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Nonprofit teaches culinary arts to help Arkansans overcome cycles of poverty

Krystal Rivera started taking classes at Food Jobs Work in 2019. Five years later, she's the kitchen manager at a local restaurant and dreams of opening her own restaurant one day.
Maggie Ryan
/
Little Rock Public Radio
Krystal Rivera started taking classes at Food Jobs Work in 2019. Five years later, she's the kitchen manager at a local restaurant and dreams of opening her own restaurant one day.

Six years ago, Krystal Rivera had dreams of working in a restaurant. But, she didn’t know where to start. She was recovering from a drug addiction and trying to stay out of jail, but still felt something was missing from her life.

“I’ve loved to cook ever since I was a little girl from Puerto Rico, I grew up over there,” Rivera told Little Rock Public Radio. “My grandma would be cooking every single day, and it always intrigued me since I was seven years old.”

So when a friend told her about Food Jobs Work, a culinary training program for people in similar situations, Rivera signed up. Now, five years after graduating, she prepares for the dinner rush at Big Orange’s midtown location in Little Rock, where she works as a kitchen manager.

“I believe that cooking is a way to express yourself. I love to express myself and see the face people make when they take that first bite and they’re like, you know their eyes open up,” Rivera said. “It gives me goosebumps.”

Rivera said she’s found her destiny, and said it wouldn’t be possible without Food Jobs Work. Throughout the 10-week program, Rivera learned the kitchen basics — proper knife skills, how to work with a team under pressure, and food safety protocols.

“Most of all, they taught me that I was worth saving, that they cared about me, and that I could do it.” she said.

Food Jobs Work began in 2017 when founder Christie Ison saw a need for qualified food service workers in Central Arkansas.

“We just couldn’t find enough people,” Ison said. “The culinary school, the people coming out of culinary programs was just not enough.”

The solution: train people coming out of homelessness, incarceration, and addiction through short-term culinary courses. After 10 weeks of classes, students learn the skills to work in a restaurant and gain a network of support to help change their lives.

It’s a way to support the growing hospitality infrastructure and re-integrate people living on the margins of society. Ison said she’s trying to do her part to help people caught in the cycle of incarceration

“There’s a lack of help. It’s just ‘let’s just throw them in jail and let them back out, throw them in jail and let them back out.’” Ison said. “What are we gonna do to fix that?”

The cost is around $4,000 per student, according to Ison. Federal workforce funding grants pay around half of the cost, and Ison uses a combination of fundraising and social enterprising to cover the remaining costs.

Food Jobs Work is a member of the Catalyst Kitchens network, which helps people like Ison start similar nonprofits across the country. The network has over 100 member organizations supporting the network's mission to end the cycle of poverty through culinary training.

Catalyst Kitchens Executive Director Justin Smith said along with sharing curriculums and ideas across the network, the network also exists as an anti-burnout measure.

“This can be a really tough job to do, whether you are coming to it from the social work side, from the cooking side — those are two very high turnover industries especially when people feel isolated.”

It’s common for these training kitchens to donate the food students prepare in class to homeless shelters or other communities in need.

Arkansas faces a high recidivism rate. A 2022 report from the Department of Corrections found 46% of people released from state prisons were re-incarcerated within three years. That number increases for people who are homeless or struggling with addiction.

Food Jobs Work is trying to help change these statistics. Just as important as teaching students how to cook, Ison said, is helping them build a support network of peers, industry mentors, and community partners.

“Maybe their group of friends were the ones that were doing things they shouldn't have been doing,” Ison said. “Maybe they don’t have a family that has a strong background, you know what I mean? I want to be that person for them, and I want to introduce them to other people in our community that just want to help.”

Ison invites local chefs and industry professionals to speak to each cohort. That’s how Krystal Rivera met Arkansas restaurateur Scott McGehee and started working at Big Orange.

One of the first dishes Ison teaches students is risotto. It’s a deceptively simple rice dish. You don’t need a ton of ingredients or fancy techniques to make a good risotto. What you do need is patience.

“It’s this very zen process,” Ison said, explaining the process of toasting arborio rice in a saucepan.

“You can’t rush it, can’t do it too slow or you’ll burn it, can’t do it too fast or you’ll swamp it.”

Ison said she notices a real change in students after they cook risotto for the first time. She said it’s just hard enough to challenge them, but not difficult enough to make them give up.

“Something like that brings… I call it self actualization, you know, like some big fancy term for it,” Ison said. “But it’s really just believing in yourself again and being able to get back to just being a part of society and doing all of the things that some of us take for granted.”

Food Jobs Work used to operate from the kitchen of Our House, a nonprofit serving Little Rock’s unhoused and near-homeless population. Rivera remembers serving food she prepared in class to the people gathering for a meal at Our House.

“And they’re very excited every day to be like ‘oh, these culinary students are making this’ so it was fulfilling to be able to help the community and ourselves at the same time, learning,” Rivera said. “It’s a great experience learning and it’s a great experience and makes you feel good about yourself, and you could tell they really cared for us.”

Ison currently teaches classes out of shared kitchen and classroom spaces in Little Rock, but her plans for the program are quickly expanding. She’s working with the state Department of Labor and Licensing to create official apprenticeships, and she also wants to start teaching barista classes aimed at people under 25.

“Teach them some customer service so that builds up their confidence in themselves and the way they interact with the world, and then we can place them in these jobs, starting at, you know, your friendly local coffee shop.” Ison said.

In the next year, Ison hopes Food Jobs Work will have a new, permanent home.

Krystal Rivera is dreaming big, too. She wants to keep giving back to the program that helped her change her life. For now, that means bringing her best self to the kitchen each day. In the future, she wants to open a restaurant of her own.

“Being able to go back to my Puerto Rican roots and giving my story, and helping other people know they can do it too.”

Seeing people like Rivera bring their dreams to life, Ison said, is what this work is all about.

“I’ve seen that it’s possible, you know these people aren’t–they're not throwaways, they’re people just like you and me that need, just someone to believe in them.”

Maggie Ryan is a reporter and local host of All Things Considered for Little Rock Public Radio.