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All the Cafe meals are planned,
shopped for, prepared and served by members and staff of the Cafe team.
We are increasing our knowledge of nutrition (some members develop diabetes
as a medication side-effect) and our daily goal is a well-balanced,
healthy, and tasty meal. Here is an example of our progress. We once
supplied snack foods free and charged money for fruits. Now we offer
fruit for free and charge for snack foods. The fruit consumption at
Yahara House has quadrupled. We believe this better models the valuing
of wellness and it has influenced change: snack food consumption has
gone way down.
Each week one person is responsible
for putting together our the weekly menu, with input from the team.
When the meals for the weekday lunch are decided, the menu is sent to
the Communications and Employment Department, which types it and posts
it around the clubhouse. Recipes are stored in hardcopy or in
Mangia, our food software program, or we find new recipes in cookbooks
or from the store of knowledge of members and staff.
On Fridays, the primary week’s shopping list is completed by a
team member. This involves checking the menu for the coming week as
well as the inventory of staples. Another member rechecks the list on
Monday morning. On Monday afternoon, three members do all the grocery
shopping. Crews obtain additional food supplies on trips to the food
bank or to Sam’s, two or three times a month. Keeping our food
stock well-supplied is a project that involves many members of Yahara
House.
Cafe is one of our more popular House jobs. We have a
policy of not starting too many new members at a given time. In this
way lots of attention can be given to making a new person feel welcome
and both members and staff have time to help them learn their jobs,
providing advocacy for individual needs whenever possible. There are
opportunities for both team work and relatively independent work within
the department routine. More experienced members act as mentors for
newer members and can develop their team leadership skills as well as
develop skills pertaining to longer term planning, weekly menu preparation,
grocery buying, and meal preparation, service, and cleanup. One of our
members also takes charge of laundering kitchen linens.
“Our
hardworking members and staff strive to make Cafe Yahara a good place
to eat.” Mark
Benson.
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The
Cafe kitchen is also used for meal or healthy snack preparation
for other clubhouse functions: work support meeting and house meeting
are weekly examples. Lunch is served during the noon and Yahara House
is open on weekends where creative uses of leftovers are served. Holiday
feasts are prepared for Thanksgiving, etc. Some of these larger, more
public displays of our culinary arts provide an addition to the day-to-day
positive comments and thank-yous in building member pride and sense of
self-worth for their part in cafe accomplishments.
Each weekday, the cafe team for the morning and the morning staff facilitator
meet at 9 a.m. The beginning of the day is relaxed: members check-in over
coffee and talk about what is for lunch. People choose what they want
to do for the food preparation and get to work. --Occasionally a last
minute shopping is needed for a missing ingredient.
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Lunch
is served from 12:00 to 12:45. Both the morning and the afternoon
(12:00 to 2:00) team workers eat early, at 11:30. For the food
service and cleanup,
The
following jobs are covered by members and staff working side by
side:
The HOST welcomes
people as they come in and gives them a ticket to write out their
order along with maintaining the flow of customers in the cafe.
The TICKET READER sees that the servers know what to supply
to the expediter.
The EXPEDITER sees that a given tray has the food items
requested on the ticket and distributes the tray to the appropriate
person.
The SERVERS (3) dish out food and beverages.
The WAIT STAFF (2) takes food orders.
The CASHIER adds up the money owed and collects the money
or meal ticket.
There are two DISHWASHERS working in the first mealtime
shift (12:00--12:30) and the second (12:45--1:30).
Final cleanup jobs involve
a TABLE CLEARER, SWEEPER, and MOPPER.
Members of the crew also put away leftovers with dated labels
and wipe down the food preparation areas in the kitchen.
Many members gain a sense of ownership and accomplishment for
the job they are learning to do better and better.
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“I
like to work in the cafe because I like to work with food; and it relieves
tension; and I like to work with other people.”
Mark Benson
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