Day 117 - Briney! Preserving local manufacturing.

Hundreds of jars, mint leaf waiting quietly at the bottom, ready to receive champagne vinegar spears...

As many of you know, I have, over the past year, joined Jon Orren of Wheelhouse Pickles on occasion for an evening of slow, artisanal foodmaking. He makes fantastic pickles. I have gotten to slice pears for his tangy, slightly sweet Irma's Pears, to quarter cucumbers for his champagne vinegar spears, and to roast and peel with my hands a couple hundred pounds of beets. He also makes peppers, wax beans okra and, occasionally, turnips. His "whim" line includes some of his most fun experiments including very, very fresh horseradish and, most recently, a chutney made with Red Hook's own Six Points Ale.

Jon makes his pickles at the Artisan Baking Center's kitchen incubator for nascent food businesses. For a nightly rental fee, Jon gets to use ABC's industrially equipped kitchen after hours for a night or two a week. This saves his young, growing business the cost of leasing a space that he isn't yet big enough to use fully. It also saves him the cost of buying a lot of equipment. For the challenge of not always having exactly what he needs at hand in the kitchen, he is saving himself a lot of money. More to the point, since he might not have been able to raise the kind of money needed to buy all that space and equipment, ABC has allowed him be in business when he otherwise might not have been able to thrive.

While I was at the Mayor's Office for Industrial & Manufacturing Businesses, we commissioned a study by the New York Industrial Retention Network and the Fiscal Policy Institute--More Than A Link In The Food Chain--to explore how to take advantage of New York's already vibrant food manufacturing sector and make it even more so. One key recommendation is to find more large, industrial or institutional kitchens that, with some effort at programming, can be turned into incubators for New York's food entrepreneurs--many of whom are immigrants and women.

On the nights I've worked with Jon and his team, we've been side-by-side with an organic, small-batch granola maker, an organic dog treat maker (better ingredients than are likely to be in your typical ham, egg & cheese sandwich at your local bodega), a high-end fat-free dessert maker, and another who serves exclusively airlines traveling between New York City and east Asia. And that's one night a week. It's open all seven for similar businesses.

Access to affordable space that allows for manufacturers to craft products that are locally demanded and supplied, and which take advantage of its talented pool of skilled labor, is the single biggest challenge for many businesses anxious to set up shop in New York City. Many of the City's most successful industrial areas have vacancy rates, conservatively, below 5% with waiting lists for spaces that are becoming more and more expensive as the specter of rezonings and the allowance of non-manufacturing uses bids up rent levels. A land use policy that incorporates a balanced approach to mixing uses (scroll down)--light industrial activities like pickle making and appropriate densities of residential units--could help ensure that these jobs and activities remain in New York City. And in a town that is more than two-thirds foreign born, having good paying jobs that provide opportunities for folks with limited education and English proficiency--not to mention a much more interesting urban landscape--couldn't be more important.