If there’s one thing that husband-and-wife duo Todd and Nikki Marks both feel they need in their respective careers as a developer and chef—it’s more workspace.

Todd, the founder and CEO of Mindgrub Technologies, says the mobile app, web, and and marketing company has outgrown its 20,000 square-foot offices inside the Banner Building in Locust Point. And Nikki, co-owner of Share Kitchen in the same building, has given up her own area in the commissary kitchen to meet the demand of other food startups interested in leasing space.

“We’ve got people practically sitting on laps at Mindgrub,” Todd says. “We’ve just run out of room. And Nikki is a chef without a home right now. There’s just so much demand for kitchen space.”

A lightbulb went off when Todd came across the former home of Rachel New American Cuisine, a three-story building zoned for many different uses, just down Fort Avenue in Riverside. Though the former restaurant has sat vacant for more than a year, he envisioned the top two floors as Mindgrub offices, and the kitchen as a place for Nikki to continue her cooking classes, prep for catering gigs, and host other chefs in need of commercial equipment. Keeping all of this in mind, the couple recently purchased the property as a home for a new collaborative concept, which they’re calling, “Mindpub.”

“There are a lot of options that we want to try out by having this space,” Todd says. “It’s kind of a food-tech playground to see how food, technology, kitchens, and office space get to play together.”

Eventually, the couple can see the first floor transforming into a cafe that is open to the public full time. But the short-term plan is for it to be a hangout for Mindgrub employees and an events space for the company’s many meetings and speaker series.

Other than the remediation work that inevitably comes with reviving a vacant building, the owners say the quick turnaround—Todd expects workers to begin using the space mid-December—will involve building a rooftop deck and adding fresh coats of paint. The offices will be able to accommodate 30-40 people, while the kitchen will have room for 10-15 chefs working in the kitchen at any given time.

Todd says that Mindpub is a stepping stone for a much larger “work-live-play” environment that he envisions for the company when its lease at the Banner Building is up in five years.

“When I look at my younger employees—it’s all about the experience,” he says. “The office of the future should be kind of like Google or Silicon Valley. They have things like tetherball, dry cleaning, and daycare. This is a foray into that.”

For now, he is excited to activate the 4,000-square-foot corner spot, which historically hasn’t survived as a restaurant, as something that will have many different uses within the community.

“Over the past ten years I think four or five restaurants came in and out of that space,” he says. “The other places were trying to do two-floor restaurants, and they couldn’t get enough people in there because of parking, cost, or [a lack of diners coming in from other neighborhoods]. So the fact that we can have office space and the restaurant will allow everything to thrive.”

Of course, Todd is also looking forward to the opportunity to collaborate more closely on a project with Nikki. The two previously worked together to rebrand food truck MindGrub Cafe, which Nikki sold last year to focus her energy on Share Kitchen. But Todd says that Mindpub will create an entirely new experience for the couple.

“We’re always trying to figure out why we’re so in love,” he says. “I’m a math guy, but the only conclusion I can come to is that we both have the same stardust in us. In this case, we get to parallel play. It’s the best of both worlds because we’re not reporting to each other, we’re not in the same business, but we both get to do what we love under one roof.”

Nikki Marks is all about promoting collaboration within the local culinary community. Not only is the chef well connected in the food truck scene—operating kitchen-on-wheels Mindgrub Cafe and holding a position with the Maryland Mobile Food Vending Association—but she frequently teams up with local groups to host her own private cooking classes.

Now, Marks is taking her partnerships in the local food scene one step further—running a shared commercial kitchen at McHenry Row in Locust Point.

“It’s just the way things are going, people are helping each other out more now,” says Marks, who spoke with us on the phone from a table at famed retail-and-restaurant concept Eataly in New York City, while on vacation with her daughter. “I mean I’m sitting here at Eataly and there’s so much movement. There’s one guy slicing meats and another prepping cheese. I love the energy of people all working together. There are a lot of joint ideas that come with sharing a space.”

The aptly named Share Kitchen recently debuted inside the Banner Building in Locust Point, where Marks’ husband, Todd, runs local tech firm MindGrub. Marks was introduced to the space on an afternoon last summer, when her friend Brian Mathias happened to be parked out front serving lunch on board his food truck Bistro Lunch Box.

“I went out to the truck and said, ‘Brian, there’s space in the basement, we need our own kitchen,” Marks remembers. “And he said, ‘Done. Let’s do this.’ It all happened so fast.’”

Throughout the past year, Marks and Mathias have spearheaded the buildout of the 3,000-square-foot kitchen—which now features amenities for catering and food truck preparation, as well as cooking classes and private events. (Marks says that the front area, equipped with lounge furniture, a television screen, and a 12-foot farm table that she built herself, is ideal for business meetings.)

The state-of-the-art kitchen features fryers, stand-up freezers and refrigerators, prep tables, ample shelving units, a 12-foot hood, convection oven, Vulcan range, flat-top grill, and walk-in refrigerator.

Aside from being a basecamp for Mindgrub Cafe and Bistro Lunch Box, the incubator also currently houses WOLO food truck, food consulting firm Au Jus Solutions, and Rack House Bakers—the local startup that has become known for making whiskey cakes using Kevin Plank’s Sagamore Spirit Rye. Marks says that the space could potentially accommodate one more food truck, but she isn’t looking to fill it to capacity.

The space also boasts plenty of room for Marks to continue teaching cooking classes for both kids and adults. In fact, she recently hosted a weeklong summer camp with children from Garrison Forest School.

“The hospitality business is tough on a family, but mine can do it with me now,” says Marks, whose blended family officially grew to include seven children after she and Todd got married last year. “Don’t think we’re not having our Thanksgiving dinner there this year.”

Besides teaching, Marks is committed to empowering local food trucks—as her battle to overturn the city’s 300-foot rule heads to trial at the end of September.

“The food truck business is difficult enough without having to also worry about where you’re going to prep and park,” she says. “Having a space that’s approved where we can make it easy for more food truck owners, that’s the thing that my heart is most tied to.”

Joey Vanoni has always had a knack for making pizza. As a kid growing up in New Jersey, he would frequent his neighborhood pizzerias, and later crafted his own brick-oven pies aboard submarines while on active duty in the Navy.

Now a Baltimore resident, Vanoni wants to continue that passion aboard his food truck Pizza di Joey. But he says that current Baltimore City legislation is prohibiting him from freely serving the community that he has called home for the past decade.

“I’m not asking for anybody to hand anything out to me,” he says. “I’m just asking for the city government to get out of my way while I pull myself up by my own boot straps and earn an honest living.”

A law enacted in 2014 bans mobile vendors from operating within 300 feet of brick-and- mortar businesses that sell a similar product or service. As a result of this—and given the abundance of other city businesses peddling pizza—Vanoni, along with Nikki McGowan of the MindGrub Cafe food truck, have teamed up with Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice (IJ) to file a lawsuit against the city.

“Baltimore City is really picking and choosing the losers and winners in town here,” Vanoni says. “They’re saying that the brick-and mortar-businesses should be the winners and anybody who’s on four to six wheels are going to be the losers.”

The suit was filed in the Baltimore City Circuit Court over a year ago, and, earlier this week, Judge Yolanda Tanner denied both parties’ motion for summary judgment—sending the case to trial on September 28. A pre-trial settlement hearing is scheduled for Friday, August 18, however IJ attorney Greg Reed says that the plaintiffs see no room for settlement.

“The only way that this case would be resolved prior to trial is if the mayor and city council repealed this patently unconstitutional law,” Reed says. “These entrepreneurs have a constitutional right to vend in Baltimore City free from protectionist competitive laws like the 300-foot proximity ban, and they aren’t going to give up for their rights to be free from such laws.”

Reed explains the ban’s “same or similar” provision by saying that there are certain locations that Pizza di Joey can operate, but MindGrub Cafe cannot solely because they sell different products. 

“The city creates this entirely unrealistic hypothetical in its argument that a pizza parlor is going to go out of business if Pizza di Joey parks within 300 feet of it,” he says. “But not if a burger, taco, or pho truck parks in front of that very same pizza parlor. That’s simply ridiculous. The success of any brick and mortar isn’t about how close a mobile vendor is, it’s about whether they’re serving a good product and offering a good customer experience.”

City solicitor Mark Dimenna declined to comment on the suit, explaining that his department has a policy of refraining from publicly discussing active litigation. For the city’s part, Mayor Catherine Pugh attempted to alleviate the conflict back in April by establishing 10 designated food truck zones that all uphold the 300-foot rule.

The list of new zones targets many of the city’s hospital and college campuses, but excludes other high foot traffic areas like Federal Hill, Fells Point, and Harbor East—neighborhoods which Vanoni says would significantly benefit his business to operate in.

“The new vending zones created by the mayor are entirely insufficient,” Reed says. “They are not nearly enough to accommodate Baltimore’s growing mobile vending industry. And they are rarely, if ever, located in places that would allow mobile vendors to actually reach their customers where their customers want to be reached.”

Reed says that he is confident that IJ will be able to vindicate the rights of Vanoni and McGowan, along with other entrepreneurs facing these restrictions across the state.

“There’s nothing less than the American dream at stake,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s the people of Baltimore that should be choosing from whom they shop, not the city.”