Look at What’s Cooking in the Neighborhood

Food Entrepreneurs Whip Up Designer Dishes in Local Business Incubator

Story and Images by Rob Mackay
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While Astoria resident Yiorgos Samios was waiting tables at an upscale Manhattan restaurant in the mid-2000s, he noticed two recurring themes: his desire to start his own business kept growing and growing; and patrons kept praising his employer’s garlic dip.

Fast-forward to 2010 and Samios started producing his own skordalia, a Greek condiment made from bread, extra virgin olive oil and fresh garlic, in a Long Island City-based business incubator called the Entrepreneur Space. The Athens native added his own spin to this classic, time-honored, Old World dip by developing variants featuring dill, roasted red peppers and an olive-rosemary blend. (He even went to his grandfather’s village to learn about skordalia and tested his product with family members before getting started.)

Business has boomed since then, and Samios peddles his skordalia products under the Gogo’s Garlic Dip trademark at Whole Foods throughout the Metropolitan Area, as well as farmers’ markets from Brooklyn’s Park Slope to Upstate’s Ossining. By this December, his all-natural, vegetarian dip will be on sale in about 20 health food stores.

Samios is one of roughly 150 businesspeople who use the “E-Space,” as it is commonly called. Launched in 2009, this 12,500-square-foot facility features four commercial-grade kitchens and is open around-the-clock. Clients use the kitchens to make everything from vegetarian souvlaki to organic dog biscuits to high-fiber Finnish bread. Heck, there’s even a Ringling Brothers Clown College graduate who recently decided to pursue his true lifelong passion. He now uses the E-Space to make designer, creatively flavored marshmallows.

The E-Space also has two classrooms and various workstations that are rented by nonfood businesses such as a tutoring service and an employment firm.

Run as a partnership between the Queens Economic Development Corporation and the consultancy Mi Kitchen es su Kitchen, the E-Space also provides job training classes and seminars, business counseling, technical assistance and networking opportunities.

The end goal, according to QEDC Executive Director Seth Bornstein, is to help these businesses outgrow the E-Space. “We want clients to be so successful that they can open their own shops,” he said. “It’s funny. We are always looking for clients, and we treasure the chance to help them. But we also hope to bid fond farewells.”

Samios agrees with this policy. He hopes that his skordalia will be so successful that he can go out on his own in about a year.

“The kitchen is great,” he said. “But it’s nice to have your own.”

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