VEAZIE, Maine — A restaurant in Veazie isn't a place where just its soup of the day changes, but its entire menu.
Changsu Lee owns his part-time restaurant, Korean Dad.
"Running a small restaurant in a small town had been my dream for 20 years," Lee said. After opening his part-time restaurant in 2021, he found a way to help others make their dream a reality, too.
Lee is in the kitchen on Saturdays cooking his Korean cuisine.
But when he's working as a college professor during the week, he rents out his commercial kitchen giving people a chance to test out their restaurant without fully committing to buying their own space.
"Someone was interested in running a restaurant during the weekdays and I thought, why not?" Lee said.
Joy Dudley recently opened her Filipino restaurant, Kusina, which will be open on Fridays.
When she heard of the unique opportunity of opening her own restaurant without a huge commitment, she said she thought it was a win-win situation.
"I was like, yeah let's do it. It's once a week. It's a great opportunity to be out there," Dudley said. "Not putting a lot of investment into opening a restaurant, and everything in this place is like, ready to go."
Korean Dad's takeout kitchen now has five restaurants utilizing the space.
Although having an incubator kitchen wasn't always Lee's plan, he said it's a great opportunity for hopeful restaurant owners to test the waters before making a big investment.
"It's difficult to run a small ethnic restaurant in rural Maine," Lee said.
Kusina is open Fridays, while you'll find Lee cooking for his Korean Dad customers on Saturdays. A Cajun restaurant is open on Sundays, and Lee said a couple of new restaurants will be coming on board soon. Next month, a Nigerian restaurant will be put on the schedule.
"You could be a restaurant owner [too], telling people 'Yeah, I have a restaurant, and I'm proud of it,'" Lee said.