learning by doing

The only way to learn how to be Café Manager at Bread and Roses Café, it seems, is by doing it...and by making mistakes doing it. On day one, my supervisor/the executive chef picked me up, we did the day's grocery shopping, and I got a quick tour of the facilities before I started managing volunteers while he ran the kitchen. By the end of the first meal, he was gone and I was on my own. I knew generally what needed to be done from studying the binder that's been passed from JV to JV, and, thankfully, there was a handful of experienced regular volunteers (including the chair of the board of St. Joseph Center) to back me up. Remarkably, I didn't actually get stressed about the fact that I was supervisor-less for most of my first day...I'm learning to roll with the punches this year.

I've had a few minor hiccups along the way, but I'm starting to get into a groove with the café, so I'm finally able to articulate to people what it is that I am actually doing. My title is "Program Assistant at Bread and Roses Café and the Culinary Training Program," which translates to me being café manager by morning and case manager by afternoon.

Every morning on my way to Bread and Roses (leaving between 6:30 and 7:15 daily), I make a different stop to pick up food donations. I roll into the café between 7:30 and 8:00, and I start prepping for the volunteers to arrive at 8:30. My most challenging task throughout the morning is definitely managing the volunteers. There are four to seven of them daily, and it's my job to make sure they work efficiently and happily. Things I have learned: volunteers do not like feeling bored, and they also do not like changes (e.g. The fact that I made a chart of how to set the table is actually going to cause a volunteer uprising.). Another tricky aspect is to try to appease the experienced volunteers while still sufficiently orienting brand new volunteers. I've started holding a daily volunteer orientation to get everyone on the same page, which has worked well when people are on time.

I'm responsible for overseeing most of the front-of-the-house activity of the restaurant, while the chef runs the kitchen. Beyond managing the volunteers, this also means I'm responsible for letting guests in off our reservation list, keeping a count of how many meals we're serving, and generally keeping our clients happy and orderly. The most difficult aspect of this is definitely the gatekeeper role I play...it's not easy to tell a hungry, homeless person that he/she cannot come in because we're full and he's/she's not on the list. Alas, that is sometimes what I have to do. Clients sign up for Bread and Roses meals at the Homeless Services Center, where they also have case managers (my casamate Jackie is one of these case managers). Luckily, I have the help of our security guard when things go wrong on the list/gatekeeping front.

We serve meals three times a day -- at 9:30, 10:30 and 11:30. I see many of the same clients on a daily basis, but we're always seeing new faces, too. Our dining room seats 40, so a "full house" puts us at 120 meals a day; however, we can serve up to 150 meals in a day by seating overflow in shifts within each seating. After cleaning up the last meal with my volunteers, I take stock of the kitchen and make the next day's shopping list before heading to the St. Joseph Center administrative building a few blocks away to work with the Culinary Training Program (CTP)! More to come on CTP in a later post since I've probably lost most people by this point anyways...

The job of café manager isn't terribly intellectually challenging, but it's been fun and exciting to interact with so many volunteers and clients. So far, I've been most tested in patience and multi-tasking, and the constant demand of interpersonal interactions is exhausting in itself. I feel as though I've been working at Bread and Roses for much longer than three weeks, but the time has flown by!

I should also mention that the food is GREAT.