Kitchen Incubator Hatches Dreams

BY ANDREW SHARP

SOME OF THE JELLIES that emerge from Marie Boulden’s kitchen will give your PB&J an edge it’s never had before. She sells flavors like orange crush, mango ghost pepper, lemon lavender, and tomato honey butter. She’s even made a jelly with redbud blossoms.

“Put that on a graham cracker with triple-cream brie, and it’ll change your life,” says Boulden, the owner of Jam Session Jams.

The kitchen where these flavors happen isn’t only Boulden’s, though.

She rents space in the Sussex Kitchen Incubator on Delaware Technical Community College’s Georgetown campus, sharing it with dozens of culinary startups that send their creations out into Southern Delaware and beyond. One makes specialty fermented hot sauces. Another sells soft pretzels. Some provide catering services.

When Bill Pfaff became Sussex County’s director of economic development, he drew on his decades of experience with the Delaware Small Business Development Center to identify a market problem: Many cooking and baking entrepreneurs had a hard time finding a commercial space that met health department requirements.

“One of the things that I would constantly hear [was] ‘If I could only find a kitchen,’” Pfaff recalls.

That was Boulden’s experience when she explored the possibility of renting space in local restaurants in the beach area. “I wasn’t having any luck at all. Either they wouldn’t return my phone calls, or they weren’t interested at all.” When she stumbled across the Sussex Kitchen Incubator, “It just seemed like the perfect model for me.”

The kitchen, a partnership between Sussex County, the state, and Delaware Tech, held a soft opening in November 2023 and officially launched in the spring of 2024. It not only meets sanitary standards, but also offers a wide array of equipment, from ovens to industrial mixers, high-temperature dishwashers, and more. There’s freezer storage space, cleaning equipment, rubber gloves, and hair nets. The cooks even have a place to dispose of their used oil.

“It’s a one-stop shop for somebody that has an idea,” Pfaff says.

Beyond gear, the kitchen exists to support startups as they turn Grandma’s recipe into a full-fledged business, Pfaff explains.

Many people don’t have a good grasp on all the steps involved in starting a business, says kitchen manager Jim Richards. In his past career, he owned and operated restaurants, and now mentors rookie business owners on everything from how to best use the equipment to pricing their product, and saving money on supplies.

“It’s a one-stop shop for somebody that has an idea."

One of these new business owners is Seamus Scott, who has a background in natural foods and recently launched a line of healthier popsicles with co-owner Donna Shea. Fern & Frost Pops’ hydrating electrolyte popsicles are made with ingredients like coconut nectar and real fruit, and have no refined sugars, Scott says. “We just want to try to create something that is fun, tasty, and good for you, too.”

He has two children with firm opinions about what they like, so he has a ready test market for his wares.

Scott says his experience at the kitchen incubator has been fantastic so far, giving him a chance to absorb Richards’ business advice and connect with retailers.

Sometimes the businesses at the kitchen go together like bread and jam and are able to network and help each other out. Boulden notes that a local baker developed a hot-selling orange crush cake using her popular jelly.

Amid the growing year-round bustle at the beaches, Pfaff notes, there’s a huge opportunity for creating businesses.

“Some people will be here [in the kitchen] forever,” he says. “But the ideal situation is, we hope that someone … will get to a point where they can go out on their own.” (Which has already happened several times.)

The goal for the incubator is 75 members by the end of 2026. It’s making fast progress — the kitchen already had 32 members in the spring of 2025, with almost 20 in the process of coming aboard, and a number of others showing interest, Richards says.

“All you have to do is bring in your raw materials,” Pfaff says, “and at the end of the day, you can create whatever you want to create.”