Whitefield Couple Cook Up Business Incubator

WHITEFIELD — When Stephen and Milva Smith purchased the Country Farm Restaurant building on Mills Road in 2008, they converted part of the building into apartment units and a commercial space available to lease, but they had no idea what to do with the restaurant’s kitchen. “It was trashed and it was unused,” Milva Smith said. The couple left the space untouched and unoccupied for quite some time before slowly converting it into a commercial kitchen and business incubator called Food Forge that can be rented by anyone who has a need for a large-scale food operation without the financial or regulatory hassles that come from building one themselves. “We did some research and looked around, and we saw an interesting space in Washington, D.C., which, on a really large scale, is what we envision for our space,” she said. The Smiths, who live down the street from the property, said there are regulatory and financial burdens that come with trying to open something like this.