High school students and college seniors aren’t the only ones graduating in May.

The Berry Nutty Farm, a company that makes fruit butters and jams, plans to “graduate” from the Ennovation Center and into its own facility in Independence that same month.

The move is an important milestone for Andrea Schnetzler and Darrell Tindal, who base their line of jams and butters on their grandmothers’ recipes. The company officially debuted almost two years ago and will soon introduce its 10th new product.

“We’ve gotten to the point where, if we want to keep expanding, we need a larger facility,” Schnetzler said.

The Ennovation Center has been a major help, they said. Creating the jams and butters requires a commercial kitchen—something that most young companies simply can’t afford to build.

“In today’s economy,” Tindal said, “it would be pretty hard to get a loan to get that amount of capital without a proof of concept.”

The young company is winning notice for its work: The Berry Nutty Farm won the Independence Manufacturer of the Year Award for 2013 and the 2012 Independence Economic Development Council iNpact Award.

More than 20 food startups use the Ennovation Center’s 8,000-square-foot kitchen incubator, which has five kitchens, high-capacity convection ovens and other specialized equipment.

The Berry Nutty Farm will be the center’s fourth graduate in a little over three years, said Stephanie Zamora, director of entrepreneurship and small business at the Ennovation Center.