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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.
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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 SUNDAYS
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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