As you know by now, the vision of Hugs Café is to create a restaurant that will provide training and employment for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
For quite some time the Board of Directors of Hugs Café has been tirelessly working around the clock to make this vision a reality. As we continue to raise money to open our first café, we searched for new ways to start enhancing the lives of our future Teammates.
This is our first chance to start achieving that goal.
On Monday November 17th, we kicked off the first semester of our Hugs Café Certification Series, teaching health safety and kitchen and cooking skills. Topics included proper hygiene, professionalism and several other topics that will help each of our students to receive their Food & Beverage Handlers Certificate at the end of the semester. Not only did we cover important certification info, we also worked on making our signature Cranberry Walnut Oatmeal Cookies!
What an exciting and fun evening we had with a classroom full of students and volunteers!
The teammates and volunteers were divided into three groups and the fun began. Equipment and ingredients were identified at each station, proper techniques were taught and cookies were baked! If you were to ask one of our Teammates what they learned, they would probably say “to make cookies” and “to wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands”.
Future plans for the rest of the first Semester are three additional classes making our signature cookies, two classes in January making Braised Pork Tacos with Jicama Slaw, and two classes in February making Creamy Chicken Tortilla Soup and Southwest Chopped Salad. During all classes we will continue to educate our teammates on the importance of food safety for their certification exam.
If you’d like to try one of our signature cookies come visit our tent at McKinney’s Home for the Holidays November 28th and 29th where you will get to meet some of our teammates and Board members, learn more about our mission and, with a donation, get a delicious cookie!
We are so incredibly excited to start our Hugs Café Certification Series as we start to give back and enhance the lives of our future teammates. These skills will help each of them to become contributing members of society at Hugs Café or even other restaurants as they achieve their goal of gainful employment.
This is why we started Hugs Café and what drives us each and every day.
Have you had your Hugs today?