BRIDGETON, N.J.

WHEN Innocenzo and Michele Visceglia stopped making their pasta sauce at the Rutgers Food Innovation Center here in late August, it was the end of an era — but not the kind of era would-be food entrepreneurs might feel reluctant to bid adieu. Every Wednesday since early this year, when the Visceglias first began using the compoundlike center’s equipment and space, they rose at dawn and traveled 45 minutes to get here from their home in Williamstown, near Glassboro. By 7:30 a.m., they were suited up in the center’s regulation white smocks, rubber boots and hairnets. Around 3:30 or 4 p.m., they emerged, exhausted and splattered in the day’s yield of 600 quarts of tomato sauce.

Still, Ms. Visceglia said, when it came time to tell the Food Innovation Center staff they had found a commercial kitchen space of their own, complete with a storefront, in Williamstown, she had mixed feelings.

“I felt bad, I really did, telling them we were moving out,” she said. “They helped us a lot. But I know they expected us to go eventually.” Now that the Visceglias are able to make sauce without relying on someone to open the doors for them in the morning, she said, ”they’re happy for us.”

If the couple’s pasta sauce — labeled Visceglia’s and sold in around 250 stores, including some ShopRites — one day becomes as well known as Ragú, the Food Innovation Center team can claim some of the credit.