The Culinary Square shared kitchen and food incubator set to open in Glen Burnie in spring of 2027

GLEN BURNIE, Md — A new culinary concept called The Culinary Square will bring a shared-use commercial kitchen, event venue and food incubator to the former Mike's Restaurant and Crab House in Glen Burnie.

A new culinary concept is coming to Glen Burnie, bringing new life to the old Mike's Restaurant and Crab House starting next year.

The site is officially the home of The Culinary Square, a shared-use commercial kitchen, event venue and food incubator. The space will allow local food trucks, caterers, bakers, specialty food brands and other startup food businesses a licensed place to cook, store, sell and grow — without each one having to build or lease its own commercial kitchen.

Gretchen Moran said she wanted to create this space to fill a need, and she said it will benefit both local food businesses and the community.

"Really lucky to find what is a niche industry that is these shared kitchens. There's about 300 more across the country and all of them are solving this problem of how do we build the infrastructure that's missing in food system," Moran said.

"Yeah, I looked around and I saw that Baltimore has amazing share kitchens and DC has a thriving food community that comes out of share kitchens not only does that provide a diversity of local food but it builds jobs and build small businesses so I looked around County and I said well many of these operators are finding kitchens and working out of kitchens that already exist, but those kitchens are not set up for more than one operator so connect all of those dots and the culinary Square was born," Moran said.

Kelly Bell, owner of The Bell House Catering, is one of the businesses already partnering with The Culinary Square. Bell said she is excited for the change this will bring to the community.

"It was exciting to know if this happened 10 years ago I would've had a place to go. It took me a while to get to where I am but having her here is going to make so many peoples dreams come true," Bell said.

The concept will also have culinary and nutrition classes and will have event space open to the community.

"This brings our community back together around food and that nefarious agenda. That's our culinary classes. We want to have really fun entertainment style culinary classes. There are affordable for people so that they can come in and see. I know what to do with what I buy in a farmers market now and it could be really fun," Moran said.

Another local business, Let's Chow, and the Maryland Food Bank are also on board, each offering up ideas to support the community kitchen and bring Moran's vision to life.

"It's nice to have that people in the support like Gretchen behind me. She's like OK so let's try to do it this way OK great and that's what you want. You wanna be able to have those folks who know what they're doing to help support the people who may think they know what they're doing and sort of build in that direction," Bell said.

Moran says the Culinary Square is becoming a reality thanks to the "Own your Future" loan from the Maryland Department of housing and Community Development and the VOLT fund from the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation.

The Culinary Square is set to open its doors in the spring of 2027.

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