San Francisco’s hottest restaurant has a general manager who believes it is smart business to hire the formerly incarcerated.Opened in September 2015, Cala with its Mexico City star-chef Gabriela Camara is San Francisco’s most talked-about 2016 restaurant, according to Daniel Smith of www.bayarea.com. The Atlantic magazine named Cala the poster child of a new wave of chic, experimental Mexican cuisine.
Under-reported in all the media hype, however, is that Cala opened with 70 percent of its staff composed of the formerly incarcerated, thanks to the efforts of its general manager, Emma Rosenbush.
She used to work for the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit in Berkeley. There she developed an appreciation for this at-risk community. “I would like to see former inmates given a second chance and overcoming the odds,” Smith wrote.
Rosenbush worked with the San Francisco Adult Probation Department to find training space and to organize interviews.
The biggest challenges in hiring the formerly incarcerated are training, as most arrived with zero prior restaurant experience, and addiction “No different than employees without (a record),” Rosenbush said.
Inexperience (not criminal behavior) is the most challenging aspect of her staff. “There’s a steeper learning curve,” she said.
After six months, the results are mixed. The percentage of formerly incarcerated staff has now dropped to about 40 percent, due to people moving on to another job and having to let some go. Despite these challenges, Rosenbush plans to keep hiring the formerly incarcerated. “There’s nothing about being incarcerated that makes you a second-rate employee,” she concluded.
San Quentin has its own restaurant training program.
https://sanquentinnew.wpengine.com/calpias-pattillo-explains-the-options-of-prison-job-training/
