More than 50 food-focused small businesses can rest easier this week as their shared facility on Quincy Street – Commonwealth Kitchen – announced its $7 million acquisition of the building, while also beginning a $4 million capital campaign for expansion.

Jen Faigel, Commonwealth Kitchen’s executive director, told the Reporter the purchase of the former Bornstein and Pearl Food Production Center from Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation will cement their operations in Grove Hall. The kitchen has served as an incubator and a place for businesses to succeed or fail since it opened in 2014, and now they hope even more budding entrepreneurs can take a shot at their dreams.

“The businesses we work with have grown and there is a lot of opportunity in our building,” she said. “We wanted to get our base stabilized and to be able to do repairs and upgrades. Owning the building and controlling how we grow and support businesses was obvious.”

Faigel added: “Light industrial buildings like this are hard to keep, with the push for biotech in Greater Boston. Food manufacturing is going to get decimated in the city if we don’t quickly preserve some of it.”

Faigel comes from a real estate background and had a big hand in developing Jamaica Plain’s Brewery Complex. At the time, there was a shared kitchen that housed now-well known food truck operators like Clover and Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese. When those businesses began to take off, and Faigel moved over to help Dorchester Bay develop the Pearl building – things quickly lined up to launch the city’s biggest and most diverse shared kitchen facility. Now, numerous food businesses from Dorchester and Mattapan have been able to try their hand at launching a business – sometimes with success and other times without. But, Faigel said, the new purchase ensures that the shared kitchen and a new shared food manufacturing operation can grow in place.

“The first issue when opening a food business is getting a kitchen,” she said. “That start-up cost discourages so many people from starting their business. Restaurants often fail because they get so leveraged on equipment at the start that they can never get out of that hole. We were able to allow people to create those businesses and new jobs just by building a kitchen.”

Codman Square resident Teresa Maynard, who started Sweet Teez Bakery, is one such success story. Maynard quit her corporate job in 2016 to try to launch a bakery that specialized in creating sweets that were nut-free and accommodated food allergies.

Despite great input and a well-crafted business plan, she said she had “no clue” until she came to Commonwealth Kitchen for its food business classes.

Five years later, she uses Commonwealth Kitchen from four to seven days a week to fulfill orders. While frosting more than 9,000 cupcakes for a Boston hospital this week, she told the Reporter that her success wouldn’t have happened without a place to figure it all out.

“This place is your trial and error,” she said. “Food is hard. Some people come here and don’t like the food business and walk away a little wiser, but without losing the huge start-up costs for production equipment…We are confidently at home now (with this purchase). Before you didn’t know. It would have been a shame for us not to be here. Owning the building sets us in stone – we’re here for good.”

Faigel said owning the building has reduced their monthly rent payments to $12,000 from $25,000. The savings will go towards addressing deferred maintenance issues and streamlining operations.

They also hope solar panels and maybe solar hot water can reduce their $100,000 per year energy bills. The hope is the $4 million capital campaign can help “stabilize operations, reconfigure the space and map out a plan for the future,” she said.

“The big vision here is to put an addition to the building, going up one floor for more training space, or production space,” said Faigel. “This part of Grove Hall doesn’t have a ton of great food options. Could we bring a retail opportunity where businesses here sell prepared food or other products from Commonwealth Kitchen? We haven’t started a process with the neighborhood yet so there’s a lot of work to do on that. We are interested in raising the question to see if people are interested in this idea.”

The list of successful Commonwealth Kitchen users and alums is a list of some of Dorchester and Mattapan’s favorite restaurants and eateries – including Fresh Food Generation, Down Home Delivery, Top Shelf Cookies and Reign Drink Lab, to name but a few.

It’s that network and the shared wisdom of others that Maynard said helped take her business successfully from making 20 cupcakes in her home to making 1,400 at a time at the Quincy Street facility.

“It’s my watercooler, like you might have at a big company, because being an entrepreneur can be lonely,” she said. “I’ve never been in an environment where everyone wants everyone else around them to win. I never experienced that before until I came here. That support around you from other businesses gets you through the rough times.”

Faigel said owning the building gives more access to more dreams – dreams that sometimes are just a learning experience and not a success story.

“There’s no question that part of what is good about Commonwealth Kitchen is you can fail fast if you’re going to fail and you’ll learn great lessons too,” she said. “Lots of entrepreneurs have more than one chapter in their business life. What’s important is the learning.”

The purchase of the building was supported by $5.7 million in financing from the City of Boston and the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as well as $2.5 million in financing from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through MassDevelopment. The $4 million capital campaign is expected to be launched later this year.