Culinary Job Training Program

Comprehensive Food Stabilization
With our state-of-the-art kitchen facility, the Food Shuttle now accepts an increased quantity of fresh produce and stabilizes over half-a-million pounds of perishable product.   Blast freeze technology installed at our new home, the Vernon Malone Center, enables the Food Shuttle to effectively integrate substantially more fresh produce into our distribution stream.   Previously, items such as corn, cantaloupe, and other fruits and vegetables would come to the Food Shuttle in shipments too large to be distributed completely before they lost freshness.   With blast freeze technology, the Food Shuttle can stabilize these delicate items quickly, retaining taste as well as nutritional value.  

Through blast freezing stabilization, the Food Shuttle will also expand the impact of its food preparation activities. Soup kitchens -- often limited to serving low-nutrition, "can-to-pan" meals -- benefit from the high-quality ready-to-serve meals provided in quantity by the Food Shuttle.   Family-sized meals available to low-income families served through community food pantries enable those who have unsteady access to balanced nutrition or inadequate kitchen facilities to serve healthy and balanced meals at home.   Individual-sized meals will fill the nutritional void for homebound seniors on weekends, when many programs do not operate.

Rural Expansion
In the new Vernon Malone Center, the Food Shuttle is fulfilling a long-term goal: expansion of food distribution services in rural counties.   Although four of the seven counties in the Food Shuttle's service area--Johnston, Edgecombe, Nash, and Chatham--are rural, the vast majority of food distribution activities take place in the three urban counties (Wake, Durham, and Orange) that are closer and take less time, money, and resources to serve.   The Food Shuttle has recently expanded transportation resources and obtained additional food resources available for rural distribution.   The Food Shuttle expects to more than double rural county food distribution.

Cafe on the Hill
On the grounds of the Dorothea Dix campus in Raleigh stands a small white bungalow. Right now it looks empty, neglected, shabby. But where some people see an eyesore, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle sees potential. With care and an investment from the community, we believe that this little house can be transformed.   It can become a welcoming place. It can be filled with industrious hands producing nourishing meals. It can become a place of respite for busy office workers to take a moment over lunch and gaze out over the city where they live. It can be transformed into Café on the Hill.

Transformation is the key to the Culinary Job Training Program. We see the potential that is within people who are in recovery, who are homeless, who have severe mental illnesses. With proper care and investment they, too, can be transformed into productive, self-sufficient members of the community.   Café on the Hill will be an integral part in that transformation process for the most needy, most difficult-to-place clients. These are the people who will benefit from the long-term apprenticeship opportunities and the sheltered environment that Café will provide.

Under the program model developed, selected graduates of CJTP and the state's Customer Service Training Program will apprentice at Café on the Hill as cooks, food preparation workers, wait staff, and cashiers. The café will be staffed with support personnel including a manager (a CJTP graduate with a first-hand understanding of the difficulties associated with overcoming mental illness and substance abuse), a case manager, a job placement counselor, and a job coach. Café apprentices thus obtain valuable work experience in a supportive environment while gaining real-life experiences such as earning a wage, developing the coping mechanisms needed to work in a food service environment, and obtaining the recommendations needed from respected food service staff in order to obtain substantive employment in a real-world environment. Program participants will be placed in apprenticeships for 6 to 18 months, and will be supported with job coaching and other supportive services for a minimum of 36 months after placement in non-supportive work environments.