Mingus restaurant doubles as nonprofit helping Texans with developmental disabilities with job skills

Dec. 26—MINGUS — A former dry goods store turned restaurant is making history again in Mingus.

"One thing about this place is it makes a difference in people's lives," Beneventi's Italian restaurant employee Eliza Barrett said, shortly before getting the kitchen ready for the day's diners earlier this month.

A Strawn resident, Barrett is the first participant in the restaurant's nonprofit job skills program to graduate to full employment there.

Owner Jan Underwood, who opened the eatery in her family's shuttered general store in June 2020, has shepherded a dozen participants with developmental disabilities through the jobs skills program she started.

Unlike Barrett, most are from Dallas/Fort Worth. Palo Pinto, Parker and Erath counties also have contributed to the 12-person alumni roster.

"And we've put five of them in jobs," Underwood said. "And we're about to put a sixth one in a job, but he has to wait for the restaurant to open in Fort Worth/Dallas."

Underwood founded two sister entities to further her job-training effort and a larger economic development mission — the nonprofit Each and Everyone Foundation, which now owns the South Mingus Boulevard property, and the Mingus Job Accelerator.

Most of her "participants" — with Underwood having no formal disability certification, her charges are not considered "clients" — live with Down syndrome or autism (Barrett has cerebral palsy and related complications).

Participants stay four to six weeks, living behind the restaurant in six 240-square-foot tiny houses in a little courtyard next to a garden where they also get their hands dirty.

"We do screen the participants," Underwood said. "We're really looking for motivated individuals that want a job. ... The whole reason why we're here is for the participants. and when they are here, they need to have the opportunity to do what they can do — and just be supported."

They are expected to work, and master what therapists call activities of daily living, in the communal setting.

"No one's going to be coddling them," Underwood said. "It's that inclusion, and not being afraid to ask somebody to do something."

Barrett had been living on a special needs ranch in Elgin when the pandemic drew her home to Strawn the year Underwood opened the restaurant.

"Eliza's been really good," Underwood said. "She's had a lot of interaction with a lot of the participants. We try to give her responsibility to show them what the proper procedure is. ... I need Eliza, she's a great asset to this restaurant."

Barrett washes dishes, sets tables, washes and folds laundry and takes menus and other items to diners.

"Taking people's orders from one table to the other is really challenging," she said. "I can balance stuff in my left but not on my right."

Underwood said she focuses on what Barrett and other participants can do, not what they can't.

"It's the same with all of us," she said. "We all have strengths, and we all have weaknesses."

Underwood's great grandparents, John and Amelia Auda, were in Northern Italy when they bought their little piece of Texas in 1904 "sight-unseen" for $88, she said.

The immigrants arrived in Mingus two years later and opened the general store that would operate as a family enterprise, complete with a post office and family quarters, until 1972.

Jump to 2010, and Underwood started her job-skills nonprofit.

"I wanted to create vocational jobs for individuals with intellectual difference, because our middle child has Down syndrome," she said.

That son, Austin, was lobbying his mom to open a restaurant for him by 2016, but she resisted opening another restaurant. The compromise was Austin's Underdawgs, a specialty hot dog catering business.

"We've sold over 70,000 hot dogs in seven years strictly by catering," the mother said, including in that number a job feeding 150 at the Goldman Sach's Christmas happy hour.

"From that, I started thinking, 'Gosh. If Austin can be this successful, maybe we should look at something that will put them in jobs.' and that is how Beneventi's was born and became a nonprofit."

Long term, Underwood said she hopes to hand off to a more established entity.

"My ultimate goal is to spin the program off to a college or university, hopefully Weatherford College," she said, adding Ranger College and Tarleton State University as potential takers.

Tarleton already operates the G.K. Gordon Center for the Industrial History of Texas in nearby Thurber. (Underwood can hear her Great-Aunt Amelia and Great-Uncle John Underwood speaking on the museum's recreated telephone).

"Any of those (schools) in this area could really benefit their special services by opening a program like this," she said, touting Beneventi's as an ideal learning lab for such a curriculum. "Exactly."

Students in Texas Christian University's radio and television major have heard of Beneventi's history and new mission.

Their 23-minute documentary on the Mingus operation is set to premiere at 6 p.m. on Jan. 29 in TCU's BLUU Auditorium, 2901 Stadium Drive.

"And they will do a big, red-carpet reception," she said, adding she will sit for a Q&A session after the film.

To learn more about The Each and Everyone Foundation or the Mingus Job Accelerator, visit their respective websites at www.4eeo.org and www.4mja.com.

The restaurant is opening 2024 with a Dec. 30 fundraiser for the foundation, with Elvis and Buddy Holly tribute artist Hunter Cole. Seating begins at 5:30 p.m., with a live auction and raffle drawings planned.