LETICIA LANDA
“It’s what the American dream has always been: people coming here and starting little busineses”
farm. “A lot of our businesses are open for more than 10 years, which I think is pretty unusual for the food industry. I feel so proud of that,” says Landa. Some of the graduates have published cookbooks, sharing their stories beyond California, and the model’s impact stretches further too. La Cocina offers consulting and works with organizations as far away as New Zealand, helping them to support entrepreneurs in the same way. For Landa, the success of a business depends on determination as much as skill. “It’s that scrappiness and entrepreneurialism that make things happen seemingly out of
La Cocina’s incubator program includes business support and mentoring
nothing; that’s a big piece of it,” she explains.
PART OF THE CONVERSATION
Landa, herself the daughter of Mexican immigrants who started their own business in the US, found La Cocina almost by happenstance. Having read about the organization while she was at grad school in New York, when she moved to San Francisco to take up a fellowship, she sought out some of the La Cocina graduate businesses in the food market. Later on, at a holiday party, she met then executive director Valeria Perez, who was about to relocate to Miami and invited Landa to join in her place. She can empathize with
the entrepreneurs, having gone to culinary school herself and spent a summer as a line cook at Jeffrey’s in Austin, Texas, during college. “It was 100 degrees, I was on the fryer, making salads, running around – it gave me a real sense of what kitchen work takes,” she recalls. “I stand in such admiration of the people who do it.”
20 When Landa joined La
Cocina 17 years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle’s top 100 restaurants listing included almost no restaurants run by immigrant women “In the last iteration, we had five or six restaurants on the list that had come through La Cocina, and more overall that are run by immigrants or women,” she says. “Tat’s something that has shifted in the food industry and we’ve been a part of that conversation.” She recognizes that there
is more work to do. In many ways, La Cocina runs counter to a national foodscape that is increasingly consolidated, where main street looks similar regardless of the city – they have
“A lot of our businesses are open for more than 10 years, which is pretty unusual. I feel proud of that”
the same restaurants and offer the same food. “We all say we want that
diversity, but then it is easier to keep going into the same chains. We can get everything delivered in 24 hours or we can go to the shops. Tat is ultimately a question we have to address,” she says. “If we just want the most efficient way of eating, we could just freeze French fries and burger patties, but that is maybe not the most delicious way of eating. I do think you have to go a little counter to the current and support your local food businesses.” If there was always a place
for La Cocina, the political uncertainty and rising costs of today mean that the need is even more pronounced. “Tis is what the American dream has always been: people coming here and starting little businesses,” says Landa. “We need to remind people how important small businesses are to everybody’s happiness and wellbeing, no matter where we are in the world – and that those things are worth championing.”
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