Leticia Landa is executive director of La Cocina, the San Francisco-based culinary incubator. Last week, she received the Basque Culinary World Prize for her work supporting dozens of entrepreneurs, primarily low-income women of color.
The award comes with a €100,000 prize that will go directly to the organization. In this conversation with Gazetteer SF, Landa reflects on her nearly 20 years at the organization.
This conversation has been edited for clarity.
First of all, congratulations! How are you feeling?
Well, it’s such an honor and also it feels a little funny to me, you know? Because La Cocina is such a team effort. I've worked there for 17 years and I've put a lot of work in, but it’s really all of us. It's everyone’s collective effort and energy and all the different ideas that have gone into building the organization.
And so, I really hope that it feels like a prize for everybody who has touched La Cocina, especially all the entrepreneurs who start their businesses there. The chefs — it’s their food and their expertise that I learn so much from and that I think has really shaped our organization.
I don’t love being the center of attention, but if I can shine a light on this project and this community that I care so much about, then it's worth it.
The award came with a €100,000 prize that will all go directly to La Cocina. What needs will this funding satisfy?
It’ll go into our general budget to support the work that we do. We have two kitchens that we run, one in the Mission District and one in the Tenderloin. We have quite a lot of staff to support all of the entrepreneurs as they're growing. So, it will be just general support for La Cocina, which is the most important kind of funding that any nonprofit can get.
In the 17 years that you've been at La Cocina, the city’s seen some changes. The world has seen some changes. How have the needs of the chefs in your programs changed?
I mean, I think the thing that has changed the most is how pervasive the use of technology is by small businesses. 2005 is when La Cocina started; it’s our 20th anniversary. When I began in 2008, so many of the main tools that small businesses use — think about the credit card readers we have today or social media for marketing — none of those things existed.
And so, really, we want to support entrepreneurs as they have so much more access to so many different tools for their businesses. It’s used to reach out to clients, but then also on the back end for their accounting and pretty much everything, right? Like for HR, we used to write checks and now everything is digital.
So, I do think that using all those tools and really getting expertise in them is probably the biggest thing that has shifted over time because otherwise, making food is making food. That hasn’t changed as much.
What are some unique opportunities or attitudes that the city offers that are really advantageous for budding entrepreneurs? How is the food scene here for up-and-comers these days?
I think that San Francisco is entrepreneurial, right? Full stop. These days, you know, it’s all of the tech and startups and everything with AI. But it’s been that even since the gold rush days.
It’s crazy to think about all of the different things that have started here. There was a cool campaign — I think it was just, like, a marketing campaign about San Francisco, but I learned that things like blue jeans and different random things were made here. It was a cool reminder of what we do here, not only in the technology space but in lots of things. I think there’s always been kind of an entrepreneurial spirit to people who find themselves here. And also in the arts, too, with so many different types of music and performers.
I think there’s a creative energy that has always been part of the fabric of the city. And it’s, I think, very much the same with food. Part of that is just how much of a destination San Francisco has been from the beginning for immigrants, whether it was immigrants from the East Coast coming west and taking over from like the Spaniards and the natives that were here.
And all of those different waves of like immigration from Asia, how vibrant Chinatown is and how many different countries are represented here. There’s such a big Vietnamese population. There are so many different diasporas and immigration patterns from the beginning of San Francisco that I think have really shaped the city’s food scene.
And so I do think that compared to other places where there are maybe just fewer people from fewer places, you know, here you get such a richness in terms of all of the different kinds of cuisines that you can access.
Thinking about your time with La Cocina, do you have a favorite memory or a favorite element of your job?
Gosh, over 17 years it’s like so hard to choose, but I think that it's two things. One is, every time I go into any of the restaurants that people have started after being in our incubator program, I still get goosebumps.
I went to Lunette for lunch today… and I also had dinner at Lunette on Friday! Both times I was just in awe. Because I know exactly how long it takes and how hard it is and how much work is put into getting there. Even all the many decisions like the menu design — I just think that we take restaurants for granted, but they're such like labors of love. Truly.
And so being able to eat at these places with my friends, or bringing my kids to graduate restaurants from La Cocina, there's really, really deep joy in that.
And I would say the same thing for packaged food products. To see the collaborations that Neococo does with Dandelion Chocolate; every time I get a newsletter that has like a featured La Cocina product or, for example, Samin Nosrat just wrote another cookbook, which is beautiful, and in the section about how to stock your pantry, she mentions Aedan Foods miso. Aedan Foods is a graduate of La Cocina, so I took a picture of the page and sent it to Mariko [Grady, founder] and I was just so excited. And I do that over and over again because it really is just so cool to me when so much goes into these businesses. I’ve known Mariko for so many years and at one point she was even unsure whether to start it as a business.
Like, “I just love making miso, but do we really think people will buy it?” And I was like, of course people will buy it, this is like a really special product! So that full arc I think is what is so special about this job.
I saw that the food festival is returning, which is so exciting!
Absolutely. We are bringing back our food festival just for a special 20th-anniversary celebration and really hoping that everybody who’s ever been to one of our other festivals wants to come back and celebrate and get to know both some of the original entrepreneurs that were at the festival way back in the day, as well as a bunch of our new businesses. This year, we’re doing it in collaboration with Noise Pop. So, there’s going to be a stage with live music.
It’s at China Basin Park, so there’s the beach right there. I’m so excited. I think about my first street food festival: I was a 20-something running around working and now, I get to bring my kids, and they’re going to get to experience the festival and there’s something so special about that. And I really hope that lots of other people who have been at these events in the past can come experience a bit more of a grown up version of it now that we're in our 20th year!
La Cocina’s Street Food Festival returns on Nov. 8th from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Nov. 9th from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at China Basin Park in Mission Rock.
