Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1050416
PHOTOGRAPH BY, LEFT TO RIGHT, SARAH JORDAN MCCAFFERY, KELLI WHOLEY / I N - D E P T H / around Lawrence. "ey might have ideas, but they might not always have the assets. is is really a launching pad." Gonzalez was the RTK's first graduate, and after finishing his stint there, he opened CocoRay's at a permanent location on Parker Street in Lawrence earlier this year. e RTK's current resident is owner Danny Torres. His restaurant, El Encanto, has been open there since late February. At press time, applications were being accepted for the RTK's third iteration. Torres says he's been cooking for 11 years, and was trying to get a food truck going when he heard about the RTK opportunity. Because of his experience at El Encanto, he's now leaning toward wholesaling his food products. "I can say that if it wasn't for the RTK, I might not have been in the steps of trying to do the wholesale business," Torres says. "If it wasn't for this project, I wouldn't have learned the stuff that I've learned, I wouldn't have visual- ized other projects, other plans. It gave me the experience of running a business." Sal Lupoli is the president and CEO of Lupoli Companies. Left, Derek Mitchell is the executive director of Lawrence Partnership. A C O L L A B O R AT I V E V I S I O N e RTK is a collaboration between Northern Essex Community College, Lupoli Companies, the city of Lawrence, and e Lawrence Partnership. "e Revolving Test Kitchen came from an idea I had about creating a restaurant incubator that would assist food entrepre- neurs and serve the community," says Sal Lupoli, president and CEO of Lupoli Compa- nies. "We had the existing space at NECC on Common Street in Lawrence, and I donated more than $300,000 in equipment, furniture, and fixtures, whatever was necessary to help a restaurant get up and running." Northern Essex Community College provides the space rent-free and also provides a built-in customer base of students and faculty, in addition to the residents and people doing business in that neighborhood, while e Lawrence Partnership acts as the