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November 19, 2024 - LIMITLESS Magazine

A cafe with a cause

Inside a North Carolina colleague’s sweet mission to empower adults with disabilities.

Tucked away in a nondescript bank building in Uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, is a cafe like no other. Founded by Marsh McLennan Agency (MMA) Client Executive John Ratcliffe and his wife, Renee, Cakeable Cafe’s mission is two-fold: it provides patrons with gourmet coffee and delectable freshly baked pastries and also helps bridge the employment gap for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In 2019, the couple launched Cakeable as a nonprofit workforce development program focused on baking, then opened the Cakeable Cafe and its associated barista training program earlier this year.

“I worked as a special education teacher for several years, and had a baking hobby on the side,” says Renee. “We were getting to know families who have children who live with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and hearing their stories made us aware that so many of their opportunities evaporate once they get out of the school system. I was thinking about using baking to make some kind of local impact, and started thinking that baking skills are employable skills—if I could teach someone baking skills, then perhaps we could help them take steps toward employment or some kind of meaningful interaction out in the community.”

Cakeable began with three bakery interns and has steadily grown to about 50 between the bakery and cafe programs. They come from Charlotte and the surrounding areas and range in age from 18 to 60. Each internship lasts three to six months and focuses on hard skills—baking, coffee making, cashiering, and customer service—plus soft skills, like teamwork, confidence, and professionalism, that will serve them well wherever they go.

Career placement assistance is available for Cakeable graduates, and grads have gone on to work in coffee shops around Charlotte, a coffee bar inside a bank, and maintaining the physicians’ lounge at a local hospital. Others have gone on to community college.

In North Carolina, 80% of individuals who live with a disability are unemployed. What we’re trying to do is create opportunities,” says John. “We invest in people with disabilities and say, ‘You have skills that are valued in the community; we just need to bring those skills to the surface. Your disability doesn’t mean you don’t have abilities.’”

Encouraging people to explore new interests that could translate into employment is one of John and Renee’s favorite parts of the job. Take Gina, for instance. While working at Cakeable, Gina discovered a love of washing dishes. She’s even turned the cafe’s dish pit into her “office.”

“She is very, very proud of her office. And anybody who comes to visit, she says, ‘I want to show you my office,’” Renee says.

The couple also delights in first-time cafe customers’ reactions to the sometimes-silly antics that go on behind the counter. Instead of using names to call when an order is ready, which may be difficult for some of the interns, customers are given a calling card with an animal. Interns have been known to eschew animals’ names in favor of what sounds they make—ribbit ribbit, your latte’s ready!

“Some of our customers come into the cafe and they don’t know that we’re a nonprofit; they just think they’re walking into a coffee shop. Then when you see the realization on their face that, oh, this is different, but they walk away feeling like they got a really good cup of coffee, I'm a little more upbeat,” says Renee.

John’s MMA colleagues also pitch in from time to time. Though he’s relatively new—he accepted the position the same day he and Renee were approved to bake out of their first commercial kitchen—his coworkers were quick to volunteer to staff Cakeable’s booth at the local farmers market and help interns give out samples, and were the practice customers at the cafe’s soft opening. John even holds the occasional business meeting at the cafe. He recently hosted a colleague from the Oliver Wyman division, who loaded up with baked goods to take back to her office.

Despite the long days and the challenges that come with a relatively inexperienced workforce, John and Renee keep moving forward. They’d eventually like to expand and create a business model that could be replicated in other markets, and just hired an executive director to help manage the growth and take a little off their plates.

“It’s been a lot of early mornings and late nights for me because I have a day job. But seeing the success and seeing the joy on people’s faces when they go and get jobs or when they can serve, whether it’s an amazing latte to a customer or someone who comes back to the market for cake or the cookie they made that was so delicious, that’s what keeps us going,” says John.

Renee echoes the sentiment and adds that it’s rewarding to see program grads secure employment opportunities that they and their families likely never thought possible.

If one of our team members feels hope and possibility, then that makes it worth it,” she says.

To read more articles like this one, check out the current issue of LIMITLESS Magazine.