Our Founder Justin’s Journey from Muffin Man Enterprises to Food Web
Before there was Food Web, there was Muffin Man Enterprises: a one-man baking operation run out of a small Halifax apartment by a young chef with big dreams and a goofy name.
Yes, Muffin Man Enterprises. I admit, the name was silly, but the muffins were delicious and the vision was serious.
The Beginning of a (Local) Food Story
Back in 2016, My roommate at the time was attending Nova Scotia Community College and decided to start a new farmers’ market on campus. She roped me in to help organize it, and together we registered what became the NSCC Waterfront Campus Farmers’ Market. We brought together a handful of local farmers, bakers, and artisans once a week to sell their products to students and staff.
Starting this farmers market was also the spark I needed to start my first food business. I began baking muffins, cookies, and other treats under the banner Muffin Man Enterprises. Because baked goods are considered “low-risk” foods, I was allowed to make them from my home and sell them at the market without needing a commercial kitchen.
For a while, it worked. The muffins sold, the market grew, and I began to imagine what it might look like to take this little business further.
Hitting a Wall
I started receiving interest from a few cafés in Halifax who wanted to sell my baked goods. It was an exciting opportunity, a chance to move from market stall to small-scale distribution.
But as soon as I stepped into that next phase, the roadblock appeared. To sell wholesale or prepare foods beyond baked goods, I’d need to produce everything in a licensed commercial kitchen. That’s where the momentum stopped. I began calling dozens of cafés that closed in the afternoon, hoping one might rent their kitchen space in the evenings. I emailed churches and community centres. I left voicemails, sent follow-ups, and asked for referrals.
Weeks turned into months. Some kitchens were already booked solid leading up to Saturday markets. Others didn’t know how to rent safely or weren’t interested in dealing with insurance or paperwork.
Finally, I faced a hard truth. Signing a full-time lease for my own kitchen was out of reach, and without part-time kitchen access, Muffin Man Enterprises couldn’t grow. So, reluctantly, I packed up my baking trays and called it a day.
Back to School — and Back to the Bigger Picture
Two years later, I enrolled at Dalhousie University to study Sustainability and Social Anthropology, driven by a deeper question: why is it so hard to grow small food businesses in Nova Scotia?
That question became the focus of my internship with Farmers Markets of Nova Scotia (FMNS), where I interviewed farmers market managers, food entrepreneurs, and local food advocates from one end of Nova Scotia to the other. What I found was strikingly familiar. The same barrier that had ended Muffin Man Enterprises kept surfacing everywhere he went: lack of access to part time commercial kitchens.
Whether it was a caterer trying to expand, a hot sauce maker looking to scale, or a new immigrant launching a family recipe business, everyone faced the same problem.
You can read more about that internship and the findings in my FMNS Internship Report on our research page. It’s where the seed for Food Web truly took root.
The Lightbulb Moment
It was during that internship that I had the realization: If so many kitchens sit empty, and so many entrepreneurs need them, why not build a tool to connect the two?
That simple idea became the foundation for Food Web: A digital platform designed to make finding, booking, and managing shared kitchen space as easy as possible. Food Web was born not from theory, but from lived experience, from one Chef’s struggle to find a place to cook.
Today, Food Web is helping other dreamers pick up where I left off. Giving them the access I never had, and helping communities unlock the infrastructure that’s been sitting idle for far too long. Because no one with a great recipe and a good idea should have to close their business over a lack of kitchen space.
→ Learn more about Food Web at Foodweb.network
Keegan Francis
Justin Andrews