Gate House Kitchens in Walpole offers a home base for food entrepreneurs ready for growth.

Photos by Michael Piazza

According to Josh Pelz, Gate House Kitchens, the multi-unit commissary kitchen he and his brother, Dylan, opened in Walpole in July, represents the future of the food industry. Two months later, threequarters of the units have been rented by businesses ranging from a barbecue food truck to chocolatiers to caterers to vegan patty producers.

“If you’re entering the food market today, you can start in a commissary like this and grow in a way you couldn’t before,” says Josh.

The brothers, who grew up in Chestnut Hill, developed the concept for the business when they were both living in Manhattan. Geared toward food entrepreneurs ready to expand their businesses, Gate House Kitchens fills a void between shared or communal kitchens and brick-and-mortar restaurants or retail operations. “We give people a space to call their own,” says Josh. “We wanted to eliminate the need to fight for time.”

The brothers began working on their joint venture while they were still in New York. Josh, now 38, was working in marketing and emerging markets; Dylan, now 31, in finance and operations. “We were [both] ordering delivery 80% of the time.” About five years ago, he began to wonder where all the food they were ordering was being prepared. And whether it would be feasible to build a single kitchen facility to serve multiple delivery-only concepts. The idea sat idle for a while until a couple of years later, when a childhood friend came to visit from California. He had been building ghost kitchens on the West Coast, essentially executing on Josh’s earlier idea. Josh and Dylan decided to launch their own business, which can include but is not limited to ghost kitchens, bringing in the friend as a consultant. “We chose Boston because it’s a market we know best and there was nothing like it in New England/Boston,” Dylan explains. The pair resettled in their home state in December 2020.

Gate House Kitchens occupies a 7,000-square-foot building with 12 turnkey commercial kitchens—nine hot and three cold—ranging in size from 200 to 400 square feet. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they are all built to meet FDA and USDA standards, and outfitted with sinks and floor drains. The hot kitchens also have gas lines and hoods. There is communal dry and cold storage, shipping and loading, wi-fi, janitorial services, parking and proximity to public transportation. Each of the kitchens is a self-contained unit, so specialty food producers—vegan or gluten-free, for example—do not have to worry about cross-contamination. “The main thing [tenants] have to think about is cooking,” says Dylan.

Beyond the basic fittings, tenants provide their own equipment. Dylan notes that he and Josh have relationships with many restaurant suppliers and are available to help tenants procure whatever they need. “We can be as hands-on or hands-off as tenants want,” he says. Launching the first multi-unit commissary kitchen in the Greater Boston area was a natural fit for the Pelz brothers, who are both enthusiastic cooks and enjoy all aspects of the food world. Their paternal grandfather was a butcher in New York and they mention proudly that their father still has all of his father’s knives. Their current undertaking “married a few of our passions—real estate and food and restaurant space,” says Dylan.

While they were developing the business, they spent a lot of time commuting between New York and their parents’ house in Chestnut Hill. On one of his trips to the area in 2020, Dylan found the Walpole building through one of the real estate brokers he had engaged. The brothers closed on the building in December of that year and rebuilt it from the ground up in a little over four months. Though they worked with an architect, both say they were very hands-on in the design.

Tenants have come through word-of-mouth, digital marketing campaigns to chefs and food entrepreneurs, generic and industry message boards and “boots on the ground. We are out and about at all of the local farmers markets,” says Josh. “We’ve found that the local community of restaurateurs and food entrepreneurs has been not only receptive but great at sharing information. It’s a tight-knit community.” They also have done rounds of email marketing. The latter approach hooked Amy and Hector Camargo and Becky Kuehn, of chocolatesU.

On a beautiful sunny day in mid-September, Becky and Amy are in their new kitchen with part-time contractor Krista Brancaccio, gearing up for the holiday rush. The 10-year journey from Quincy, where they live and started their business, to Walpole meandered from customers’ homes to a Quincy diner’s kitchen after hours to a shared commissary kitchen in Cohasset before settling here in August. The three longtime friends (Amy’s husband, Hector, is a co-founder and still very active) launched their business 10 years ago to teach people to make artisanal chocolates. They soon learned that people were more interested in eating the chocolate than making it, so they shifted their focus to making and selling confections.

About six years ago the trio hit on their current product which, Amy explains, grew out of “our own pain. We love hot chocolate but not the powdered kind.” “Chocolatiers with science and engineering backgrounds,” as Becky describes them, the team developed solid chocolate balls that can be melted in milk or milk substitute in a microwave. Made from a blend of couverture chocolate, cocoa powder, honey, vanilla and Boyajian natural flavors, the balls come in milk and dark chocolate, Aztec, mint, mocha, salted caramel, sugar-free and special seasonal flavors. The partners sell the products online and at Christmas fairs and markets. (Due to the COVID pandemic, they are only scheduled to appear at two events this year.)

As demand for the chocolate balls grew, the limitations of working in their shared kitchen made it “hard to keep up with production,” Becky notes. In May 2021 she received an email out of the blue from Gate House Kitchens. Amy went to look at the still rough space shortly after, and by early June the partners had decided to move.

The new kitchen, Becky says, is “making life so much easier. We set our own schedule and don’t have to work around other people.” Both partners cite the kitchen’s sinks as a strong selling point. In their previous shared space, they note, they barely had room to wash their equipment. The loading dock and ability to store supplies—they point to shelves stacked with Guittard chocolate—are also big pluses.

The partners employ two part-time contractors. One works at the kitchen on packaging and special projects. The other, who has been working with them for the past two years, is transitioning from packaging to social media projects. Though they have leased one of Gate House’s small kitchens, all of the equipment is on wheels so the team can repurpose the space as needed. “[Food professionals] are really good at playing Jenga with their space,” notes Dylan.

Jay Caraviello isn’t quite as settled in, still waiting for much of his equipment. The founder of ThankQue Catering, a barbecue food truck and catering business, sold his partnership in a financial services business in 2018. The following year he enrolled in the professional certificate course at Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. The same year, he visited storied barbecue venues throughout the U.S., meeting with many of the country’s most acclaimed pitmasters. And he attended the late Mike Mills’s course at 17th Street BBQ in Illinois three times. He says what he learned there is the foundation of ThankQue. Jay recently established a home base for his new venture at Gate House Kitchens.

While he was learning the finer points of burnt ends and smoke rings, Jay was also trying to figure out how to enter a business in which he had no previous experience. “I thought I would do catering,” he says. “That disappeared with the pandemic.” A food truck, with a base kitchen, seemed the most sensible route to him. He had begun talking to Dylan Pelz before the pandemic began, when the details for Gate House Kitchens were still coming together. The two remained in touch.

Jay’s operating plan combines “Old World barbecue techniques with modern technology,” he explains. When his equipment arrives (he expects it around November), his Walpole kitchen will have a steam-dry heat oven, a blast chiller that can take meat to freezing in four hours and state-of-the-art food service software. He will be able to cook, store and retherm large batches of food to take on the truck. Everything but the smoked meat will be cooked and stored in the kitchen.

Since launching for friends and family in spring 2021, followed by regular appearances at Mighty Squirrel Brewing Co. in Waltham—which he refers to as his “start-up base”—Jay has been cooking everything on the truck. Because he is working solo (and actively looking for help) the pitmaster has kept his early menu small—St. Louis–style pork ribs; pulled chicken and pork platters and sandwiches; buttermilk biscuits; coleslaw; mac and cheese; dessert; a sweet, a savory and a tangy sauce. He typically arrives at a venue at least an hour before food needs to be served. Once his kitchen is up and running, he believes that time should be cut in half.

But even without his full suite of equipment, Jay is already benefiting from his new space. When not on the road, he plugs his truck into an exterior Gate House outlet. Previously, he had to run everything off a generator. He also plans to bring a smoker four times the size of the one on his truck to live outside the building. “Food trucks need to have a base operation like this,” he says. “It’s a lot easier for me here.”

Another early Gate House tenant, Venkat Vedam, had a career in finance before he felt the pull to follow his passion for healthy food and communities. Unlike Jay Caraviello, Venkat launched his second profession while continuing to work at his first. Three years ago, he explains, “I wanted to be part of the local sustainable food ecosystem and to find ways of growing and processing healthy local food that is also good for the planet and community.” With “no background in anything to do with food or farming,” the data analyst became a farmer with his wife, Shrimoti Mukherjee, through Tufts University’s New Entry Sustainable Farming Project.

In their first year, Venkat and his wife started growing vegetables and bringing them to farmers markets. With a crop largely made up of greens, most of which they were not able to sell or process, the couple ended the season having to compost more than half of what they grew. Quick learners, they planted niche heirloom and other specialty vegetables for their second season. “I offered something different since I didn’t have the same volume” as other farmers, Venkat says. They also started working out of a shared kitchen in Stoneham, where they turned much of their produce into hot sauces, condiments and other products, using a co-packer to package them. New Entry partnered with them to produce the sauces.

Most recently Venkat and his wife acquired a Maine-based producer of plant-based burgers, taco crumbles and sliders, Freshiez. After an extensive search for a kitchen where they could set up their own equipment to produce gluten-, dairy- and allergen-free products, they landed in Walpole. “Gate House fit my needs perfectly because it’s a dedicated space so I can bring my own equipment,” Venkat says. “It has all the bells and whistles for running a commercial kitchen. It has all the sanitation requirements. All the facilities are there.” Venkat also appreciates the communal walk-in freezer and fridge, and 24/7 access to the kitchen. In Maine, the business could only produce 900 patties per week. Venkat says they can make close to 3,000 in their new space.

Initially Venkat and Shrimoti will only make Freshiez products in Walpole, continuing to produce their sauces in Stoneham. They plan to sell the patties and crumbles wholesale, frozen in boxes; and fresh at farmers markets. They sell at the Winchester and Walpole Farmers Markets and the Boston Veg Food Festival’s virtual vegan market place, which stays open through winter.

The couple, who live in Winchester, are also looking for farmland because this is their last year with New Entry. They hope to be able to grow at least some of the ingredients—potatoes and beans—for the plant-based protein products, and they are looking for local sources for the rest of the ingredients. They also added a third partner this year to help with markets, recipe development and all aspects of the kitchen.

Amy Camargo and Becky Kuehn are still getting used to the luxury of their own kitchen, easing into the eight-hour days that were never available to them before. Jay Caraviello looks forward to increasing catering and adding pickup and delivery to his menu options once he is more firmly settled. And Venkat Vedam is passionate about continuing to build on Grace Food Labs’ contributions to the local sustainable food system.

Josh and Dylan Pelz plan to keep growing. “I can’t tell you the amount of times we’ve heard from prospective tenants, ‘Can you build another facility?,” says Dylan. “We believe the Boston market can support more Gate House Kitchens,” adds his brother. Stay tuned...

gatehousekitchen.com
hotchocolateballs.com
thankquecatering.com
gracefoodlabs.com

(Note: Between the time this article was written and the magazine went to press, Gate House Kitchens added two additional tenants, bringing the total to 10, of 12 available spaces.)

This story appeared in the Winter 2022 issue.