Reaching The Community Through The Back Door

By Jeff White

The basement of St John’s Episcopal Church has white stucco walls and is warmed by soft light. It is home to the Back Door Café, a breakfast and lunch delivery business operated by 19 high school students. On any given morning there are decisions to be made. This morning is no different. As baked goods are readied for delivery to the Faith Food Pantry, workers grapple with issues surrounding the café’s breakfast service at the middle school.

“If we don’t get first and second period, it’s not going to work,” says Steve Buchholz. The problem is finding café workers who can spend the first two periods of their day at the middle school. The Back Door Café helps with a breakfast morning program at the middle school, where they aid cafeteria personnel and sell food to students waiting for the start of their days. Steve knows that a few café members have to be able to stay two consecutive periods at the middle school to maximize profit.

Dru Saren, one of the café’s advisors, agrees with Steve. For Ms Saren, the chance to oversee the operation of the Back Door Café is an opportunity to see just what these students can do, when they put their minds and talents to it. “Every year we have a lot of talent,” she will tell you, as she quietly stands in the background, observing.

The “family” began seven years ago on a $200 endowment that allowed students to start their own business. For the first few years, the café was housed in the middle school, before moving out and hooking up with St John’s Episcopal Church, which agreed to lend out its basement kitchen.

From this room, equipped with a full kitchen and possessing ample room for tables and meeting areas, students work to fill orders that are delivered to various customers almost every week day.

Ostensibly, it is a program that serves as an alternative to the traditional classroom setting, where students work and earn class credit at the same time. But the camaraderie and support among the café workers not only bolsters the business, it galvanizes lives.

Delivering To The

Community

When Dru Saren emphasizes that the Back Door Café is above all a business, she does so by recognizing the different problems her students have to address on a daily basis in order to keep their customer base.

At first, the challenge was developing that customer base. In the years when the café resided at the middle school, a substantial portion of its business was derived from middle school teachers. A new location meant new clientele, and for the most part the café has successfully taken advantage of their location.

Besides delivering to local merchants, a good portion of the café’s business comes from Sandy Hook and Hawley elementary schools. Sandy Hook has its “Back Door Day” Tuesdays, when a school secretary phones in the order for the three lunch waves. The café prepares every order and delivers the meals in the late morning.

Hawley has its “Back Door Day” Wednesdays.

In addition, both the middle school and high school place orders often. Once a month, the café caters a luncheon for the entire Special Education Department.

With large orders being filled on a weekly basis, workers are challenged to remain organized and efficient. On Fridays, Teresa Duffy, in her third year at the café, creates the next week’s menu, which might be highlighted with homemade chicken orzo soup, a vegetarian pita or a chicken wrapper with sautéed onion, mushrooms and cheese. This menu, once printed out, is photocopied and passed out throughout town.

Mondays are busy shopping days for the workers. Although the café does make money on their deliveries, most profit goes right back into buying supplies and ingredients.

Students cook for the rest of the week, filling small orders and refurbishing their supplies, while keeping their eyes tuned to the big deliveries of Tuesday and Wednesday. 

Workers actually earn paychecks, $1 for each day worked, which they can save until they accumulate enough money to qualify for a rest day.

The garden salads, Cajun chicken wrappers and BLTs notwithstanding, the Back Door Café delivers something a bit less tangible to the student-workers: the opportunity to realize their own talents.

More Than A Business

There is a bus that transports students to the café during their assigned periods and allows workers to make their daily deliveries. But it is not the sole link between the café and the high school.

For up to four periods a day, students work at the café, not only cooking, but also taking course work relevant to the running of a business. There is usually time for workers to get one-on-one attention for subjects like math or science.

Students’ final grades rest in the culmination of a “country study.” Each marking period, café workers study a particular country, delving into its history, art, music and, of course, cuisine. From this study, students create a comprehensive cookbook that highlights the foods and traditions from that country. Some selections from the cookbook are prepared for a dinner given for their parents and school officials.

They are also in the process of creating a training video to use with future newcomers to the Back Door Café. Rather than have the advisors go over the business, workers thought it would be a better idea to train new students themselves.

Workers will admit that the café’s family atmosphere allows them to discuss issues that are happening in their lives. Each keeps a journal that acts as an intermediary between them and their advisors. And although both Ms Saren and Gloria Arsenian, the other advisor, often play the role of sounding board, workers recognize that communication is a two-way street. “Sometime we’re their outlet,” confides Teresa Duffy.

“[The café] gives everybody a chance to find their niche, their talent,” explains Ms Saren.

Teresa discovered that she had a knack for computers and banking. Evan Brooks’ organizational abilities allow him to manage the morning breakfast program at the middle school. Steve Buchholz takes his perfectionism and puts it into baking to-die-for apple pies. Joe Bromely found that he was an excellent cook. Jill Passero can garnish just about anything.

Different workers take on leadership roles. Those workers who in the past have not gotten along in school are forced to bury animosities for the sake of the collective endeavor: operating a competitive business.

“All responsibilities are shared equally throughout the whole group,” explains Evan Brooks.

For Joe Buchholz, today’s responsibility is to figure out how to keep workers at the middle school for the necessary time in the mornings. It will have to be put to the whole group for input, however, and the bus idling outside guarantees to postpone any decision until tomorrow.

The Back Door Café’s day ends shortly after lunchtime. The kitchen is cleaned and books are stacked neatly along the square formed by adjoining tables.

And Dru Saren watches her workers trudge up the basement’s stairs. Seven years ago, she was present at the café’s inception, and since then she has seen more students than Crystal Lucsky, Adam Samuels and Adela Wharton discover that they had talents they never even knew about. Different attributes that when melded together can run a successful business.

But it’s more than a business for Ms Saren. “We’re like family here,” she says.