When the SoKY Marketplace reopens in April after its winter break, its administrators hope to begin bringing a mobile kitchen to the farmers market to host demonstrations on cooking with locally available produce.

Jennifer Schmidt, a grant writer for Warren County, said a $101,840 grant from the Department of Agriculture has made the mobile kitchen possible.

The mobile kitchen will be part of the Marketplace’s Growing Opportunities for Regional Producers and Consumers initiative, she said.

“It’s an initiative of the marketplace to grow programs that will allow more producers to be vendors and make more consumers aware of the marketplace,” she said.

The kitchen’s equipment will include a grill, a refrigerator, a 3-compartment sink and a stove, but not an oven, Schmidt said. “It’ll be in pieces and taken somewhere and put together,” she said.

The kitchen will be used to demonstrate how to cook certain products available at the farmers market and allow viewers to taste the results, Schmidt said.

Lynn O’Keefe, chair of SoKY Marketplace’s board of directors, said the demonstrations are supposed to “take the mystery out of” locally available produce that people might not be familiar with.

“It’s all about educating people as to what we have,” she said.

Though the necessary arrangements haven’t been made yet, O’Keefe said she hopes the mobile kitchen can be stored in the former Taylor Chapel AME Church, where Warren County Fiscal Court has been working to install a commercial kitchen.

“The idea behind the mobile kitchen is that we can move it out to the farmers market every time we want to give a demonstration,” she said.

At this point, how often the kitchen would be used and who would provide the demonstrations are both unclear, but O’Keefe hopes it could be part of a demonstration every weekend.

Local organizations would be welcome to perform the demonstrations, she said.

“Since we’re a public market, pretty much everyone has an equal shot,” she said.

The decision to bring in a mobile kitchen was based partly on a study conducted by an advanced marketing and PR class at Western Kentucky University that found that people would enjoy a sampling component at the marketplace, Schultz said, adding that other studies she’s looked at suggest demonstrations have been beneficial for other farmers markets across the country.

“Lots of studies have found that doing demonstrations like this helps increase sales,” said.

The grant, which will be given out in pieces over the next three years, will also be used to fund SoKY Marketplace’s advertising efforts and the construction of eight picnic tables at the market, four of which will be designed for children and four for adults.

Alan Bush, market manager at SoKY Marketplace, said he expects the demonstrations to be well-received, adding that people are often interested in unfamiliar items the vendors have and frequently ask about how to prepare them.

“We’ve found that people are interested in that,” he said. “We think it’ll be a great asset to the community as an education tool.”

— Follow Daily News reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.