k i tc h e n i n c u b a to r Baladini is a kitchen incubator located in the rural village of Abo el Sir, near Sakkara. The kitchen incubator focuses on women as their main target group and is part of Nawaya social enterprise. Since the spring of 2014, Baladini has worked on the creation of a virtuous hub of inclusive food-based businesses in the Sakkara area with the end goal of improving the life quality of local rural communities and fostering healthy, nutritional practices for women and their families. While exchanging traditions, traditional recipes and practices with local women, Baladini began to simultaneously measure the willingness and capabilities to embark in a more formalized communal project. The Baladini team began to pilot the concept of a women’s food cooperative using the development, production, and sale of fresh pasta. The product was selected during wheat season, when there was an abundance of the raw materials needed for pasta among the local farmers, the products were tested and sold in farmer’s markets. Later on, couscous was piloted and introduced to the product range offered by Baladini. Recipe exchanges between the women have given rise to recipe hybrids between Italian and traditional Egyptian cuisines using local ingredients; including dried egg pasta, tortellini pasta stuffed with a variety of homemade cheeses from Sakkara, couscous, beef and vegetable lasagnas, pizza, pesto, and tomato sauce. Income for the business is generated through selling products at these markets, individual sales in addition to sustainably catering corporate events.
Building on the women’s excitement around food-based economic opportunities, as well as dialogues around traditions and female challenges, Baladini envisions the development of a platform that can support women in the development, testing, and launch of inclusive food-based ventures. The business model is mainly modeled after the “kitchen incubator” business model. A kitchen incubator allows entrepreneurs to prepare food in a shared equipped kitchen. This provides the women with an opportunity to prepare food in a commercially equipped and hygienic kitchen and selling it to the public. Baladini also has a training aspect to it, on nutrition, food safety and later on on business management skills. In a rural Egyptian context, one of the most important success factors is the fact that the kitchen is located within the community. Women are an integral part of a healthy population; as mothers and wives, they are responsible for their children’s and husbands health. In raising nutritional awareness among women of Abo Sir, and creating an income generating stream for them through something that they do in their day to day lives – cooking – without having to leave their homes, Baladini has managed to find a culturally responsive and sensitive way to solve both the issue of poverty and health in their community. It is important to note that poor health and malnutrition are major and recurrent causes of cyclical poverty.