Welcome to Frontier Kitchen University.

Here we teach entrepreneurs how to create the company of their dreams.

You have the drive and the passion to start a business doing the thing you love. Everyone LOVES your food. Every Thanksgiving or family event you are told you should start selling your food.  

Your secret is that you LOVE it.  You love making people happy with your food. You love the expression of bliss on their faces as they enjoy the flavors.

So you think they might be right. You can make money doing this. And you are right...food businesses are not just fun, they can be quite lucrative.  

So if you are thinking of a side hustle or a full time gig or--more importantly---financial freedom and creating a company that does what you love then we can teach you the principles to make that happen.

Hey, the food business is hard. You already know that. You are here because you need to know how to make money at it and how to make sure you aren't a statistic. The problem is, that answer isn't straightforward because there are a billion ways to get to profitable and successful. 

We know from working with HUNDREDS of entrepreneurs that if you know the fundamentals of this business, then you can come up with the success you want your company to be. Do you want a restaurant? Great! Do you want a hundred restaurants? Excellent? Do you want your product on every grocery store shelf? This is how you get started to realize that dream.

So as you are planning your company, there are a few decisions to add to your to do list you may not even be aware of...but making these decisions NOW (before you buy a single dish) will determine the direction of your company forever.

For example, what type of company do you want to have? Answering this leads to choosing your business model. Why is a business model important? Because your business model determines who your target customer market is, which licenses you need, how much volume you need to produce, and how you can price your food. For example, although a restaurant and a caterer have similar types of foods, how they find their customers are very different and need to use different methods.

Next, consider what you want to be in your company. Do you want to be the artist that comes up with delicious new recipes? Are you the salesperson who enjoys watching people as they enjoy trying your products for the first time? Are you the producer, who can make a thousand dishes without breaking a sweat? Are you a businessperson who likes tackling issues of growth and numbers?  Of course, in the beginning you will have all these jobs and more. But since the idea here is to set up a company for you (and not another job that will burn you out), you need to decide early on what your role will be so you can create processes for all the other roles for the people you hire to take them on.

This series of courses in Steps for Starting a Successful Food Business are here to help you make these decisions and so much more. In our experience, it is  only the entrepreneurs that can make these decisions early that actually succeed--because they know what success means to them. 

I'm Ready to Invest in Myself!

ONLY with the Steps for Starting Bundle...a FREE guide to choosing your Business Model (and why it matters!)

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"Real affluence is the freedom to change the course of your life, to do what you want to do." -Sadhguru

Our Story

In 2014 Brenda and Cassity each owned their own small bakeries. Introduced through friends, Brenda pitched Cassity on the idea for Frontier Kitchen--a shared kitchen space that offered opportunity for anyone to start the company they wanted and taught people how to create a food company that doesn't fail. Once he understood the vision, he jumped onboard. Buildout of our first kitchen endured every problem possible, including the need to open a second kitchen before the first was even finished! Since then, we have worked with hundreds of new business owners. During this we realized that there was no central location for the right information on starting a successful food company--most people in the industry learned from mentors and years of mistakes. We launched FK University to provide a community and a forum to shorten learning curves and improve your ability to succeed in your business--whatever success looks like to you.

Brenda Cromer

CEO & Co-Founder

Ms. Brenda Cromer is the CEO and Co-Founder of Frontier Kitchen. A former intelligence analyst with a specialty in organizational analytics, Ms Cromer is an expert in evaluating organizations (including businesses) and determining the root cause of problems or challenges they are facing and coming up with plans to help the organization reach its goals. Ms Cromer launched Frontier Kitchen in 2014 with the goal of helping others create businesses and become the leaders they want to be. Ms. Cromer has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs at many stages of development. She especially enjoys working with new, first time entrepreneurs to help them grow multi-million dollar companies.

Cassity Jones

COO & Co-Founder

Mr. Cassity Jones is the COO and Co-Founder of Frontier Kitchen. Mr. Jones is a very experienced and highly talented pastry chef, having run teams across the country including the Bellagio in Las Vegas and the Four Seasons in Washington DC. Mr. Jones is Frontier Kitchen’s expert in food safety, kitchen flow and production. Mr. Jones believes in the importance of financial freedom and enjoys passing that knowledge to others. He has advised hundreds of entrepreneurs on how to become profitable and scale their production processes, creating dozens of successful, multi-million dollar companies.

"We are not here to buy ourselves jobs. If that is what you want, work for someone that pays you better [in the beginning]." -Cassity Jones

OK, I'm ready to start my road to financial freedom and business ownership...
Let's Get Started

What Happens if I Don't Take Your Class?

Why can't I just start my business and figure it out?

Well, that depends on how much money you want to waste. Honestly, many entrepreneurs we work with refuse to go through these steps. The vast majority of those have about a 12-18 month "shelf life" before they burn out and go back to work for someone else. 

This industry is not for the faint of heart. Most new food businesses fail. Usually because--until now--you learned these lessons through a mentor or trial and error (more error than anything else). And most people run out of money before they can fix all those errors.

That is the core reason we started offering all this information online. Because we want to see your company thrive, like so many of our successful entrepreneurs have. We know you CAN do it. We are just here to help you get there quickly and for the least amount of money possible. 

OK, So What Should I Know?

First, keep in mind the goal here is not to grind away in front of a stove for the rest of your life. You are starting a business to be free of a regular job.  You are the creator. You are the owner. You are the CEO.

Being a business that you do not have to grind in is all about developing and managing processes that are ongoing and repeatable yet flexible enough to adapt to market changes and disasters. To do that, you need to understand the business fundamentals of the food industry and make educated choices (not just "that's what everyone else did" choices).  

Now we aren't trying to tell you that you can "set it and forget it"...especially not in the beginning.  You need to know, however, how you establish your company at this early stage will determine if your company will be capable of flight or will just burn you out.

The better you understand the concepts of the business--like why you chose one type of business model over another--the better equipped you will be to grow it and make it successful. 

That's why we put together the "Setup for Success" bundle. Because working with so many hundreds of new food business entrepreneurs means we know who will succeed and fail--and it is ALWAYS based on knowledge and willingness to learn.

Can you learn everything in these courses on your own? Sure you can. But it will cost you. It will cost you years making mistakes and tens of thousands of dollars when you have to correct them.  The question isn't "Can I learn this on my own?" it is rather "Can I afford to learn this on my own?"


Here is Your Ticket to Success

This is the information all new entrepreneurs require to create a successful company

PLUS

What you NEED to know when starting your business

ARRIVING JAN 2023

Be the first to get access with your bundle purchase. Menu Design covers how to create an efficient menu (and product line) from both the customer facing side and back of house. Licensing Your Food Business walks you through the process and nuances of how to set up your company AND get all of your food safety licenses, from health department to FDA Registration.

FAQ

  • OK, I want to start my company. Where do I start?

    Ask the right questions! Most people only know a small fraction of the questions they need. And, as the saying goes, you can't fix a problem if you can't recognize it. We are here to teach you the questions and how to evaluate them...but only you can answer them. We go through this in-depth in the Starting Your Food Business Course

  • What is a health inspection like?

    Health Inspections and Department of Agriculture Inspections can be very intimidating—unless you know the inspectors limitations. Can they shut you down? Yes, legally they can do that. But our "Licensing for New Food Businesses" course will teach you an inspectors “kryptonite”.

  • How do I know how much to charge?

    Did you know that “market cost” is NOT how you set your prices? We have worked with a LOT of entrepreneurs that actually ended up giving away money every time they sold their product because they didn’t know how to properly charge for their food so they could make a profit! Check out our Costing and Pricing course for all the details

  • How do I create nutrition labels? Do I need them? Do I have to send my products to a lab to get them?

    There is no short answer to this question that is useful (because you have already heard “it depends” too many times). Not all packaged goods require nutrition labels—it depends on what you are selling, where you want to sell it and how much you intend to sell. Lab testing is sometimes required…it just depends. Check out the details in our "Licensing for New Food Businesses" Course.

  • How do I find my customers?

    THIS is the question every entrepreneur asks. Major corporations spend millions of dollars using focus groups to find the right customer profile…did you know you probably have the same option and, instead of spending millions, can make money while you do it? That is the secret of Farmer’s Markets…they are the perfect opportunity to test your food, see if strangers will buy it and get their feedback directly. There are definitely best practices to make this work for you…check them out in our “Early Sales” course.