“It was clear to us that he had a really great idea to transform the work he had been doing in the Brooklyn Flea, and he needed a way to take that way to the next level,” said Alicia Glen, the managing director of the group.

To offset Mr. Butler’s construction inexperience and to provide capital, Goldman Sachs connected Mr. Butler with BFC Partners, which built the striking Toren apartment building in Downtown Brooklyn.

In 2011, Mr. Markowitz committed $1.5 million to the construction of a kitchen incubator, provided the location was in central Brooklyn. The city’s Economic Development Corporation, which chose Third Ward, a creative center for freelance artists in Bushwick, to run the incubator, is managing the project alongside similar ones in Long Island City, Queens, and East Harlem. Construction is to begin in several weeks.

Jason Goodman, the director of Third Ward, sees a kinship with his group and the Brooklyn Flea brand. “It’s a very authentic and a grass-roots organization, but also well organized and well curated,” Mr. Goodman said. “Those are the two forces that are hard to get right, but they do so well.”

In addition to the ground-floor kitchen and classroom space, the second floor will house office space for the administrative, creative and production needs of emerging food businesses. On the third and fourth floors, Mr. Butler is seeking Dumbo-overflow technology and design tenants, hoping to stimulate a changing neighborhood.

Because the young professionals in Crown Heights will need a place to unwind, Mr. Butler and Mr. Demby, with separate investors, plan to create their Smorgasburg-branded beer hall in the adjacent 9,000-square-foot space, which will also house a kitchen for food vendors they select from the market. From the inside, it will link to the incubator, to become — pardon the expression, says Mr. Butler — “a real foodie hub.”

Will the building and the Whole Foods deal allow the partners to achieve total world domination with crispy pumpkin sage fritters and bacon-infused maple syrup? Hard to tell. But for now, Mr. Butler said, “we very much trust our guts in these things.”