Foodworks Alliance helps small businesses grow and women in recovery

Coming Tuesday: More information on Executive Director Amy Aurore can be found in this week's Aces of Trades.

ZANESVILLE − The Foodworks Alliance is an incubator of small businesses, ideas, and better lives.

The alliance is built around a kitchen in the former Maysville Middle School, in what is currently the Muskingum Valley Health Center. Operating from the kitchen are a number of small businesses, including Sweet Life Bakery and Recovery with Purpose.

"Foodworks Alliance is a nonprofit kitchen incubator, where we help small businesses and aspiring food entrepreneurs who need a licensed kitchen to work out of," said Executive Director Amy Aurore, who's hoping the community will help support all three entities.

The location bridges the gap between having an idea for a product and store shelves, Aurore said. Ohio's cottage food laws are good for baked goods and things like jellies and jams, but for prepared food a registered kitchen is needed, which comes with a substantial price tag, she added.

Membership in the alliance includes access to the kitchen, which can be rented by the hour, and dry, refrigerated or frozen storage. In addition, members can hire workers from the Recovery With a Purpose program to help with cooking, cleaning, packaging or anything else food work requires.

The Recovery With a Purpose program was created in 2019 in conjunction with Sweet Life Bakery, although the programs are two separate entities. "Recovery With a Purpose hires women in recovery to go through a 12-week training program to learn basic kitchen skills, life skills, hygiene in the kitchen, how to make a resume, basic work skills that they may not have," Aurore said.

Workers do a variety of computer modules and get ServSafe Training, training they can take to into the workforce. They work in the kitchen for Foodworks Alliance members, or with Sweet Life Bakery.

Sweet Life Bakery workers bake primarily Bundt cakes, which they sell at various markets around the area or for pickup at the alliance kitchen. They are the public face of the Recovery With a Purpose program. "They keep our face in the community," Aurore said, but the the economic model does not fully fund the program. The kitchen pays for itself through membership, but with funding drying up for Recovery With a Purpose and Sweet Life Bakery, Aurore is scrambling to find a way to fill the gap.

"Recovery With a Purpose has proven to be a valuable program," Aurore said. Since starting at the kitchen last year, graduates have gone on to find full-time work, been reunited with their children or move out of group homes and into independent housing. Worker schedules are flexible, allowing them to make court hearing and other appointments. Most regular nine to five jobs can't accommodate that kind of flexibility, Aurore said.

"Having a place to work fulfills not only the obligations of probation or Job and Family Services, what I have witnessed is the confidence building," Aurore said. Women who once said they had never done anything in their lives are excited to graduate from the ServSafe program, she said, which is valuable to people who are exiting a period of their lives where they may have been considered a disappointment.

"It is a nice gap between treatment, not working and bridging that gap to whatever is next," Aurore said.

Victoria Reed-Bebout started as production assistant with Sweet Life, and then moved into marketing, and is now the executive for Foodworks Alliance and Sweet Life Bakery and program manager for Recovery With a Purpose. She can relate to the women she works with. Out of the workforce for 12 years, she ended up in recovery after the death of her husband. She started at Sweet Life Bakery while living in Naomi House, a sober living home for women in Duncan Falls.

"It is really scary to restart a life, and restart a job, and restart living honestly," she said. The programs, both Recovery With a Purpose and Sweet Life, "are hugely important," she said. Since finishing the program she has moved out of Naomi House and gotten an apartment. "I'm living how I should be living. I stayed here because I believe in what we do, and I get to help girls that were in the same position I was in when I started, help them gather skills to take in their future, whether that is a thing to put on their resume, or a way to feed their family."

Kitchen Manager Holly Denny said the program goes beyond teaching cooking skills, but skills like teamwork and responsibility. In turn, the program, and those taking part, provide a support system.

It is essential for those in recovery to have someone to relate to, Denny said. Her job is to teach them how to deal with the inevitable hiccups in life, and how to move on. "There is a lot more than learning how to cook here," she said. "We hire ladies that are in recovery, and they go from being in active addiction to try and be sober and learn how to live a regular life." That means learning how to balance all the things that make up what she describes as a normal life − the balance between work, recovery and living life. "Life is life," she said, "You have to be able to work and pay bills and have a normal life. It is awesome when I get to see them walk out of here."

Aurore said the next step for the three organizations is not clear.

They are intertwined, but also separate entities. While the kitchen pays for itself, the current economic model for Sweet Life does not, and there is a budget gap between what is earned selling Bundt cakes and the costs associated with the program, including paying the staff and trainees. Aurore said she would like to see more small businesses take advantage of the kitchen and its various services.

She is particularly interested in bridging the gap between producer and consumer and helping eliminate food waste by finding ways to get excess produce to those in need. The kitchen and its staff can be used in a variety of ways, she said, including processing food, turning it from raw produce into ready-to-eat meals. The staff was doing that recently when it was making breakfast potatoes for a local shelter. Foodworks Alliance also does training, including manager-level ServSafe training.

For more information about Foodwork Alliance, Sweet Life Bakery and Recovery With a Purpose, visit the Foodworks Alliance website or call 740-280-6805.

ccrook@gannett.com

740-868-3708

@crookphoto

This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: Foodworks Alliance helps small businesses grow and women in recovery