Mondays just got a lot more exciting around here, with the introduction of
Neighborhood Noodle, a dinner pick-up joint operating out of a Woodbridge home one day a week.
Jess Daniel relocated to Detroit just this summer and is already hard at work shortening the local food chain. As someone that's been involved with cooking -- primarily Asian, as befits her half-Singaporean background and time spent in Cambodia -- as well as farming and local food policy efforts in her home state of California as well as Washington, D.C., she ended up in the 313 because of her interest in burgeoning food entrepreneurship and urban agriculture efforts here.
With grand plans that include the pursuit of a thesis at Michigan State University that will develop a business plan for a Detroit food incubator and the operation of one or more food trucks in the coming years, Daniel got started small and realistically, with a once-a-week noodle bowl enterprise that, in its first week on Aug. 23, served 92 plates of food and is already poised to double.
Neighborhood Noodle keeps it simple by offering two entrees with available add-ons and potentially one extra -- this past week, non-dairy coconut-tamarind ice cream from another local foodie start-up,
Suddenly Sauer. Prices are reasonable, starting at $5 a serving, and all the while Daniel is closely monitoring her income and expenses with plans to extrapolate those numbers into a sustainable full-scale business.
Part of Daniel's goals in studying a legitimate food incubator in Detroit is to help other like-minded foodies, but it is also to prove that ideas like hers are legitimate -- even after labor, licensing and equipment expenses.
Neighborhood Noodle will take Labor Day, Sept. 6, off, but will return on Sept. 13. Order the week prior to ensure availability.
Source: Jess Daniel, Neighborhood Noodle
Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh
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