CLEVELAND — At the Cleveland Foundation’s headquarters on Euclid Avenue in MidTown Cleveland, employees and visitors buzz in and out of a coffee shop. Susanna’s Cafe by HELP Harvest has become a place for people to pick up a quick cup of coffee, grab lunch or take a meeting. But its purpose is much deeper than providing people with their daily caffeine fix.
The cafe opened in the summer of 2023, and is run by the HELP Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission to provide services and support to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, according to president and CEO Tami Honkala.
The name of the cafe itself comes from former Cleveland Foundation CEO Ronn Richard’s daughter, Susanna, who has a disability.
“We realized that there was a need as kind of the system transitioned for supports for people who wanted to enter the workforce,” Honkala said. “So we started these vocational habilitation programs.”
Honkala described a three-tiered program called HELP Harvest, which involves a greenhouse, commercial kitchen and Susanna’s Cafe. At each of the locations in Northeast Ohio, participants are able to get paid for their work, while learning skills to help them transition into full time jobs.
For example, at the greenhouse, participants work with a horticulture specialist to grow and harvest food while getting paid. In addition to their work with plants, they’re also learning practical lessons, like how to get along with a supervisor, or how to navigate work challenges.
Honkala described it as “a curriculum-based program that focuses on individuals learning the skills that they need to learn in order to be successful in any kind of work environment,” she said. “So it's this pathway to employment, this basic employment training curriculum that we developed and that we then have individuals come and learn.”
The food grown in the greenhouse goes to the HELP Harvest Kitchen in Lakewood, where the food is packaged and prepared, and ultimately sold at Susanna’s Cafe by HELP Harvest.
“You can come in, you can grab a coffee, you can purchase breakfast or lunch items that are all prepared and grown in our greenhouse and then prepared in our kitchen by people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities,” she said. “And so you'll come here and we always have an individual that we are providing services to who's learning while they're here.”
On the day 3News stopped by, that individual was 24-year-old Mackenzie, who was receiving barista training from cafe manager Quinn Bader.
Mackenzie, who has the “gift of gab” and “terrific customer service,” according to Bader, whipped up a hot chocolate for 3News’ Isabel Lawrence. According to Mackenzie, it would be “like a dream come true” to work at Susanna’s full time one day.
“I’m learning how to clean, and I’m learning how to do customer service, which I'm really good at,” she said.
Mackenzie gets paid for her work at the cafe, learning everything from how to make specialty drinks, to how to work the point-of-sale system.
“I love being at Susanna’s and at the greenhouse,” Mackenzie said. “I make new friends and I really enjoy myself by carrying these vegetables into the cafe and even at the HELP Harvest Kitchen.”
For Bader, the highlight of the day is when the baristas-in-training arrive. It’s his job to run the business, while also ensuring they’re receiving their vocational training.
“I would say on the surface, competitive employment for sure, which is getting employment out in the community,” he said of the goals of the cafe. “But then just all the different things that we get from our jobs that we don't realize, you know, like community integration, it's a layer of responsibility. There's so many different things that we get out of our jobs that you don't think about until you're an individual that's unemployed for a while. So it is just huge for their quality of life. Obviously it's great for them to be making a check, too, but that's our overall goal is employment in the community in a competitive setting.”
Feeling part of a community is something that Honkala views as an important factor in the partnership between the cafe and the Cleveland Foundation.
“Our folks aren't any different than you and me,” she said. “They just want to just have normal conversation. And they want you to talk about what their day is like, what challenges they have, what kind of great things that they love, what makes them tick. And I think the Cleveland Foundation has figured that out.”
Leslie Dunford, vice president for building operations and guest services at the Cleveland Foundation, said the team at the Foundation knew they wanted some sort of eatery or cafe in the building, sparking a competitive process for food service providers. Ultimately, the HELP Foundation was the winning applicant.
“You know how important their mission is to lift up persons who have intellectual and developmental disabilities,” Dunford said. “And that aligned so much with what the Cleveland Foundation does, where we want to leave no Clevelander behind. We want to make Cleveland better for everyone who calls this place home. So it was just a natural fit, which we didn't know at the onset. We didn't know who we were going to end up with, but we ended up with the HELP Foundation and it's been a beautiful partnership.”
Dunford said having the cafe in their building has been a “win-win;” people are able to come into the building and have a lunch or a coffee, while being exposed to the work of the HELP Foundation, and getting the opportunity to learn more.
“Our staff comes in every day and they interact with that staff and they love them,” Dunford said. “And it's been such a beautiful partnership and really the community's benefiting from it.”
“When you feel like you belong, you want to be here,” Honkala said. “And that is kind of what everybody says; ‘I had a great day, I had a great day because people made me feel valued and respected and loved, and they appreciated how hard I was working.’”
In addition to specialty coffees, the cafe also sells local brands of snacks, plus salads, bowls and sandwiches prepared by the HELP Harvest Kitchen team. Susanna’s Cafe by HELP Harvest is open 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.