Starting a food-related business (lessons learned and beyond – much more to come)

Several years ago, I got the brilliant idea to start a business in which to employ people with disabilities. Easy, peasy, right? Well now 2-3 years later, we still are looking to start a business. And we will be starting one in January-February 2019. This will be a coffee shop/café in Havertown PA as part of the new Kelly Center for Music, Arts and Community being created by a nonprofit Kelly Music For Life.

It has taken a long time, but the stars aligned several months ago and we had connected with the right people. For the entire story, please read here (not yet finished).

Being friends with the Kellys and their organization for over 8 years helped. They knew me from all the music events in and around Havertown that they ran. They knew me because I set up and managed all of their websites. So, when they started talking about creating this community center, I became involved especially because it was going to have a coffee shop. And I knew that our organization could manage it and help create employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Our part would enhance the value that the center would have, being a place for all.

So, we made a proposal to Kelly and they liked it. We set up a financial agreement and are now working on completing our part of the deal. They are completely funding the entire center, including the coffee shop. We do not need any capital for equipment and such. We are only responsible for staffing and procuring the things we will make and sell at the coffee shop. This is huge because lack of capital stopped the other businesses we wanted to start.

So, we are getting ready setting up the vendors we will work with for coffee, tea, cakes, and drinks (iced tea, lemonade, juice, etc.). We need consumables like cups, plates, napkins, utensils, lids, sleeves, sugar, creamer, etc. We need employees and volunteers to help us 7 days a week from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm. That will be a lot of employees since we envision our kids will only work about 2-3 hours a shift. We will need 3 managers to work the morning, lunch and afternoon shifts.

We will need insurance and workman’s compensation.

We will need operating manuals and human resources manuals. We will need to train our staff.

Starting a food-related business has many more requirements, and pitfalls, than other businesses. This has caused us not be able to start a business when we wanted to. There are code requirements from the county and township and state and federal governments. We need to have a certified food manager on site at all times, passing the ServSafe certification. Both Andrea and Jim are now certified. But any people we hire as managers will have to become certified.

We will also be engaging occupational therapists to help us assess our employees and identify needs and accommodations. Or just identify that a specific job is not for them. We will do this during a testing and training phase as we bring in every person who applies. We hope that giving folks a day or two working in the coffee shop will give us and them the time to evaluate whether the job is right for them. We will also be doing assessments at times throughout their employment. We want to try to keep on top of this to make sure it is working for everyone involved. We don’t want to fail because we didn’t do this.