Chicago's Fulton Market area will soon be home to a collaborative innovation hub for food and beverage companies and restaurant operators.

Steve McCarroll, founder of Menu Collective, a consulting firm that helps clients including Starbucks create food and beverage menus, has come up with a co-working concept that could have tenants eating out of the palm of his hand. 

McCarroll recently purchased a 20K SF industrial building in the Fulton Market neighborhood for $4.2M, and now plans to turn it into a space to help restaurateurs develop new products and concepts. It will include a large kitchen and lab space for its members to use, Crain’s Chicago Business reports.

The entrepreneur came up with the idea when he realized his clients were consistently asking for the same thing — open working space.

The neighborhood has been touted as a desirable location for technology companies since Google opened its Midwest office there and has seen a serious increase in development activity in recent years as developers have increasingly competed to acquire land in the area, which was formerly known as a meatpacking and restaurant hot spot.