Authenticity Sells in Somerville: Nibble Entrepreneurship Program is a Global Food Pipeline
Photos by Michael Piazza
Key to the cultural capital of one of the Boston area’s coolest neighborhoods is the diversity of its many small businesses. Union Square in Somerville is not even half a square mile, yet it’s home to more than 200 mom-and-pops, many of which are multilingual. Thanks in no small part to a City of Somerville-supported culinary entrepreneurship program known as Nibble, the global food scene continues to evolve and diversify.
Nibble encompasses an annual workshop series, open to all Somervillans but aimed at underserved populations like low-income residents and women. Its participants vend at local festivals and farmers markets, host cooking classes and supper clubs, and often develop their own businesses. Some have the opportunity to soft-launch their concepts at Nibble Kitchen, a takeout-focused restaurant and event space at Bow Market. Since Nibble Kitchen opened in 2019, it has set in motion numerous other eateries in the Union Square area. Bow Market vendors Carolicious Gourmet—serving Venezuelan arepas and more—as well as Petra Mediterranean Cuisine, Taquisimo Birria Tacos and Nagomi Bento are all helmed by Nibble alumni.
Nibble is an economic and cultural development initiative of the Somerville Arts Council, mainly funded through the City budget, says Rachel Strutt, SAC cultural director and the food program’s founder. Nibble Kitchen is a self-sustaining business. The arts council is focused on “the overall cultural landscape of Somerville and how we preserve that, especially in the face of gentrification,” Strutt says. “Through culinary entrepreneurship programs, we’re helping keep Union Square diverse and delicious.”
PUT YOURSELF ON THE MAP
Petra Mediterranean Cuisine at Bow Market serves a succinct menu of traditional Jordanian dishes from founder Abdullah Srour, such as combo plates of basmati rice, creamy hummus, fresh vegetables and herbs, and tangy garlic sauce with a choice of falafel or grilled chicken. The latter is uniquely spiced by a 14-ingredient blend including cumin, turmeric and cardamom.
Food has been a major way Srour has made connections in New England since relocating to Somerville from Jordan (following a brief stint in Portland, Maine) with his American wife, who is enrolled in a local PhD program.
“Immigrants, like, you don’t have society. You don’t have friends. Who do you interact with? Who are people here that will fill this gap?” he says. “Everyone likes food. You love sharing stories about your food.” Over a meal with people you just met, “you will small-talk about other things.”
Formerly a flight manager at Logan Airport, Srour decided to follow his passion for food during the pandemic. The avid home baker took some classes in pastry and pizza-making at Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and in 2021, his mother-in-law encouraged him to apply for the Nibble Entrepreneurship Program (NEP), the linchpin of the Nibble initiative.
Since 2016, the eight-week program has convened a cohort of about 12 people annually for workshops spanning the gamut of food entrepreneurship. Established local chefs, restaurateurs and even City regulators are invited in to teach on topics ranging from developing marketing strategies to knowing what certificates your business will need and how to secure them. The final class is a pitch competition. Judges from the food community choose three concepts to graduate on to the next rotation of businesses at Nibble Kitchen. Srour introduced his signature chicken shawarma spice blend there in 2022.
CREATING COST-EFFECTIVENESS
NEP has a nominal fee of $100—“basically so people take it seriously and show up,” Strutt says—but if participants can’t pay, there’s a sliding scale. The program covers the $179 cost of ServSafe certification for each participant, which is the basic food safety requirement, so participants can pop up with Nibble at Somerville’s annual Ignite Festival and other vending opportunities.
Affordability was key for Afruza Akther, whose Bengali home cooking was among the first offerings from Nibble Kitchen. “I always love to make food and feed people,” Akther says, whether it was for family, coworkers or friends. Since moving to Somerville from Bangladesh in 2004, Akther has advocated for affordable housing and job training with Union United, and served on the Union Square Neighborhood Council. To meetings, she would often bring trays of roti, curries brimming with local produce and shingara (fried potato-veg turnovers, served with tamarind dipping sauce). Her colleagues eventually encouraged her to try selling her Bengali cuisine, which led Akther to Nibble in 2018.
She continues to cater with her company, Bangla Adda, “but not full-time because I don’t have the kitchen yet. Struggle is real,” Akther says. “People like my food, and they want to come to a restaurant, but I don’t have enough money to have my own restaurant or own kitchen where I can do catering from.”
Nibble continues to provide support by making its Bow Market kitchen available if she needs to use it to fulfill an order; and inviting her to be part of opportunities such as Nibble Kitchen’s Winter Supper Club. The pre-ordered format of the supper club series guarantees sales in advance, Strutt explains, which lowers the risk for the proprietor. Akther’s menu for her February supper featured her beloved kati roll, wrapped in flaky paratha flatbread and filled with a choice of chicken bhuna or mixed vegetables. The savory handheld was a mainstay of her menu during her stint at Nibble Kitchen.
“My own place where I can do full-time business would be my dream,” Akther says, but it feels out of reach without capital. Her Muslim faith prohibits her from taking on financial interest obligations, so she won’t take out a small business loan, she says. Catering opportunities, including those through Nibble, are helping her save toward her goal.
TAKE A CHANCE
Nibble is also a low-risk environment to experiment in—which is how Riti Doshi became a full-time ice cream maker.
She was raised in Mumbai (then called Bombay) and moved to the U.S. for college in 2002. She has been in the Boston area since she got married in 2011. While working full-time as a certified public accountant for a tech startup, Doshi became pregnant in 2015 and wanted to start cooking for her future kid. “I just realized I had this whole creative side to me when it came to cooking,” Doshi says.
Doshi entered NEP in 2020. Initially, her pop-up menus centered on a New England-seasonal take on kitchari, a bowl of lentils and rice topped with vegetables and pickles. But once the festivals started and she had to serve waiting customers, “I thought the bowl would be quite ambitious,” Doshi says. “I wanted to then come up with a product that had a shelf life, not a fresh bowl that you have to make and serve it in real time.”
By 2021, she had pivoted to kulfi, a frozen confection made with a rich, caramelized milk base, infused with cardamom, rosewater and other traditional Indian flavors. Doshi had made kulfi on a whim that summer for her daughter, then 5. The little girl praised the sweet, floral treat and told her mother she should sell it, Doshi recalls. That fall, she decided to bring it to Ignite, the Somerville Arts Council’s annual street food festival, where “it was an instant hit,” Doshi says.
“Somerville was the perfect crowd to accept it,” she continues. “Us from India, like, we don’t think authenticity sells. But we are in a generation now [where it does]. You need people like the demographic here in Boston to give you that space to sell something authentic.”
Doshi credits Nibble for supporting her as she figured that out. In May 2024, she launched Matki Kulfi Creamery full-time, quitting her CPA job. Nibble was “really helpful in just not treating me like an ex,” says Doshi, who had been out of the program for a year. She got back on the schedule for various events where her product would fit, including Ignite. Currently, four-ounce cups of Matki Kulfi are available to purchase from a cooler inside Nibble Kitchen. “My next step is to finish my wholesale license process and try to get some consistent orders,” Doshi says.
MEET IN THE STREETS
Carolicious, the specialist in Venezuelan arepas, might seem like the poster child of Nibble, with four restaurants now open around Boston plus robust catering operations. Two veteran business partners, Carolina Salinas and Carolina Garcia, founded this food company in 2016, after they immigrated from Venezuela to Somerville together with their families.
Even before Nibble Kitchen existed to help launch new concepts, the Carolinas were the first Nibble graduates to open their own restaurant. Situated inside Somerville’s Aeronaut Brewing Company, Carolicious celebrated five years in 2024. The event “was a story full of love, passion, and the support of fantastic people,” Garcia says. “Aeronaut, Nibble and also the customers are incredible.”
It’s exactly how Nibble is designed to work. “Internally, we’re teaching these workshops and offering training here,” Strutt says, “and then concurrently, we are building relationships to develop a pipeline, so when people graduate from here, they have places to go.”
Petra Mediterranean Cuisine is another prime example. Srour signed a one-year lease at Bow Market this past October for the counter-service restaurant, which “will tell me if I want to continue [in the food business], or keep it as a hobby for me,” he says. He has a strong interest in other cuisines, from Italian to Indian and Vietnamese, so maybe he’ll try different flavors next. No matter what’s on the menu, Srour feels equipped with the skills to execute it. “The food business has many details,” he says, and running a restaurant “is very hard.” So the insight and connections gleaned from the Nibble program is invaluable.
The knowledge current program manager Tony Baum brings to the table has taken Nibble to another level, Strutt and participants agree. Before joining the City department in 2021, Baum was a manager at high-end Boston-area restaurants like Island Creek Oyster Bar and Pammy’s. “When Tony came, I felt more open to opportunities,” says Akther, who worked with Baum to design—and appropriately price—the catering menu she uses today.
As an official program of the City of Somerville, Nibble opens doors. “They knew the opportunities, and they create a lot of festivals,” Garcia says. “These are the spaces where you exercise what you learn.” The Carolinas have made it a policy to say “yes” to every business opportunity they can, Garcia says—and there have been many. Along with Bow Market and Aeronaut, Carolicious has outposts inside the Stratton Student Center at MIT and the Central Branch of Boston Public Library. “We are proud to be part of the growing of this city, or something new or something better for the city,” Garcia says.
Not all Nibble graduates end up with a restaurant, nor even in the food business, Strutt says, and that’s OK. When each new cohort begins NEP, “we always start off by saying, ‘So you think you want to be a culinary entrepreneur? This is an opportunity for you to explore possibilities,’” she explains.
For the broader community, Nibble is a portal for cultural exchange and storytelling. Union Square’s diverse array of international markets and eateries was an asset to the area even as far back as the mid-2000s, when the Somerville Arts Council first established Nibble as a neighborhood walking tour series. Before expanding the program with cooking classes and pop-up restaurants, Strutt also started a blog and spearheaded a Nibble book.
Published in 2012, the book is a little outdated now, but the ethos of Nibble is more relevant than ever. “It’s basically stories about food and culture in Union Square,” Strutt says, “and, by extension, the whole world.”
This story appeared in the Spring 2025 issue.
