Growing up in a Welsh family, and marrying an Italian, Jane Del Rosso’s passion has always resided with food.

“My mum was always an avid cook, so she would often experiment,” she says.

“And my first memory of food was at about ten when she would let me make my own food, like cakes.”

However growing up in Devonport, Tasmania, Jane felt here career options were limited.

“I ended up just going to school to learn shorthand and typing just to get a job,” she says.

This was a choice that led to a 20 year corporate career for Jane, and relocation to Victoria.

“I worked hard, and got into corporate through IBM, and then moved onto other areas as my career grew,” she says.

After a long and successful career in the corporate world, Jane realised that she really needed to get back to her basics and doing what she loved; cooking.

“It was a personal need, I wanted to do something on my own in food,” she says.

“So I went and got my cookery certificate.”

Jane decided she would open My Other Kitchen, a unique cooking incubator business, designed to help other cooking businesses get their feet off the ground.

“Opening the doors was the scariest,” she says. “It was six months of construction, two years of planning so the day I opened the door, it was like uh oh – no turning back.”

Although five years on, it may seem like Jane has done extremely well for herself and her business, it wasn’t always so easy in the beginning.

“The first year we were basically trying to get people through the door,” she says.

“Because of my business model, it was also about educating my would-be customers that yes I was there for everything, not just the kitchen.”

My Other Kitchen also provides businesses with information surrounding food laws, council registration, labelling, packaging, marketing and much more.

“We have a whole network of added value services,” she says. “We give you all the help you need and introduce you to people who can help you too.”

“It’s actually more of a community, it’s a hub just with a kitchen,” she says.

The kitchen has an array of diverse and eclectic businesses coming through its doors all the time.

“We’ve had caterers catering to musical festivals, people doing menu development for a new restaurant in the city… we’ve got the take home meals guy who then delivers to gyms, the nougat lady who is at farmers markets, the muesli lady – yeah it’s grown a lot,” she says.

Jane and her kitchen are so busy now that she doesn’t get the time or space to cook in there anymore.

“That’s where my passion was that led me here in the first place,” she says.

“All of my cooking is done at home now.”

Jane and her business are dedicated to assisting new cooking businesses with acquiring all of the information they need, which is why she made it the fourth year for My Other Kitchen to attend the Victorian Small Business Festival.

“I just find it a really good way to give back, but also a really good way to be recognised as an expert in the food industry,” she says.

“Most of the information I gathered for my business was through those kinds of workshops – the low cost workshops.”

The events took place on August 26 down at the Kingston Hall, enabling Jane and thirty other exhibitors to network and share their expertise with others.

It appears that Jane has nestled into a niche area, as kitchen incubators appear to be in limited supply.

“I can’t find them in the UK and in Australia there are similar businesses in that there kitchens that are shared,” she says.

However there hasn’t been anything quite like My Other Kitchen in the cooking industry since it was launched in 2009.

“I do think from here it will grow,” she says. “People are seeing the need for both business support as well as the infrastructure of a commercial kitchen.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if competitors start popping up all over the place soon… I can’t expect to be the only person for much longer,” she says.

Though this doesn’t appear to worry Jane, as she says she has bigger and more exciting business phases already aligned for the future.

“Watch this space, as they say,” she says.