An Indianapolis ghost kitchen wants to help Black chefs start their own virtual brands by giving them the kitchen space and capital needed to launch new concepts.
Melon Kitchen opened Tuesday inside the Amp Food Hall in the city’s tech district. It was founded by Kelli Jones, co-founder of venture capital firm Sixty8 Capital, which focuses on funding underrepresented businesspeople.
Melon will offer six-month training programs for up to eight chefs. They will spend that time developing virtual concepts with help from the Melon team, doing everything from choosing suppliers to designing logos. After laying the groundwork, they will start actually operating the brands out of Melon’s 5,000-square-foot ghost kitchen inside Amp.
The inaugural class got into the kitchen Tuesday, Jones said. Their concepts run the cuisine gamut from hibachi and bao buns to grilled cheese and vegan food.
The goal is for the chefs to get their brands into a position to grow beyond Melon, either through licensing, other ghost kitchens or even brick-and-mortar restaurants.
“In the end, hopefully they have been able to be nimble enough to work through each iteration and get it to a place that’s ready to scale,” Jones said.
The 5,000-square-foot kitchen has room for multiple concepts. / Photograph courtesy of Melon Kitchen
Online-only brands have been trending since the pandemic began, allowing restaurants to add revenue streams or test out new concepts. Thousands of these brands now exist, with more popping up every week. But Jones said she hasn’t seen a lot of Black chefs starting them.
Melon is designed to give them the opportunity to do so. The ghost kitchen model works well as an incubator because it requires less capital and carries less risk than opening a traditional restaurant, Jones said. Melon’s goal is to give each chef $5,000 to help develop their brand.
Black business owners have long struggled to get financing relative to other groups. From 2016 to 2018, 31% of Black business owners who applied for a loan said they got all of the financing they asked for, compared to 49% of White business owners, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. They were also less likely to receive Paycheck Protection Program aid during the pandemic.
“The No. 1 issue is certainly the capital, and so one part of this program is about how do you [open a restaurant] at far less capital?” Jones said.
The program is mostly free to chefs, though they will have to cover food costs. Many already have small staffs of their own, and Melon is working with local culinary schools to find workers. Up to eight people can be in the kitchen at a time, and the brands will have different hours so the space can accommodate all of them.
Customers will be able to order from the brands on third-party delivery platforms, Jones said. But Melon is looking into hiring its own drivers from the community and is also developing its own point-of-sale system.
The restaurant world is familiar territory for Jones: She worked in the industry from high school through law school and always thought about opening a restaurant someday. Melon Kitchen lined up with those interests as well as her current job of helping diverse entrepreneurs.
“It kind of aligned to my strengths and opportunities,” she said.
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