Café Opens, With A Cause

Coffee shops come and go but rare is the one whose staff is composed almost entirely of young adults with disabilities, has an inclusionary nonprofit mission, and a mezuzah affixed to the entryway.

No wonder 75 people came out Monday morning to indulge in mochas and macchiatos and cupcakes and to celebrate the grand opening of Café J at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Greater New Haven on Amity Road in Woodbridge.

For a half dozen years the Chapel Haven Schleifer Center, a vocational and training school for people with disabilities in nearby Westville, has placed some of their young adults in job-and-life skills-training internships at the JCC.

However turning over the café operation exclusively to that purpose – to enable young people like Erin Martel and Maia Keillor to learn to operate the café’s challenging (for anyone!) espresso machine, to distinguish their mochas from their lattes and cortados, and how to negotiate the financial transactions at the register and the life skills that go along with all that – is a unique first.

And not only for Greater New Haven’s JCC but among all the 170 JCCs across the U.S. and Canada.

That was the appreciative view of Doron Krakow, the president and CEO of the JCC Association of North America, one of the several speakers at the festive event.

“There are partnerships with organizations coming together [with other JCCs to advance inclusion], but this one, two extraordinary institutions joining hands, is unique in quality and scope,” Krakow said after Monday’s ribbon cutting. ​“It helps us understand our broader purpose for the entire community, providing not only for those who show up but to reach out to others. This is emblematic of our highest aspirations.”

And it showed in front of the sunlit café in the heart of the JCC’s main building as the Chapel Haven interns, who had been training hours a day for a week with café manager Jeremiah Redmond, were dispensing coffees and smoothies, side by side with several of their volunteer mentors from Amity High School.

“Every day,” said Chapel Haven President Michael Storz, ​“adults in our residential programs come here to swim, play basketball, enjoy the climbing wall, and work out.”

And now with the café reimagined as a non-profit program to advance inclusion and career training for many more, ​“we are so entwined,” Storz concluded, ​“we have taken to calling the JCC our ​‘North Campus.’”

There has long been a café at the JCC, said JCC President Scott Cohen, but in general it was tough for the outside vendors to make a go of it.

Subsequent to the serious fire in 2016, when facilities were being rebuilt, Cohen said he and the staff and board thought long and hard about accessibility, ​“but not only of the physical kind.”

With Chapel Haven so close, and with an already substantial history of Chapel Haven interns working in the marketing and fitness departments of the JCC, for example, re-conceptualizing the café not as a for-profit asset but an inclusionary program that could offer even more opportunities felt not only natural and right, but a ​“responsibility,” Cohen said.

And the need could not be more pressing for meaningful learning opportunities, with supportive training and what’s called ​“job shadowing,” of the kind unfolding at the shiny new café.

Studies show, said Storz, that only one in four adults with disabilities had a job last year. ​“Just slotting people into a job doesn’t work. Success is matching our adults with mentors and meaningful jobs.”

Because Chapel Haven matches up their clients to work that is doable and suitable for their interests, ​“80 percent of our adults have been placed into competitive employment, compared to an 18 percent national average. Even better, 91 percent of our adults are staying on the job beyond that critical 90-day mark,” Storz said.

Interviewed before the event, while preparations were ongoing, Erin Martel said that she was really enjoying making coffee and in particular adding chocolate to the mochas.

Social worker Rachel Scolnic, who is behind coordinating the JCC initiative with the Jewish Family Service, Chapel Haven, and The Towers (which provides the food and baked goods), said the need for programs like this couldn’t be greater. 

She estimated a six-to-eight-year wait for families to place their young people in programs like Chapel Haven’s, exemplified now by Café J.

“You are a role model,” said Doron Krakow, ​“for the over 170 JCCs. We revel in the magic of this community.”

“Hopefully, it spreads,” added Scott Cohen.