We are a boutique shared commercial kitchen located within The Graphic Lofts in Charlestown, MA. Our new state-of-the-art facility also features a food hall with a cafe, food stalls, and a wine and craft beer bar.

We are family-owned-and-operated (by husband & wife team Ciaran Nagle & Tara Novak), and strive to provide a space that is inspiring to other small to mid-size food companies.

What is a shared commercial kitchen?

It is a facility that is licensed for shared-use food production, and multiple other businesses may operate from our kitchen. All member companies working out of our space have their own licenses, insurance, and certification, and either work from their own designated studio space or from their own pre-scheduled space within the shared kitchen.

Why work in a shared kitchen?

There are many reasons – a few being the lack of commercial kitchen space in the Boston Metro Area, the cost of taking on long-term leases, and the overheads associated with a commercial kitchen facility (equipment purchasing & maintenance, building maintenance, utilities, trash removal, property tax, etc).

We take care of all of those elements, providing a facility where companies can come in and focus on their core business – making and selling food.

We also work very hard to curate a community of like-minded businesses within our facility, creating a place where owners & employees can network, find support, and help motivate each other.

WHAT CAN I FIND IN YOUR FOOD HALL?  

This facility also features an intimate, 2,000-square-foot food hall, with four separate vendor stalls, on the ground level. Guests can purchase food from Rita’s Fresh Pasta, Tchacoberry Pastel & Acai, Delectable Eats, and Render Coffee. This space seats about 40, including bar area seating, and outdoor patio seating. By 5 p.m., the cafe turns into a full wine and beer bar, with drinks from Fermenta by celebrated wine expert Peter Nelson,

Foundation Kitchen is dedicated to allowing serious culinary & business talent to grow their food companies.  

In addition to our shared and studio kitchens, we provide:

• Food Business Consultancy (both to member and non-member companies)

• Food Business 101 Courses “Ready to Serve”

• ServSafe Certification Courses & Exams

• Food Safety Auditing (both to members & non-member companies)

• HACCP Plan Development

• Hourly rental space to restaurants needing recipe testing or staff training

Ciaran Nagle - Co-Founder/COO

Ciaran Nagle has been a pioneer in the shared kitchen industry for many years, running another kitchen for 2 years before launching Foundation Kitchen in 2015.

He is a ServSafe proctor and expert in Food Safety and Standard Operating Procedures. He is a sought after panelist and speaker on these issues, and also consults with both member and non-member food companies.

Prior to Foundation Kitchen, he ran an event production company in Dublin, Ireland, for 20 years, and also launched the globally-successful “The Three Irish Tenors”.

When not at our facilities (or sometimes at them), he can be found singing Irish tunes, or trail running through the forest (good luck catching him).

Tara Novak - Co-Founder/CFO

Tara Novak worked in the fine dining & wine industries for over a decade before taking on the accounts for a multi-million-dollar Boston-area catering company.

She left that position in 2015 to help found Foundation Kitchen with her husband and business partner, Ciaran Nagle.

She is passionate about “real finance” - finding innovative ways to bootstrap and to make the complex financial pieces fit together, always tying everything back to the actual cashflow of the business.

She is also a composer, songwriter, and violinist - and when not building spreadsheets, can be found showing off her large collection of high heels on various stages around the world.