Hope’s Kitchen is having a five-day-long grand opening, June 4-8, to give hungry customers a chance to taste its menu.
Hope’s Kitchen is not an ordinary restaurant. Sure it has a menu of fresh sandwiches, homemade soups and salads, but it does more than feed a hungry mouth. Hope’s Kitchen is a training ground for older teens and young adults with disabilities.
It’s a support system for those in special education programs as they transition from high school to the adult workforce. The kitchen is open for lunch from 10:30 a.m. till 3 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, but after hours clean-up duties mean students are on staff till about 5 p.m. There are different shifts, he said. The students can only work two hours at a stretch.
The restaurant has been opened since February, but it’s just now that they’re making a push to go public.
The restaurant is part of Hopewell Academies, a private therapeutic day school that provides educational, therapeutic and transition services to special needs students ages 12-21. The restaurant is for older students in the program, said Chad Kollross, director at Hopewell Academies, 1352 N. Cedar Road.
Located in the 100 block of East Francis Road just east of Cedar Road, Hope’s Kitchen is run by a staff of trainers and cooks that offer a couple students at any one time a chance to practice social interaction skills while serving food, taking orders and cleaning up at the end of the shift. They have to learn what it’s like to work as a team, he said.
“This is paid employment. It’s really working out in the real world while still having a safety net,” said Kollross.
The restaurant manager is trained in special education, and job coaches are regularly on-hand to help provide one-on-one assistance, said Kollross. At the moment, eight of Hopewell Academies’ students serve as interns at Hope’s Kitchen.
On the order of a delicatessen /sandwich shop, the restaurant features a glass case full of fresh, homemade pastries. A small menu of sandwiches and the soup of the day is chalked on an easy-to-see board that hangs on the wall behind the pastry counter. A couple booths are situated along the window and several small tables big enough for two line the wall.
Kollross said he’s proud of the menu. The food is completely prepared at the restaurant. A friend of his who runs a restaurant in the East helped design a tasty menu that transition clients could prepare on a daily basis. And while there’s a degree of consistency on the menu, there’s also plenty of room for creativity. For instance, the staff whipped up a brownie sundae that’s thought might attract some fans.
Fresh recipes will be reflected in the soups and salads, and 5 percent of profits go back to the Marshall Klein Foundation, which is Hopewell Academies nonprofit organization. Among other things, it raises scholarships for deserving Hopewell graduates,
It’s a friendly place where the waiter or waitress greets you with a smile and makes sure the water glasses are full. The student staff buses the tables and keep basic items stocked, napkins and the like.
Along with the in-house restaurant, Hope’s Kitchen is preparing box lunches for business meetings and per order for folks at offices, added Kollross.
To learn more about the variety of services at Hopewell Academies and its sites in Joliet and Orland Park, visit the website.
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