Like a Gym, Except a Kitchen, with Dan Mills of Tinker Kitchen

Dan Mills turned his hobby of collecting commercial kitchen gadgets into Tinker Kitchen, a makerspace for community cooking. He joins us to talk about his inspiration for the space, why entrepreneurs need grit in the face of never-ending roadblocks, and how his very understanding girlfriend provided the (literal!) space he needed to succeed.

Links and Show Notes

• Maker culture
• CAD (Computer-aided Design)
• SketchUp
• R&D (Research and Development)
• ROI (Return on Investment)
• Pared —Making restaurant life easier
• Liquid nitrogen
• Sous vide
• Molecular Gastronomy
• Stage —“An unpaid internship when a cook or chef works briefly, for free, in another chef's kitchen to learn and be exposed to new techniques and cuisines.”
• Chez Panisse
• Opportunity cost
• Burnout
• Tinker Kitchen Kickstarter project (funded, 2018)
• Microsoft Excel
• SBA—Small Business Association
• SBDC—America’s Small Business Development Centers
• SEO—Search Engine Optimization
• Processed Food Registration (PFR) —“Processors of general food commodities (e.g. baked goods, noodles, processed fresh vegetables, seafood, snack foods, dietary supplements, etc.) must obtain a Processed Food Registration (PFR) from FDB. A PFR certificate is a firm’s basic health permit. The PFR allows firms to manufacture products not specifically covered by another FDB license.”
  • We talk more about the PFR in episode 7 with Guilianna Glassman of Alma Superfoods .
• Ideating
• Combi-Oven
• Cataplana (Portuguese tomato chorizo stew) video recipe
• Laziness, Impatience, Hubris: The Three Virtues of a Programmer
• Takeru Kobayashi
• Episode 8, The Ice Cream Atmosphere, with Lori Phillips of Rocko’s Ice Cream Tacos where Lori answers our "take a bath in what food" Wrapid Fire question (@ 56:48).

Our thanks to Dan for joining us. You can find him at tinkerkitchen.org, and follow him on Twitter (@tinkerkitch) and Instagram (@tinkerkitch).

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