truck or sitting on the curb despondent about three days of lost business.

In a short time better plans came together.

Here is the recipe for gettiing Brian on the road.

Brian borrowed the Kenny’s Meat Wagon cart from Ken Donnelly and was loaned an SUV with a towing hitch by Alex from Tatoheads.

For Friday, Laura Lee of Ajumama opted not to take the day off and instead partnered with Brian to do a pop-up combo on her truck. The two partnered with special items from the Ajumama menu and select items from OH! Burgers, so the two could work together to have Aju-Burgers / OH!Jumama set up for lunch at an OSU medical facility. (Please note the infamous, MikeGuyver, in the background of the shot with a thumbs up).

Friday night, Brian picked up his truck at 5:00 pm and raced to the Instaband Battle of Bands Competition with his repaired OH! Burgers truck but had a back up plan of borrowing the Kenny’s Meat Wagon Cart or having another member sub for him. Kenny worked the truck with Brian to complete the circle.

Food Food Members in the News

Two of our kitchen members Bleu & Fig and Dinner Rescue crew received a mention ( Women Owned Businesses Thriving at ECDI’s Food Fort ) in The Metropreneur.

That Food Truck, was voted Best Food Truck by Columbus Underground with members Tatoheads placing third and Ajumama placed in at number 10.

We think all of our members deserve accolades (and those will be popping up here soon) but we are glad that some of them did get some kudos to wrap up the year.