Entrepreneurs who had their businesses up and running at home are among the first tenants to occupy office space in the new Innovation Incubator. Operated by Georgia Southern University's Business Innovation Group, or BIG, on East Main Street downtown, the incubator shares a building with the FabLab, but has its own identity.
"The Innovation Incubator is really just a spot where the entrepreneurs, the people wanting to start a business, can get help, and in some cases space, to do that," said Dr. Dominique Halaby, director of the Business Innovation Group.
Rentable office areas of various sizes make up a large portion of the incubator's floor space. Monthly rents for the 20 spaces available for entrepreneurs to occupy full-time range from $100 for a small partitioned desk area to $550 for a larger office with its own door to the shared interior and windows to the outside.
Eight seats at a shared "hot desk" for out-of-town businesses who just need an occasional space in Statesboro, or local entrepreneurs who need to get a laptop online and use a phone, rent for $75 each.
Boro Take-Out
So far, four businesses have moved into full-time office spaces. Another 17 applicants are in various stages of qualifying. Some are going through the university's application process, while others are being evaluated by the innovation group itself to make sure they are a good fit, Halaby said.
Boro Take-Out Express, which appears online as simply Borotakeout.com, has become such a success that few people would have imagined it was until very recently based in someone's dining room.
Sally Minton launched it in her family's home seven years ago this November. She and business partner Rick Robins secured a franchise from a national restaurant delivery company that provided the website template and other features.
Minton's husband and children also helped after she turned the dining room of their home on the outskirts of Statesboro into a call center with computers and phones.
"When we first started this, I was able to take an order, call it in to the restaurant, go pick it up, come back to the house and wait for another order," Minton said.
But over the past seven years, the business has grown so that it now relays orders and picks up meals from 29 or 30 Statesboro restaurants, a number that fluctuates. The 22 drivers work as independent contractors, delivering meals with their own vehicles.
After a former Boro Take-Out driver moved to Pooler about three years ago and started Pooler Takeout, Minton's home became Pooler's dispatch center, too. Pooler Takeout's owner pays a per-order fee to Boro Take-Out, but works with nearly as many drivers and restaurants, Minton said.
Only in early September did Boro Take-Out cease to be a home-based business, moving into the Innovation Incubator. The incubator's capabilities became available at an opportune time.
"Our call center is growing, and it was getting so that the house couldn't accommodate the phone lines coming in," Minton said.
The company also needed more reliable Internet service, she said. The Innovation Incubator offers the same level of high-speed, broadband optical fiber service available at the university's main campus.
Since the drivers are contractors, Boro Take-Out's dispatchers are its only employees. Currently there are six, including Minton. The call center now has at least one dispatcher on duty, 12 hours a day most days, seven days a week, with two dispatchers at peak times.
A new takeout service based on Wilmington Island near Savannah is preparing to launch, and will also be dispatched from here. With that addition, Minton expects the center will soon need two dispatchers all the time with three during peak meal times.
She is paying $250 a month for the office space. Approved entrepreneurs will be eligible for the discounted rates for up to two years, after which rents will be market-based, Halaby said.
Video production
Jared Lott, owner of Rustic Image Productions and Broadstead Media Group, has also moved his previously home-based videography and production company into the incubator. He is paying $325 a month for a small office with its own door and no exterior window, the window's absence being much preferred for editing video, he said.
As Rustic Image he does wedding videos. Broadstead Media creates many other types of videos, such as commercials, video promotions for businesses, and niche television. Lott produces outdoor TV shows, particularly about hunting and fishing.
He is his only full-time, really more "double full-time" employee, he said. Lott works with three freelancers in the area and calls on other freelance videographers across the country as needed, he said, mentioning Colorado, Kansas and South Carolina as places he has shot video.
"But this is our home base, right here," Lott said.
He produced videos occasionally beginning in 2009, but went full-time about a year and a half ago. He was one of the first entrepreneurs to move into the Innovation Incubator, two months ago. It offers downtown foot traffic and gets him out of the house, and Lott likes being part of revitalizing downtown, he said.
"This is a great opportunity for Georgia Southern to do something like this for young entrepreneurs, young businesses that can't really afford to spend thousands of dollars a month on rent," Lott said.
So far, the other businesses that have secured space in the incubator are CBA Flooring Company, owned by Larry Lester, and the 1040 Tax Shop.
Advice available
But Jill Johns, employed since August 2015 as part-time business advisor for the Innovation Incubator's clients, said they outnumber those now in the building and those who have applied for space. She is working with about 30 entrepreneurs in various stages of their business journey.
Johns describes herself as "a recovering corporate executive." After 15 years working for corporations, she left and founded a magazine, Home Advantage, once distributed to 50,000 homes in Chatham, Bryan and Effingham counties.
But a breast cancer diagnosis convinced her the magazine wasn't really what she wanted to do with her life, either. Since selling Home Advantage, Johns has taken up other adventures, teaching laughter yoga, serving as a life coach, and arranging corporate retreats and retreats for other breast cancer survivors.
"Now I too am a serial entrepreneur," Johns said. "I've started and sold businesses and started multiple ventures myself. So I'm one of them. I advise people like me."
Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.