At The Kitchen Project, our entrepreneurs don’t just share kitchen space. They share ideas, support and increasingly, ingredients. From loaded spuds topped with BBQ lamb to smoky pies filled with award winning sauce, a wave of fresh collaborations is bubbling up between graduates, proving that everything tastes better when we do it together.

Across cohorts, connections are forming that go beyond encouragement. Our food businesses are beginning to cross over into each other’s menus, pop ups and production kitchens, and the results are delicious.

Take Sips and Spuds, run by Tyson and Sini Ropeti. Known for their creative Pacific style loaded potatoes, they recently joined forces with Tyson’s sister Trina and her husband Ralph Pereira of K-Bone Kai to cater for the Te Atatu Rugby Club. Their slow cooked lamb spud is one of the crowd favourites. It is the kind of tasty collab that only happens when entrepreneurs know and trust each other’s food and in this case, it runs in the family.

Over in Franklin, Madd Pies founder Emily Maddren took the The Smoke Shed silver medal winning BBQ sauce made by Jayde and Andrew Lane and folded it into one of her signature hand pies. Turns out Emily and Smoke Shed’s Jayde Lane are also related and it is their shared sense of flavour and community that makes this partnership really stick.

Another standout collaboration came from Ginger’s Pantry and Comfort Bowl. In a delicious meeting of cultures, Ginger’s handcrafted kimchi, made with local cabbage, radish and a fiery hint of Fijian ginger, was paired with Comfort Bowl’s handmade pork and prawn wontons. The result? A bold and unexpected fusion of Korean spice and Hong Kong comfort. It’s the kind of creative, cross-cultural magic that happens when our TKP entrepreneurs stay connected and keep supporting each other long after graduation.

These collaborations show what can happen when business meets friendship, and recipes become a shared language. “This is what The Kitchen Project is all about,” says The Kitchen Project’s manager Connie Clarkson. “When food entrepreneurs have space to grow together, they naturally start to lift each other up. What we are seeing now is a growing family. There is more generosity, more creativity, and more opportunity.”

As new products hit the market and more doors open for our graduates, we expect to see even more creative pairings. Whether it is a pie that started with a sauce or a spud that sparked a new menu item, these connections show that collaboration is not just good for business, it is good for flavour.

Got a food business idea cooking? Apply now to join our next cohort.