A Special Week At The Back Door Café

By Shannon Hicks

The Back Door Café, located at the St John’s Episcopal Church in Sandy Hook, is an entrepreneur program out of Newtown High School. Throughout the year the students have the opportunity to run a hands-on business out of the small but practical kitchen in the lower level of the stone church building on Berkshire Avenue.

Students receive credit for class time by participating in Back Door Café. Some of the students receive pre-vocational credits, while some of the students who return for a second year can also earn management credit. The class is also a business, with students preparing breakfast and lunch selections, which are then delivered to smaller local businesses and most of the schools in Newtown.

The class runs for the full school year, with students learning a lot more than just cooking. There is also inventory, shopping, order-taking, cooking, preparation, deliveries, book-keeping, and cleanup to be done on a regular basis.

Menus change on a weekly basis, with a variety of offerings always available. This week’s menu offered vermicelli casserole with mushrooms and peas, served with salad and buttered roll; chicken orzo and spinach tortellini soups; sandwiches ranging from turkey club, grilled cheese with tomato and bacon, BLT, chest breast BLT, wrapped sandwiches, and a selection of “crisp and natural,” with selections such as chicken salad with grapes, a large fresh garden salad, or garden salad topped with shredded Cajun-style cheese. Chocolate chip cookies were being offered as the dessert selections, and drink offerings include soda, water, or coffee. Prices are extremely reasonable, and the delivery/take-out service runs from 9 am to 1 pm Monday through Friday.

The students will learn, by their final presentation in June, to handle this workload in nearly a methodical fashion. Class is traditionally completed with a Parents’ Night Dinner in lieu of a conventional final exam. The culinary evening represents a cumulative project, a final exam, and a way to honor the students and their parents.

“We try to let them be as self-directed as they can be,” Dru Saren said Tuesday afternoon. Ms Saren and Gloria Arsenian are the instructors/adult managers of The Back Door Café. “Every piece of this business is their responsibility, and they do a terrific job.”

The Back Door Cafe program was established as a self-supporting, for-credit course that is available to any student who needs what Ms Saren has called in the past a “break from the traditional classroom routine.”

A Special Project

While still early in the school year right now, the 24 students in this year’s program spent this week preparing not only their regular breakfast and lunch offerings, but also baked goods for a special project that will be undertaken this weekend.

Because the company uses the kitchen at St John’s Episcopal Church, the students participating in Back Door Café also see people who visit the church to take part in FAITH Food Panty food pickups. The food pantry’s “closets” are on the same floor as the church’s kitchen — and therefore the Back Door Café “classroom” — so students have become interested in not only earning a grade for their school work, but also in the community service opportunity that has all but landed at their feet.

This week, Back Door Café has received food products donated out of FAITH Food Pantry and will be creating special baked goods. While the Pantry has provided the products, the students have spent the week deciding on recipes, then baking and decorating a variety of baked goods. All of these treats will be offered for sale this weekend at Super Stop & Shop, in Sand Hill Plaza in Newtown, and all of the proceeds from the sale will be returned directly to FAITH Food Pantry.

It means a lot of extra work on top of an already packed work load — and this is just one class the students are taking for school — but Back Door Café’s instructors have full faith in their students.

“It’s very family-oriented down here,” Ms Saren said this week. “It’s a very nice place for this program to be held, and when it’s needed for them, it can also be a good place for the students to come for some calmness.”

Students, say Ms Saren, have often reflected on The BDC as a place where they can be part of one big happy family, which cares deeply about one another. The more hectic things get, with an abundance of orders or maybe running out of an important ingredient, the more the students pull together as a team to accomplish their goals.

Back Door Café has been a popular offering right from day one. The business is a nonprofit endowment that started nine years ago with a budget of $200. There were 12 students in that first class; the roster had increased to 18 students for the 1998-99 class; and this year there are 24 students in The Back Door Café.

Participating this year are Shauna Beardsley, Joe Bromley, Evan Brooks, Steven Buchholtz, Sharna Cokhury, Robin DiPerrio, Eric Elleser, Adam Escarey, Dan Forenback, Jennifer Joy, Bill Kundert, Mike LaPera, Jessica Larson, Stacy Leger, Elias Lindsay, Crystal Lucsky, Kurt Miller, Katie Proulx, Megan Riley, Adam Samuels, Matt Seaman, Jesse Smith, Lauren Thibdeau, and Ashley Whitlock.

“It’s a very popular class,” Ms Saren said. “There is a real sense of ownership for every student.”