Walter Pryor, 56, of Cleveland, came to the program
aſter spending six days in jail for failure to provide child support. His age already worked against him in finding a job, and now he had a felony record. Although he has restaurant experience, he learned a lot in the program. “All you’ve got to do is apply yourself and be here
every day and learn,” he said. “Use the tools that they give you and apply it. ... If it weren’t for this program, I’d probably be in the gutter somewhere.” He is now lead cook for the LMM building’s café, where he also is involved in ordering and purchasing.
Well-rounded training Students spend three months in the classroom to learn the basics of cooking and kitchen safety. For example, they’ll learn about different parts of the knife and sharp- ening, then practice cutting techniques for potatoes, meat and other food. Nothing goes to waste—those potatoes will be mashed and used in shelter meals. Next they will have two months of on-the-job train-
ing in Central Kitchen, helping prepare the 1,700 meals made every day of the year. “We assign several different roles that they rotate
through, ranging from kind of a steward where they’re doing dishes and cleaning, all the way up to a sous chef role where they’re like No. 2 in the kitchen. It gives them some management experience,” Mauk said. Two trucks deliver hot meals for breakfast, lunch and
dinner to shelters for men, women and youth, a transi- tional housing site and a couple of other meal sites. In addition to the café, spin-off businesses operated
through the kitchen include a food truck and catering. Tat helps round out the students’ culinary experience, and some graduates, like Pryor, are hired to work in those businesses. “It’s one thing to make 500 meat loaves at a time,”
Mauk said. “It’s a little bit different ... in a café where you’ve got people ordering a variety of things, you’re cooking each burger to order and things like that.” Te program has an employment specialist who
works with students on job skills and readiness. Ulti- mately the specialist connects graduates with job leads through LMM’s network or people who contact the agency looking for people to hire. Te graduation rate is about 60 percent. Of those
who have graduated, about 80 percent have found jobs, and the retention rate is about 70 percent over the course of a year. Graduates find jobs, ranging from dishwashers to sous chefs, but most find line and prep cook positions,
which are mid-range in a kitchen, Mauk said. Wages range from $12 to $14 an hour. Te two chefs on staff, a culinary instructor and
Barnes, who runs the food production, both have net- works within the Cleveland culinary scene. So a recom- mendation from them affirming the students’ skills goes a long way toward getting hired, Mauk said. “We’ve been blessed to have a couple of employers
who were willing to give us a shot in the beginning,” he added. “And once they see our guys and gals and the skills they have, we’ve seen a lot of employers come back and look for more. “A lot of the employers who hire from our gradu-
ates are owners of independent restaurants, so they’re individuals who are willing to give somebody a second chance. Some of the larger corporations have rules that can be additional barriers for our folks.” Mauk hears positive feedback from employers:
“We’ve found that a lot of folks maybe start in lower jobs, but they advance quickly once the employers see the skills that they have, see their work ethic and see their willingness to go the extra mile.” One graduate was hired at the beginning of base-
ball season to work at Progressive Field in the Terrace Club, a higher-end restaurant in the Cleveland Indians’ ballpark. “He’s already been promoted to be a lead cook in
the burger division in the club level, so he oversees the production of like 2,000 burgers every game. And he’s in charge of a couple guys,” Mauk said. “It’s one thing to hire them, but it’s another thing to hire them, keep them and then promote them.” It still can be a challenge to get a job with a crimi-
nal record, even if the offense was committed years ago, said Michael Sering, vice president of Housing & Shelter, an LMM program. “At the homeless shelter, we serve about 4,000 guys per year,” he said, “and two- thirds of them have been previously incarcerated and so employment and housing are huge barriers to their self-sufficiency. “Tat’s part of the reason that we [created] the pro-
gram—to welcome people with those backgrounds, and see the giſts and talents and potential in them, and then give them the skills and confidence to get their own jobs. Tis program really boils down to forgiveness and second chances.”
Author bio: Kranz is a freelance writer from Cincinnati.
July 2014 35
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