A group of people seated at a long table in a restaurant or cafe, with a counter in the foreground holding various baked goods and desserts, including cakes, muffins, and cookies.

Description:

Switchyard Accelerator is a collaborative partnership between Clovis Economic Development, Clovis MainStreet, and the Curry County Business Incubator. Its core mission is to empower aspiring food entrepreneurs and existing cottage-based food businesses in Clovis through comprehensive training and technical assistance.

Program Structure:

  • Phase One: Six-Week Cohort Training The program kicks off with a focused, six-week cohort where participants dive deep into the fundamentals of running a successful food business. Key topics include business model design, customer discovery, permitting and licensing, marketing and branding, menu planning, inventory control, financial forecasting, and restaurant management. Participants also receive their Food Manager Certification through a partnership with Clovis Community College.

  • Phase Two: Real-World Pop-Up Experience The final phase provides a unique, de-risked opportunity for participants to test their concepts in a real-world setting by operating a pop-up shop in a historic downtown Clovis bakery building.

HatchForm’s Role:

HatchForm designed the program from initial meetings with program stakeholders to the launch of the first pop-up. Switchyard is part of a family programs called MainStreet Accelerators that HatchForm has been designing and executing since 2019. MainStreet Accelerators, sometimes referred to experiential accelerators, provide participants with a traditional cohort style curriculum of business model creation, customer discovery, regulatory and industry specific information, marketing, financial planning and forecasting, and general management. This cohort based training is followed by an opportunity to test a business concept in a real world de-risked environment. These “pop-up shops” are usually in vacant or underutilized buildings in downtown areas or other historic commercial corridors. This adds a downtown or district revitalization element to the overall program. to date HatchForm has launched six of these programs and the impacts have been extraordinary.

Impact:

Just looking at two MainStreet Accelerator programs in Tucumcari, NM and Alamogordo, NM the numbers are impressive:

  • $756,747 in new private investment

  • 11 new businesses launched

  • 30 new jobs created