Project Details: Taproot is expanding its services by adding a cook room — offering businesses and individuals access to a modular, fully equipped kitchen including a large gas range, convection ovens for baking, a 12 gallon steam jacketed tilting kettle for making sauces and soups, a fire-suppression hood, ice machine, and lots of dry storage.
The project is converting existing storage units at Lopez Storage into one large room that will have a proper kitchen hood and cooking equipment on one end plus lots of room for processing and storage. Movable tables and shelves will allow each kitchen user to arrange things for their operation. Open storage allows users to expand and shrink their storage needs as the seasons’ cycle.
Autumn 2025 Update
The cook room is finished enough to welcome San Juan County building inspector and fire marshall. They visited and gave us a short punch list of things to do. The contractor who installed the fire suppression exhaust hood visited to calibrate the gizmos that make that system function properly.
Once we pass final inspection, Taproot Kitchen will be serving the Lopez Island community’s commercial and personal food processing needs for many decades to come.
Let’s get cookin’!
###########################
Summer 2025 Update
While we had hoped to open the cook room in early 2025, we’ve faced the all-too-common challenge of extremely busy contractor schedules! The good news is that we’re nearly there. Our electrician is finishing up, and we recently hit a major milestone: the installation of a new OPALCO meter. We’re now in the process of connecting all the new cook room electrical to that meter — a huge step toward powering up the space for real. We are thrilled to be on the cusp of completion of this grassroots project. In the meantime get a sneak peak into the new space and components of the kitchen hood.
Project Milestones
Plans were developed in 2021
Taproot was gifted over $90,000 in 2021 to help fund the project
Plans were submitted to San Juan County (SJC) in March 2022
A Provisional Use Permit was granted by SJC to Taproot in March 2023
Permit Approved by SJC on April 24, 2023
Awarded a Rural Business Development Grant (RBDG) from the USDA to fund equipment purchases for the cook room in September 2023
December 2023 Construction started
Summer 2024 Fundraising for the fire-suppression hood complete and order placed with Lynden Sheet Metal to engineer, fabricate and install
Summer 2024 Framing, Rough-in Plumbing and Electrical Completed
Winter 2025 — Insulation, Sheetrock, Hood Installation, Final Electrical & Plumbing Work
March 10 and 11 2025 — Fire Suppression Hood installation by Lynden Sheet Metal
Spring/Summer 2025 — Working with Subcontractors for plumbing and electrical work.
Project Contact
For more information contact Laurie Bullock, Taproot Project Manager at taprootKitchenLaurie@gmail.com
Taproot Lopez Community Kitchen 