“When I was 8, I started selling potpourri baskets in the street one day, and I got 50 bucks out of it. I thought: that’s it, I’m an entrepreneur!”

Amélie Morency is 24 today and she has already launched two startups, and one on the way. This time, she is ready to change the face of food Entrepreneurship in Montreal through the FoodRoom an innovative culinary co-working place to open this spring.

Entrepreneurship, a means to achieve independence

Amélie is impatient, passionate and ambitious. Entrepreneurship has always been her way of achieving autonomy. Realizing the importance of earning money at 8, she had a bank account to keep her savings at 14 and started a landscape gardening company while studying. Her family gave her great examples: her father and grandmother were entrepreneurs and have always been supportive. “I didn’t need to do all this, but I have so many aspirations and I always want more responsibilities, more challenges”.

When her mother wanted her to go to university, Amélie preferred the more pragmatic Cegep program. She then graduated from Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec (ITHQ) and started working in a restaurant but moving up the ladder was too slow for her, she needed to achieve her goal faster and the solution was in entrepreneurship.

Amélie knows that entrepreneurship is not for idealists and sometimes you will break your neck. However, she did succeed in launching a successful first startup, A Toutes Les Sauces, an eco-friendly catering company, and she earned several prizes and awards from the prestigious Founder Institute, Coop HEC and Fondation ITHQ…

The FoodRoom, an innovative solution to entrepreneurs’ problems

When Amelie launched A toutes Les Sauces, she quickly faced a major issue which wasn’t cash flow but a stable location to cook to meet the needs of her clients and fulfill impending contracts. Lack of infrastructure is what inspired the FoodRoom.

Other similar shared kitchen initiatives exist in Europe and the United States (the San Francisco’s Underground market was a pioneer). Montreal is a fertile ground for such innovative initiatives: Amélie is part of a broader community of young immigrants and Quebecers willing to build a food patrimony for themselves (on this subject, read Alix Food’s terrific blog), and she wants to provide her fellow entrepreneurs with the physical and social infrastructure to create delicious products, build partnerships with producers.

The 7500 sq feet coworking space will be located in the Ahunstic area in Montreal. Half of the space will be dedicated to cooking and half will be transformed in offices and a multipurpose hall to organize events and trainings.

“We want to become more than a kitchen rental project, we want to create a community with high quality equipment”.

Through monthly subscriptions, members will get access to customized services. Caterers, small-scale producers (salsa, cookies, ice cream), chefs or food-truck owners’, everyone need a space to cook and in fact, the FoodRoom has already secured 23 contracts with clients and 65 are on waiting list.

“Getting investors to believe in you and your company is the toughest part.”

Investments for the FoodRoom came from Amélie’s private funds, from private investors and bank loans, but today, more than 500 000$ have been invested in the company and the building permit is settled so nothing will stop this exciting project from blooming this spring!

For now, you can visit their website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and you can meet Amélie at La Gare co-working if you’re in the area.