SAN FRANCISCO — Outside Lands 2024 has come to an end, but its support for small businesses is having a lasting impact. For its second year, Outside Lands partnered with La Cocina to support and highlight three emerging food companies.

La Cocina is a nonprofit food business incubator in San Francisco that supports talented, low-income entrepreneurs in developing and formalizing their businesses.

“They’re working with women and people of color to help them achieve their culinary dreams. That fits perfectly with what we’re trying to do at Outside Lands by working with all of the local restaurants. We’re not bringing food vendors from outside the Bay Area in. It’s about celebrating the Bay Area culinary community, and what better way to represent the Bay Area culinary community than La Cocina,” said Tanya Kollar, Outside Lands’ Food Curator.

Suyos Catering, Pacifico Latin American Cuisine and Tokachi Musubi shared La Cocina’s incubator booth at the three-day festival.

“I am very excited to be part of Outside Lands and the presence of La Cocina is a great support for me,” said Chef Norka Hernandez of Suyos Catering.

Kollar created this partnership. She thought it would be a great opportunity for these entrepreneurs to see what it’s like to work at a festival, which is a unique experience. Kollar made sure they were set up for success: “I work very, very closely with them to make sure we look at everything from their menu to their equipment to how much power they’ve ordered, their permits for fires, how much propane they have,” she said.

“The preparation is enormous. There are many steps to go through: tasting menus, scheduling meetings, making sure everyone knows their role and what we’re doing throughout the whole thing so that everything runs smoothly,” Hernandez said.

The preparations paid off, as festival-goers lined up to sample the eclectic seafood menu that matched the booth theme of “Sabores del Mar” (Flavors of the Sea).

“The really cool thing is that we have three different cultural interpretations of seafood. We have the ikura crab musubi, we have the ceviche and we also have the ahi tuna nachos,” Kollar said.

The idea of ​​having three different entrepreneurs at one booth came from the hope that they would support each other throughout the weekend. “It’s really just about bringing them all together to give them that experience. Then hopefully next year they’ll be able to apply to be a food vendor at Outside Lands and have their own booth,” Kollar said.

Eight La Cocina graduates had their own booths at the festival this year, and Hernandez said she hopes she’ll be next.

“I’m looking forward to participating in another festival. Coming back to Outside Lands would be the greatest experience. For all the other companies, for all the other women who want to start a business: don’t just have an idea, make it happen. With the best support from La Cocina, you can go through the whole process. It will be seamless and the idea will just go from a piece of paper to reality,” she said.

For more information about La Cocina, visit this website.