Central Kitchen Sets the Table for Minority-owned Craft Food Startups to Flourish
Freshwater | Chris Ball | December 19, 2019
Eric Diamond was on vacation when he got a call from his Central Kitchen partner, Gordon Priemer.
“We were looking for 30,000 square feet of space,” says Diamond. “Gordon called me and said, ‘Hey, I just toured this building. It’s got cooler space, it’s got more electrical than we’ll ever need, it’s a food grade facility. The only problem, it’s 137,000 square feet.’”
They needed to expand, but not that much. “We can’t fill 137,000 square feet,” Diamond told him. “He said, ‘I know, I know.’ So when I get back from vacation, he says, ‘Let’s go look at it again.’”
They couldn’t resist. And so in February 2018, they bought the building, now called the Central Kitchen Food Hub, at 7501 Carnegie Ave. The seller rented space in it from them while building a new facility in Willoughby but finally vacated this month.