16 FEBRUARY 2020
IT’S YOUR
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onth,
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WHEN HANG TRUONG’S HUSBAND PASSED AWAY two years after
she moved to San Francisco, she suddenly found herself in need
of a way to support herself and her young daughter in the most
expensive city in America. As a Vietnamese immigrant with
some culinary training, Truong thought she might start a
restaurant. But she was scared: “I didn’t grow up here, so there’s
a lot I don’t know [about business], plus there’s the language
barrier.” She worried that they would have to move.
After spending a year and a half at La Cocina, a culinary
incubator that provides low-income immigrant women and
women of color in the Bay Area with the educational, financial,
and marketing support to launch their own businesses, things
looked very different for Truong. In 2017, she launched Noodle
Girl, a Vietnamese noodle soup shop that draws enthusiastic
lunchtime crowds at La Cocina’s five-shop cantina on UC
Berkeley’s campus.
Truong is one of many women who have partnered with La
Cocina to open brick-and-mortar spaces. Its graduate roster reads
like a who’s who of culinary innovators, including 2019 F&W Best
New Chef Nite Yun; Reem Assil, of 2018 F&W Restaurant of the
Year Reem’s; and Heena Patel, of beloved Gujarati spot Besharam.
In 2018 alone, 22 La Cocina graduate–owned businesses created
152 full-time jobs in the Bay Area. It also supports retail concepts:
Last year, several incubator-backed stores opened, like Crisps &
Crackles, a vegetable chip company; and Oyna Natural Foods,
which specializes in kuku, a Persian frittata.
The organization’s main goal is to empower women toward
entrepreneurship, and it also helps participants like Kitty
Ditpare, who joined La Cocina over a year ago, plan for the
future. Ditpare launched TacoThai, a Thai-influenced taco
concept, and hopes to open a brick-and-mortar location in the
Bay Area with La Cocina’s support. It’s impossible to ignore the
value of having access to a fully equipped commercial kitchen,
but it’s ultimately the honest advice that graduates receive years
after they leave the program that proves priceless.
As for Truong? She’s looking ahead to what’s next for her
business. “We’re very busy in Berkeley, and I want to open in
San Francisco,” she says. “Without La Cocina, I just wouldn’t
have had the nerve to push myself.”
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The Dream-Makers La Cocina knows
that it takes more than kitchen space to
build a business. By Oset Babur
La Cocina alum
Hang Truong,
owner of Noodle
Girl in Berkeley
$1.6 million
worth of meals served
by La Cocina–supported
businesses in 2018
LA COCINA BY THE NUMBERS
100+
entrepreneurs and
businesses supported
through office hours
and workshops
businesses
have gradu-
ated from
the incubator
program
55
square feet of space at La
Cocina Municipal Market-
place, the first women-
led food hall in the U.S.
7,
PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC WOLFINGER
