Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) will soon be welcoming its second cohort of the SPICE program, which stands for specialized program in cooking entrepreneurship.

The program was started by the Centre for Women in Business at MSVU. SPICE began after the pandemic as more people were starting businesses from home.

“They were selling food through Facebook marketplace, selling food through Instagram, selling food and dropping it off people's homes,” Natalie Frederick-Wilson the Director of the SPICE program says.

The women were coming to the Centre for Women in Business because they were facing legal push back on their food businesses, Frederick-Wilson says. The nine week course provides intensive learning on different areas of business such as financials, using a commercial kitchen and how to label food. The SPICE program offers priority to African Nova Scotian, Indigenous and immigrant women but is open to any women looking to learn about opening a food business.

“They don't have to have any culinary background, they just need to be people who are interested in a food business,” Frederick-Wilson says.

Nova Scotia’s Department of Agriculture has provided $5000 for the program and $100,000 to help participants buy equipment for their business.

One woman from the last cohort was able to use this money to buy a dough sheeter to help make her Filipino steamed buns, which prior to this she was making by hand, Frederick-Wilson says.

Other government partnerships for SPICE include Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Perennia, the Nova Scotia Farm Loan Board and Invest Nova Scotia.

“Our goal is to support women who are food entrepreneurs, by making them legal food entrepreneurs and establishing them foundationally so that they can grow and build,” Frederick-Wilson says.

The first cohort of the SPICE program graduated in May and registration for the fall section will be opening soon.

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