There is a specific moment when a growing food business gets too big for a shared kitchen. For Mercy Clark, it was the size and number of parties she was catering. They kept getting bigger, and so did the equipment list, and eventually Gingerly Catered was taking up so much of NoCo Community Kitchen that Mercy started looking at the walls.
“For a long time, I’ve been outgrowing this space,” she said, “because I take up so much room and have such large parties. It’s a good problem to have, but I needed to find a solution.”
That is the outcome a shared-use kitchen is built for. Nearly three years after Mercy catered NoCo’s grand opening, she is moving Gingerly Catered into a space of her own.
The Kitchen Years
Mercy started Gingerly Catered before NoCo existed, running it out of the cheese shop she managed, where the owner let her use the space as a commissary. When she heard a shared-use kitchen was opening in Prescott in the fall of 2023, she moved fast.
“I really was adamant about getting in here,” she said. The connection to Prescott Farmers Market was part of the draw. She saw a network and community that could help her continue to grow and thrive, while also connecting her with other food entrepreneurs she could learn with and work alongside.
She catered the kitchen’s grand opening in her first weeks in the space. It was the dead of winter, so she built the menu around what the season gave her: root vegetables sliced into crostini, sunchokes, butternut squash. “Everything turned out so great, and I was so stoked with how the menu came out,” she said.
She ran the business alongside a part-time job at first, taking parties as they came. By the summer of 2024 the calendar told her what she already suspected: She had enough work booked, holiday season was ahead of her, and she knew what those months looked like. That August, Mercy went full time in her business. The holidays were as busy as she expected, and the pace has held ever since.
How She Grew
Word of Mouth
Mercy didn’t build Gingerly Catered at networking mixers. Rather, she says, it was “word of mouth and parties. That’s how I got this.”
What made word of mouth work for her was showing up consistently for a few key partners. She caters events at Sharlot Hall Museum nearly every month, and clients who first tasted her food at a Twilight Tales evening have hired her for their own parties. Those referrals matter more than any single handshake or 30-second elevator pitch at a mixer.
Investing in Business
Mercy has also prioritized reinvesting in her business. She puts money back into products and equipment as she grows. She knows that this overhead, including her rented space at the kitchen, is the cost of doing business, and she treats it that way. New tools and kitchen space aren’t a necessary evil, but rather an opportunity for growth.
Supporting Others
Mercy works with about nine part-time employees, most of whom hold other jobs. She is currently sponsoring one of her prep cooks to attend culinary school so they can take more of the hands-on work, freeing Mercy to build the systems side of the company and grow sales. She is also working toward offering health insurance, which she sees as a key that turns part-time help into a full-time team.
Always Learning
Asked what she would change about how she’s operated over these last few years, Mercy doesn’t hesitate. “I think I would have focused more on establishing those standardized recipes and systems up front, before I got so busy that I didn’t have time to really focus on them.” She’s currently working hard to build her operations and keep them up-to-date as she continues to grow.
She is clear-eyed about where that work leads. “My company at this point is not sellable, because it’s reliant on me. The goal now is to build it in such a way that it no longer relies on me.” For Mercy, that is not a worry; it’s the next thing to build.
What Comes Next
The next step arrived without a search. When the caterer at Espire Sports announced plans to retire, people in the building recommended Mercy. As an avid pickleball player, she was already a regular at the sports complex. And when she joined, she emailed the owners just to say she existed. Her email signature carried links to her website and her work, so the owners were already aware of her expertise.
Mercy is now taking over a turnkey cafe at Espire, aptly named The Kitchen. Even better, it’s an early version of the sandwich shop she eventually wants to open. She is bringing her entire team with her and hiring on staff from the outgoing caterer, because the plan is not just to relocate the business. Ideally, she’d love to double it.
“I’m the first entrepreneur in my family to build something from the ground up,” Clark said. “I didn’t have any financial backing. I built this myself.”
Watching a business outgrow the kitchen is exactly the outcome we want. NoCo Community Kitchen gives food entrepreneurs a licensed, professional space to start and scale without the cost of a build-out. When a business is ready for a space of its own, the kitchen has done its work.
We are so proud of what Mercy Clark built here, and we are grateful we got to be part of it.