From a once-vacant school building in one of Rhode Island’s smallest towns to a nearly 5,000-square-foot, ground floor storefront in one of the state’s marquee skyscrapers within the financial heart of its biggest urban metropolis — it’s safe to say that Hope & Main has come a long way.

The food incubator that since 2014 has helped launch over 450 small food businesses out of its shared kitchen facilities in Warren has finalized a deal with Paolino Properties and received grant funding from The Papitto Opportunity Connection to open a new “Downtown Makers Marketplace” at 100 Westminster St. in Providence, which will be a place to showcase the products of those food entrepreneurs and provide more exposure opportunities to grow their businesses.

Additionally, Hope & Main is in the midst of securing an additional 18,000-square-feet of shared kitchen space in Providence’s West End, which will effectively double their existing capacity in Warren.

“Since the day we opened our doors in Warren nine years ago, people have asked us two questions,” said Lisa Raiola, founder and president of Hope & Main. “Why doesn’t Hope & Main have a market, and why don’t you have kitchens in Providence? Now, with the good help of the Papitto Opportunity Connection and Paolino Properties, we can check both boxes.”

A perfect partnership
Raiola said that for the past two years, Hope & Main has seen a surge in applications from two specific groups that often overlapped — people of color, and people located in Providence. As many as 40 percent of the entrepreneurs working out of Hope & Main (or applying to do so) are people of color, she said, while about 50 percent of applications were coming from people in Providence.

Enter Barbara Papitto, founder of the Papitto Opportunity Connection, a nonprofit private foundation whose mission is to invest in BIPOC communities to help them achieve their educational, professional, and entrepreneurial goals. Papitto toured Hope & Main this past summer, and left inspired.

“I walked out of there with armloads of products and food that I knew I wanted to share with more Rhode Islanders,” Papitto said in a press release. “The Papitto Opportunity Connection believes that the ability to launch a sustainable food business is a vital path to economic mobility, particularly for immigrants and refugees, because it is familiar and feels attainable. We want to support these entrepreneurs to make their dreams a reality.”

The Papitto Foundation, as these things tend to work, happens to be a tenant of 100 Westminster St., which is owned and managed by Paolino Properties. Word spread to its managing partner and former Providence Mayor, Joe Paolino Jr., that Hope & Main might be a nice fit for their large ground floor space that had been vacant since Brewed Awakenings vacated during the pandemic.

This led to an in-person visit from Paolino to Hope & Main over the summer.

Raiola recalled Paolino running into a chef that he knew personally who was at Hope & Main working on new recipes for his restaurant, which immediately left an impression on him.

“It was one of those situations when we were driving down where I didn’t really know what to expect, but it hit me immediately,” Paolino said. “I was impressed, and I was impressed by Lisa. She’s a dynamo. When we got back I said let’s put this together.”

A marketplace of ideas, and tasty products
Paolino gifted all the existing kitchen equipment and furniture within the space to Hope & Main. Still, Raiola wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it. The space was built out just prior to the pandemic as a place for Nicks on Westminster, an expansion of the popular Nicks on Broadway restaurant in Providence, but that venture didn’t last long amidst the tumult of Covid. Next came Brewed Awakenings, which eventually closed shop as well.

She knew that Hope & Main wasn’t interested in running a restaurant, but then those voices she had so often heard during days at Hope & Main’s schoolhouse markets came back into her head.

“You first look at it, and the tables and chairs are set up, and you have to stop thinking ‘restaurant,’” she said. “And then I started thinking ‘What do we know how to do that we could recreate in that space?’ And I started to think about a marketplace, because the go-to business strategy for every single one of our members is farmers markets. We say you need to start by meeting the eater, and getting your product out there in a marketplace. I said that just makes sense.”

Since Hope & Main has produced so many hundreds of thriving small food businesses, Raiola said it won’t be difficult to fill shelves and racks and displays with locally-crafted, locally-owned Hope & Main products — like a brick and mortar Hope & Main store. Outside of the aforementioned farmers markets, Raiola continued, many of those products that have not yet landed in stores will be available nowhere else.

The marketplace will be financially buoyed by a cafe that will serve breakfast and lunch options (as well as grab and go items for rushed office workers) in addition to coffee, tea, and craft beverages, anchored by Schasteâ (another Hope & Main alum).

But there are opportunities for food acceleration here too, as Hope & Main products will be used in dishes served up by the cafe, and entrepreneurs will be invited as guest chefs to produce specialty products sold through the cafe.

“This project is about giving our diverse community of food-preneurs access to markets and consumers they could not otherwise reach,” Raiola said. “It is very costly for new brands to find their way to grocery store shelves or onto menus of established restaurants, and that makes it challenging for them to scale. We know how good these products are and can’t wait to accelerate the success of these makers.”

Raiola said that she was hopeful for a January, 2023 opening of the marketplace, with the possibilities of some pop-up events at the space prior to that.

An East Bay boost to a Providence comeback
For Paolino, the partnership with Hope & Main is one that will contribute greatly to the continued recovery of Providence from the pandemic, and by extension, the entire state.

“The culinary industry is something extremely important to the fabric of Providence, and to Rhode Island. And we’re all about the Rhode Island community. We’re a family-owned company, we’re one of the only family-owned companies that owns one of these large buildings downtown,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of investing, and to be able to provide these local companies a place to prosper, that’s something I’m very happy to be a part of.”

For Raiola, who began Hope & Main from the ground up after receiving a windfall of support when she was battling cancer, being part of that comeback story is something to be very excited about, indeed.

“You talk about timing — to be in the city of Providence at a moment when they just approved the Superman building, you know, and everyone's trying to think about what's the comeback strategy for Providence?” she said. “We will be part of that strategy.”