With the recent uptick in manufacturing around the United States, the importance of food manufacturing to local economies has come into focus for its roles in creating jobs and building on the local culinary and cultural assets of a community. With this focus has arrived an interest in supporting food manufacturing entrepreneurs as they start and grow their businesses. As a result, food manufacturing incubators and shared commercial kitchens are sprouting up in cities around the county.

To explore these issues, CNT convened a group of experts in December 2016 to workshop potential energy savings for the Hatchery, a food manufacturing incubator in Chicago. The goals of the workshop and this resulting white paper were 1) to help the Hatchery team make the operations as efficient as possible and 2) to share the workshop findings with the broader food manufacturing incubation industry to build understanding of the best energy saving options for such operations.