To Our Wonderful Partners,

We would like to take this opportunity to update you on a few changes that we’ve made to our Culinary Training Program within the past few months.  

First, we are excited to announce that we have a new program name which is now Bread and Roses Culinary Kitchen!!! This aligns us more closely with our mission at Bread and Roses Cafe, and is perhaps less of a mouthful than The St. Joseph's Center Culinary Training Program!

As the effects of COVID-19 continue to spread, we knew our alumni would be hard hit as a result of restaurant closures. We have paused our program ,not currently taking on new students in an effort to focus our support on our alumni and get them back on their feet. We made a commitment to our students that we would continue to invest in their future. Currently, we are working with our alumni to keep their ServSafe Food Handlers Certification up to date and we are providing the supplemental COVID-19 training as well, so that they may be ready to meet the new demands of our industry. We continue to offer case management as well as mental health assistance, and of course we continue to blast out job opportunities as they come our way.

Lastly, we are excited to launch our first alumni seminar starting next week! We are hoping to identify our alumni needs and to continue the engagement of getting them back to work.

If you are in a position to assist our alumni please do reach out to our team who are all cc’d on this email. In addition to kitchen opportunities we would love to learn about any available resources that may be beneficial to our students, alumni and our program during this challenging time. We would love to hear about the creative ways you are getting through COVID-19.

We are so grateful to our many supporters and volunteers for their unwavering support. Please stay safe and we look forward to hearing from you.

All the best,

Erin Aglione – Program Manager <EAglione@stjosephctr.org>
Chef Laura Weinman – Chef Instructor <LWeinman@stjosephctr.org>
Elle Hwang – Program Coordinator  <EHwang@stjosephctr.org>