LAKELAND, Fla. — If you like barbecue, chances are, you’re gonna love Lakeland's newest business project.
This week, a smoky start-up called the "Cultivated Pig" became the first restaurant to take up residence in the city’s business incubator space called Catapult.
Kevin Aydelott and Jimmy Fox were originally a couple of Texas boys with a passion for barbecue. Now, after years of competitions and pulled pork pop-ups, their Cultivated Pig concept is a full-fledged restaurant.
“This is huge for us,” Aydelott said. “This is gonna be great for us to grow our business. Get out of the kind of pop-up mentality working in a professional kitchen now.”
The Cultivated Pig is the first to be chosen as a resident restaurant at Lakeland’s Catapult, which is a business incubator that aims to help entrepreneurs like Kevin and Jimmy succeed.
“We want to make Lakeland better. We believe Lakeland is better when there’s good food to eat. So, if we can help people who have an idea for a food-based business, create that business, scale, and eventually be able to launch in their own space that we’ve kind of done our job here,” Catapult’s Assistant Kitchen Manager Elena Schillinger said.
Fox added, “We don't just come in and use the kitchen and go. We come in and use the kitchen, get advice, get help with our taxes, get marketing help. You know, all those different things.”
Catapult, a privately funded non-profit, has been around for about a decade now, offering businesses workspace and expert guidance.
About 40 start-up restaurants take advantage of the incubator’s commercial kitchen at any given time, but the Cultivated Pig was chosen as the very first to cook, sell and serve its product there.
“So far so great. Yes. Everything's been really great,” Aydelott said.
The entrepreneurial experiment is to see whether giving a restaurant a more permanent footprint, not just access to the commercial kitchen, will help them grow faster. Earning a reputation and , hopefully, enough success to get their own restaurant.
“We can take all those numbers and compile those numbers and then take that to a bank and say this is what we've done so far,” Aydelott. “And we want to go into our own place.”
“Yes, their goal is to kick us out,” Fox laughed. “It's a joke, but it's true. They want to kick you out so that you can go thrive outside.”
Kevin and Jimmy say the pressure is on knowing if they succeed they could be a blueprint for others. For now, the Cultivated Pig is open Wednesday through Saturday, hoping to one day — smoke the competition.