A Honolulu art space has grown into an incubator that helps local artists and small food businesses get off the ground — good news for Hawai'i's small-business scene.

• Fishcake opened on Kakaako's Cooke Street in 2007 as an art gallery and furniture store, named after the old kamaboko factory the founders first tried to move into.
• The space now runs a ceramics studio added after COVID, with 50 clay members and 70 teaching artists across clay, watercolor, crochet, fiber, and food workshops.
• It has hosted 27 food vendors, and several have gone on to open their own storefronts.
• Seven other small businesses — an acupuncture studio, tattoo shop, hair salon, plant shop, furniture store, and coffee shop — have used the space to build a client base.
• One founder, Wei Shu of the Moscow Project, used the incubator cafe to launch his own business after taking pottery classes there.

Outlook: Expect the space to keep adding studios and classes as new vendors cycle in and established ones move to their own locations.