Union Kitchen & REQ Give Food Entrepreneurs the Secret Ingredient to Branding

What’s the next best thing after eating great food? A great food story. REQ Senior Brand Strategist Steven Kostant spoke to a group of food entrepreneurs at Union Kitchen, a DC food accelerator, about why a good story is essential to brands.

“A brand story makes your brand memorable” Steven told the entrepreneurs. “It’s an emotional connection. We make decisions from the heart.”

Located beside the Hecht Warehouse building in DC’s Ivy City neighborhood, Union Kitchen equips members to launch and grow food businesses producing products ranging from snacks to ice cream and everything in between. Member perks include space, guidance, and connections to scale up as a food brand, along with the opportunity to share knowledge and learn from other members’ experiences.

Union Kitchen also runs two brick and mortar locations, called Union Kitchen Grocery, where DC shoppers can find local and national food brands and accelerator members can put their brands in front of local foodies.

As members prepped their deliveries and ingredients for the day and went about the daily work of running a food business, a group of about 13 entrepreneurs took a break to participate in Steven’s storytelling workshop. Their brand concepts spanned healthy drinks, frozen foods, handcrafted meals, mixology, and more.

During the workshop, Steven broke down the components of a story, why people connect to them, and the ways they can serve as powerful branding tools. He also shared tips and strategies for pitching to investors by drawing on the power of storytelling.

“Lots of people talk about the power of content,” Steven said. “Understand that the power of content comes from the story.”

After the presentation, several attendees shared some of their ideas with Steven, who gave feedback and first impressions in real-time.

Visit unionkitchendc.com to learn more and visit Union Kitchen Grocery at 538 3rd Street NE or 1251 9th Street NW to discover hundreds of local food brands.

Visit req.co/work to see brand stories and strategies we've launched.