Justin Smith - Catalyst Kitchens

The Northeast Regional Summit at UTEC, Inc.

We were surrounded by “madd love” at the last Catalyst Kitchens Regional Summit. Our first regional convening of this kind in the Northeast, the Summit brought together 15 organizations from 5 states for two days of conversation and connection at UTEC in Lowell, MA. A Model Member of our network, UTEC considers “madd love” an organizational core value and demonstrates this through their culture of unconditional acceptance along with the branding of their Madd Love Market for their social enterprise’s retail sales.

“UTEC is a family,” says David Crump, the Youthworker in Residence there. The sentiment was apparent from the moment we stepped foot in the building. UTEC’s mission is to ignite and nurture the ambition of disconnected young people to trade violence and poverty for social and economic success. In 2018, UTEC served 148 young adults in their intensive enrollment program, including their Food Services social enterprise, and reached nearly 600 in total through their Streetworker outreach and engagement.

Like anyone flying into Boston in early February, the Catalyst Kitchens team had braced ourselves for the chill. What we found instead was a warm welcome from our Northeast members and other community-based organizations operating foodservice job training programs around the region. Our Summits are intended to gather like-minded organizations together to discuss topics vital to our work, including student recruitment, program retention, and engaging employers to build career pathways for graduates. Like UTEC, many of the organizations at our Regional Summit provide services for disconnected young people, or “opportunity youth”.

“Our young people know that we understand what they’re going through,” says David Crump, UTEC Inc.’s Youthworker in Residence.

A few key takeaways emerged from our conversation, including:

The importance of providing wrap-around services to support students during their job training.

There was consensus among Northeast Summit attendees that integrated services such as transportation assistance and housing are key to their programs’ success. Assistance with these practical supports helps students to focus their full energy on their learning and growth in a culinary environment. There was a clear agreement on the need to offer better trauma-informed care and childcare.

Establishing an inclusive and community-driven culture.

It became clear that a strong program culture is a key ingredient for success as organizations shared their strategies and best practices around student retention. UTEC, for one, builds their culture through proactive community engagement on the streets. David Crump explained how the UTEC Streetworker initiative engages young people in and out of the program space by showing up for important life events, ranging from court cases to funerals. Many members of the Streetworker team have life experiences that are similar to those of the young adults at UTEC. Other programs at the Summit also echoed the importance of hiring staff members that represent the community they serve. “They see people like them on our team, who’ve come up through a similar background, and it’s relatable,” says Crump.

We believe that the power community can create real change and are thrilled we could spend a few days getting to know Northeast program’s strengths and struggles. Next stop…Houston, Texas!

The Catalyst Kitchens team is looking forward to hosting more Regional Summits across the country this year. Click here to learn more about where we’re headed.

To join in more conversations centered around training programs for opportunity youth, attend our upcoming Youth and Young Adult Workshop in New Orleans, LA.

Learn more about youth-driven training program design at Catalyst Kitchens programs including Appetite for Change and FareStart.

It goes without saying that financial sustainability is critical to the success of social enterprise job training programs. Since our model is a complex hybrid between private enterprise and public nonprofit funding, it is important to know where one ends and the other begins. What steps can you take to ensure your food service business and job training program are sustainable and thriving?

Catalyst Kitchens has created a content series on financial sustainability to address this fundamental issue in 2019. This will include blogs, interviews with leaders in our field, and self-paced learning through video tutorials and easy-to-use financial templates.

To kick off our 2019 financial sustainability content series, here’s a look at four top financial sustainability strategies that we hope can inform your team’s strategy.

1. Community collaboration is fundamental.

Each community is unique, and one size does not fit all. Listen to your community and together you will find the right solution. Our programs are only as strong as their community support, so make sure that your program is providing a necessary service and is serving populations who need the support. This principle holds true on the social enterprise side as well: is there a market opportunity for a new café in an up-and-coming area, or is your local hospital looking for a dependable food service provider? It is best to put the time into researching the current food industry landscape before determining the right business for your program.

2. Seek consistency in revenue streams and production lines.

Over 98% of Catalyst Kitchens member organizations entered the social enterprise space with some type of contract meal as their anchor business (for example, contracted meals for seniors, shelters, or childcare). This is because these are often annual contracts with a predictable volume of production. This type of business allows for scale and provides a consistent environment for training.

3. Diversify revenue streams.

Never allow your business to rely too heavily on a single contract or client. None of our member organization cover all the costs associated with their training program through profits from their businesses. Instead members work toward generating a modest profit from their business that can offset a small portion of the cost of training. Often food service business managed by nonprofits can break even or run at a loss, at least in the first 18-24 months. Organizations plan to cover these losses through fundraising until the business is self-sustaining. Diversity of business and funding sources is key to make your program more sustainable.

4. Manage expectations.

Do this constantly with your team, board members, and supporters – especially when launching a new program. Bring your board and leadership along for the journey. Onboard new board members and leadership about your program and why it is so critical to the organization and the community. Align your program goals with the strategic goals of the organization if your organization’s objective is poverty reduction or hunger relief.

Financial sustainability is the cornerstone of Catalyst Kitchens programming – stay tuned as we deep dive into this topic with our member programs!

A Letter from the Director, Renee Martin

As we begin this year, I want to share a bit about what we learned in 2018 and provide you with an overview of what we have planned for the year ahead.

1. Investing in people

For the first-time in 2018, Catalyst Kitchens offered two sessions of training for front line staff via our Train-the-Trainer program at FareStart in Seattle. Over 20 individuals left feeling inspired, motivated, and aligned in their training approach. Their motivation has inspired our team to identify new and dynamic ways to support staff at all levels of member organizations.

In 2019, Catalyst Kitchens will increase our commitment to front line staff by offering these workshops more regularly with three sessions scheduled throughout the year. We have also committed to making Train-the-Trainer more accessible by bringing them closer to you and your teams by hosting a few of these sessions at Model Member locations throughout the country.

2. Learning from leadership

You may have been exposed to the caliber of leadership and expertise we have within our network by attending our biennial national summit last September in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. To ensure ongoing connection between these thought leaders and to establish feedback mechanisms for the network, Catalyst Kitchens formed a Member Advisory Council (MAC) in 2018 comprised of leaders from our Model Member organizations.

In 2019, the MAC will participate in two key initiatives to support professional development and sustainability within the network. The MAC members have volunteered to serve as mentors to member staff protégés in Catalyst Kitchens’ first pilot of a network wide mentorship program. In addition, the MAC will participate in Peer Standards Reviews for Model Membership, in which we will pair leaders from Model Member organizations to conduct standards assessments and provide feedback to enhance the efficacy of their programs.

For those organizations that are not quite ready for model membership, we are developing a Peer Exchange Toolkit to encourage member staff to visit fellow Catalyst Kitchens programs across the country.

3. Getting together more

In 2018, we hosted three Regional Summits to create networking and learning opportunities closer to home for staff that may have been unable to participate in our larger National Summit. By popular demand we are committing to hosting five Regional Summits this year. Beyond our member-wide summits, we want to place an intentional focus on our youth programs in 2019: Catalyst Kitchens will be hosting its first Youth & Young Adult Training Workshop for front-line staff and management that work with or oversee programs for young people.

Check our new public events calendar for upcoming dates and locations.

4. Increasing the sustainability of your programs

Catalyst Kitchens members regularly express interest in ensuring the sustainability and efficacy of their existing programs. Not all members are using Catalyst Kitchens curriculum and might benefit from the best practices and recommendations of our consulting team. Therefore, we have raised funds to give members access to our support at a dramatically reduced cost. Our Member’s Request for Proposal (must have member login to view) to access Catalyst Consulting services is available now with applications due very soon. If you miss this first round, look out for the second-round RFP later this year.

5. Diving deep into key areas of interest

Finally, based on the feedback we have received over the past year we will be taking a deeper dive into three key content areas this year.

Financial Sustainability:

Our programs cannot survive without sound business and fundraising practices. We will cover many topics pertaining to sustainability including appropriate funding models for nonprofit social enterprises, fundraising best practices, and more.

Program Efficacy:

We will tap into the knowledge of our Catalyst Consulting team who have helped their clients increase their retention and graduation rates through proven programmatic techniques.

Career Pathways:

We all have a shared goal of preparing students for sustainable jobs that will serve as the beginning of a successful career rather than a short-term solution. We will explore advanced training programs that aim to provide the “next steps” of training for students aiming for supervisory positions or highly skills culinary roles.

To help us fully explore each of these topics, we will offer serial online content to help users build knowledge over multiple sessions. Look out for our first webinar series in March 2019 around Fundraising for Non-Profit Financial Sustainability.

For me, the word “tableau” used to provoke the French definition: a painting or canvas. Aficionados of art history may even associate the word with a style known as “tableau vivant”, or “living picture“. As you may have guessed, the word now holds new meaning for me- although in many ways the definition still rings true.

About one year ago, our team at Catalyst Kitchens began using Tableau software to better analyze and visualize the columns and rows of data collected from our membership network. If you’re not familiar with Tableau, their products are designed to help people better see and understand their data in order to “discover opportunities, answer questions you didn’t know you had, and share data stories”. It’s like Microsoft Excel’s stylish bilingual cousin.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo6W-oBO9XM&w=560&h=315]

It’s no secret that the nonprofit sector has historically underutilized the power of data. A 2016 study from the Nonprofit Hub found that 60% of non-profit organizations surveyed were not using data consistently to make decisions. However, the study found that 97% reported an interest in learning how to use data more efficiently.

We’ve been collecting outcomes data around our food service job training programs at Catalyst Kitchens for years. This enabled us to report annually on our collective impact- such as the cumulative number of people trained through our programs or the number of meals served to individuals in need. We are now able to bring this to the next level through our work with Tableau, and more specifically through the generous support of the Tableau Foundation.

The Nonprofit Hub found that 60% of non-profit organizations surveyed were not using data consistently to make decisions.

Next week we’ll share outcomes bench-marking reports with all of our member organizations. For the first time, the non-profits in our network will have a basis of quantitative comparison against other training programs and a better understanding of which programs are most similar to them. Members will have the ability to filter data sets for metrics such as number of trainees graduated and target population served to ensure that the data insights are as relevant as possible.

Snapshot of a Catalyst Kitchens bench marking report.

These reports will serve to provide industry standards that help define success and target opportunities for improvement. We see this kind of analysis as a shining example of why the Catalyst Kitchens network exists and simultaneously feel we’ve just scratched the surface of what lies ahead. Thank you, Tableau Foundation, for supporting data science in the social impact space!

Citations:

The Catalyst Kitchens team has qualified Community Kitchen Pittsburgh as a Model Member in the CK Network! This comes after a close review of program outcomes, a tour of all their facilities, and several hours of staff and student interviews.We are excited to welcome their organization into this collection of leaders and innovators that are combating hunger, joblessness, and poverty in communities across North America.

Community Kitchen Pittsburgh’s Adult Training Program

Community Kitchen Pittsburgh (CKP) operates a twelve-week adult training program and provides transitional job opportunities embedded in their school meals and catering enterprises. CKP launched in July 2013 with strong support from the local funding community and is growing every day. CKP also provides advanced training through apprenticeships in the kitchens of their local employer partners to provide program graduates additional training opportunities.

They have trained 270 adults to move into a range of positions in both high volume and restaurant kitchens, have placed 92% of graduates into employment, and have seen 85% job retention among placed graduates 1 year after graduation. Their work has a major impact on their community in Pittsburgh and has qualified their program to progress to Model Membership status in the Catalyst Kitchens network.

What does Model Membership mean?

Catalyst Kitchens is based on the principal that foodservice job training social enterprises can do more together than they can alone. One of the key ingredients to meaningful collective impact work like ours is a commitment towards shared measures of success. The Collective Impact Forum, a leader in guiding non-profit collective impact, says this means “agreeing to track progress in the same way, which allows for continuous improvement.”

A close look at any two job training programs will likely show that they track certain measures of success slightly differently. At Catalyst Kitchens, we work to define clear measures within our membership network through an annual outcomes collection process. Member organizations report on the same measures each year, allowing for comparisons over time and meaningful bench-marking between similar organizations.

Outcomes measurement serves to qualify high performing organizations for Catalyst Kitchens Model Member status. As recognized leaders in their field, Model Members embody and balance all three core tenets of the Catalyst Kitchens model.

On a kitchen tour with Lead Chef Trainer Darryl Coasten

To become a Model Member, organizations undergo a thorough assessment of quantitative performance outcomes and qualitative program components during a Standards Review and site visit from the Catalyst Kitchens team.

For a full list of Catalyst Kitchens Model Members, check out our Member Map page.

How to avoid ever hearing someone say: “I’ll have the lamb consommé” and other tips for training kitchens.

The menus created by Catalyst Kitchens member organizations play an essential role in guiding student development. At the same time, these training kitchens are also forced to reconcile the value of culinary education with the costs of programming. The situation is unique, and many of the resources available to guide chefs through menu development were not designed with training in mind. It made us think…what unique factors should training kitchens consider when developing their menus?

We developed the following list based on conversations and resources from Executive Chef Wayne Johnson of FareStart.

Fit with trainee labor

Questions to ask yourself – Is your menu meeting all the competencies for students? What things can the students do and not do?
Design with the default being that the staff will handle anything the students are not ready for.
You have to leave some aspirational room for the students to grow into. Don’t assume they won’t ever be able to do it just because they can’t do it right now.
Students will make a greater frequency of mistakes, mitigate those mistakes by making them low cost and low stake.
- There are many butchery tasks that do not make sense for a trainee kitchen. Cutting your own steaks comes with too high of a mistake cost.
- A mistake on a sauce or dressing from scratch is much lower stakes and gives more seasoning experience.
- You can also build in ways to use up wasted food that would otherwise be lost – chicken meatballs from scrapped chicken portions, smoked salmon from extra pieces leftover from portioning
Baking in-house is always a risk due to loss of consistency from trainee to trainee. For example: avoid rich dough and projects with potential to waste butter.

Fit with program schedules

Build in room for your students to be creative and see innovative techniques. Your paid staff will be more motivated by a menu they have stake in and are motivated to teach.
With more hands to do the work, you can build everything from scratch. Highlight that for your customers and you can build a base of customers whose desires fit with your menu design.
Have a good, structured cleaning program, and build that into the work. Lots of learning that can be done within that work which shouldn’t be lost on the students by making it just busy work or an afterthought.

Size and complexity

Your menu just needs to be big enough that you have work to do every day, without too much to worry about.
A good start for a cafe or restaurant is 6 or 7 appetizers, 6 or 7 sandwiches, 3 to 4 plated entrees, and a couple of desserts. Not crazy big, but you probably won’t run out of things to do with trainees.
Build in broadness to cover culinary skills, cuisines, approaches, etc. New skills can come through specials you run week to week or month to month as well.
Anything your menu doesn’t cover can also be taught through conversation and in the classroom

Fit with community

One of the biggest concerns is that you need to have the customers coming in. You need the menu to be competitive within the community. You can’t rely on community support for your mission to keep customers flowing.
Do not be afraid to start your own trends and highlight your unique business and trainees through innovative menus.
At the core of your menu, stay in your wheelhouse and make sure you’re making the best culinary food and art that you can. Have a reason for your dishes, do not just chase trends.
When designing dishes, think with the food chain in mind. Any animal consuming something in the food chain carries those flavors, so use vegetables and plants that your animals consume.

Outside Resources

Check out Chef Wayne’s favorite “How-to” from TouchBistro.

I used to spend a lot of time on the phone with prisoners. “Tell me about yourself. Why are you interested in this job training program? When was the last time you were employed?” Interviewing and enrolling men and women leaving prison was a significant aspect of my role as Intake and Outreach Coordinator for FareStart, a culinary job training program based in Seattle, WA.

FareStart’s relationship with the Washington State Department of Corrections was in the early stages of development when I joined the Student Services team in the fall of 2014. I do not remember how many prospective trainees I interviewed over the phone or in person at the prisons, but I do remember the impression they all left on me. I encountered a demographic looking for a first or second chance at a career and eager to engage in a program they knew would help them. To know I was the gatekeeper of this opportunity was an immense pressure. Would this job training program help them on their career path? Could they complete this program? These were some of the questions I had figure out in a brief, 30-minute phone call or in-person interview. As FareStart’s relationship with Washington State DOC developed further, we discovered those entering our program directly from prison, a process known as re-entry, had a higher retention rate than trainees enrolling from weekly orientations. Not only did they stick with the program, but they were the most determined demographic to find a job upon graduation. Even though FareStart is not technically a re-entry program, the program still benefits those in re-entry.

My interaction with this population fueled my desire to learn about the criminal justice system, attend conferences, and further my understanding of the re-entry process. As I transitioned to my role as a Program Development Manager with Catalyst Kitchens, I was pleased to learn that one of our primary target demographics across the network is re-entry. As a consultant I am able to share knowledge not only around starting a foodservice job training program, but also best practices for working with one of the largest growing target populations for job training programs in North America.

While researching re-entry conferences, I discovered the International Community Corrections Association 25^th year conference would take place in Seattle. The conference focus was “Doing What Matters: Integrating Public Health and Criminal Justice Reform” with topics on drug treatment, mental health, trauma, homelessness, and employment. While all the topics were important for re-entry, my specific lens was on employment.

The keynote speaker, Dr. Nancy G. La Vigne from the Urban Institute, opened up day 3 of the conference with a talk focusing on “Why a Job is Not Enough: Addressing Employment Needs of People with Criminal Records Holistically.” She explained that her work as a researcher had caused her to take a different approach to this topic. Her research centered on this question: “do re-entry programs work to reduce recidivism?” According to Dr. La Vigne, the answer is “It depends.” This was not the answer I had been looking for, but I became intrigued.

Dr. La Vigne proceeded to state the numbers: six million people are under correctional control at any given time in the US, with 11 million cycling in and out jail every year. While most will ultimately re-enter society, two-third of those who have been incarcerated will return to jail or prison every year. Why does this happen? Reasons include missed appointments with corrections officers, new crimes committed, citizens returning to communities with no re-entry support, to name a few. Through her research, Dr. La Vigne endeavors to understand not simply why people recidivate, but the efficacy of re-entry programs.

We know that a common approach to re-entry focuses on timing; starting a program while the person is still in prison or soon after their release. Dr. La Vinge’s findings show that timing alone is not enough. Her research has shown the reduction in recidivism through these programs can be quite low. The programs that proved to reduce recidivism by a significant rate were holistic programs that provide not only on job training, but also life skills training and wrap-around services.

More specifically, Dr. La Vigne defines “holistic” as involving three important aspects: attention to risks the person in re-entry is facing, integrating the person back into their community, and the provision gender specific programming (acknowledging that men and women respond to programs differently). With the understanding that holistic programs play a substantial role in reducing recidivism, I went into the rest of the conference curious to learn more about the specific wrap-around services and other holistic program components shown to reduce recidivism.

Housing, of course, is an integral part of the holistic approach. There are many factors that contribute to homelessness, yet if someone has a prison record they are four to six times more likely to end up homeless. The afternoon speaker, Dr. Faith Lutze, spoke on the topic of “Reducing Recidivism and Homelessness.” Dr. Lutze studied homelessness specifically in Washington, but has also based her findings off of other studies. Her research found that providing stable housing for those in re-entry significantly reduces recidivism. In Minnesota, Dr. Lutze reported on findings that the highest rate of re-arrest was found in those who are released to emergency shelters, but the lowest re-arrest was for those who are released to work release or treatment centers that provide stable housing. While shelters do provide a place to sleep for a person in re-entry, the instability of shelters can create an instable person.

Next to childcare, providing housing can be one of the greatest challenges for programs regardless of whether the focus is re-entry or job training. Dr. Lutze detailed the importance of having a home by sharing that stable residency provides the following supports:

A social and psychological refuge from external threats
Consistency and control of day-to-day routines
A place to build social networks and an identity of personal worth
A foundational “launch pad” for employment, treatment engagement, community network, etc.
Supervision compliance

Taking this into consideration, it is no wonder why many cities throughout America are starting to promote a “housing first” model when addressing homelessness. Knowing those who have a criminal record have a greater chance of recidivating due to lack of housing, providing stable housing for those in re-entry becomes vital for any re-entry or job training program.

As a Program Development Manager with Catalyst Kitchens, my role is to help organizations design and launch foodservice social enterprise job training programs. My colleagues and I always conveyed the importance of integrated wrap-around support services to help trainees during their time in the program. It should come as no surprise then, that housing, childcare, job readiness, life skills classes, and case management are the very same services recommended for holistic programming serving returning citizens. All foodservice job training programs may not be re-entry programs, but they have the possibility of serving those in re-entry. By taking a more holistic approach, programs become stronger for the populations they current serve and better positioned to serve those returning from prison.

From Pennsylvania to Arizona to Maryland, our Catalyst Consulting team has been quite busy this February!

Our first stop was to Lansdale, PA to visit Rising Member Manna on Main Street’s Common Grounds Training Program. The program, launched in December, helps trainees gain a blend of culinary experience along with front of the house experience in their Common Grounds Café. The Catalyst Consulting team is excited to see this program in action and provide feedback on how to scale their program for future endeavors.

After our visit to Manna on Main Street, we jetted west to sunny Phoenix, AZ to facilitate a train-the-trainer workshop for the Starbucks’ Customer Service Excellence Training program. Our national partnership with Starbucks has brought the consulting team to various cities across the country to collaborate with local partners focused on building programming around serving opportunity youth. While in Phoenix, we also connected with a local organization serving youth, Arizona Call-A-Teen Youth Resources. And of course, we wouldn’t have left Phoenix without a visit to Model Member UMOM New Days Center!

We closed out February in Charm City, aka Baltimore, MD! Rising Member Paul’s Place is working through the feasibility stages of launching a restaurant for training opportunity youth in the Pigtown area of the city. The Catalyst Consulting team had the opportunity to meet with local stakeholders and create community alignment on a new job training program. We also enjoyed meeting with other foodservice social enterprise throughout Baltimore at St. Vincent de Paul’s Kidz Place to discuss the ecosystem of foodservice job training as a way to reduce poverty.

Overall, February brought great service opportunities for Catalyst Consulting. We are eager to continue building strong and sustainable businesses and programs with our members and partners.

Curious about the Catalyst Consulting team? Visit our team page!

“Madd Love” Found in Massachusetts