Ability Baking, Arc focus on community integration

When The Arc of Central Alabama moved its day programs into a new campus on Crestwood Boulevard about four years ago, Vice President of Development Mary Frances Colley said, the building included a huge residential kitchen. 

At first, they weren’t quite sure what to do with it, since the building wouldn’t be serving residential needs. Instead, Colley said, they came up with an idea for the kitchen space to serve a new and entirely unique purpose for the adults in their day program with intellectual disabilities. 

After securing grant funding to renovate the kitchen with all new equipment, in addition to hiring a full-time baking instructor, Colley said, they formed the Ability Baking Company.

“There’s not really any program in central Alabama [like it],” Colley said, adding that The Arc of Central Alabama focuses on early intervention services and serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in various parts of Jefferson and Blount counties.

Since 2015, Ability Baking Company has offered kitchen classes through The Arc’s day and development programs, which Colley said now serves about 390 adults each day, in addition to providing transportation to and from classes. The purpose of the day programs is to provide care and activities for people with intellectual disabilities over the age of 21 or offer them job training and shadowing. 

In addition to their program this year, Ability Baking recently received funding to launch a whole new component to the community and employment-driven part of the program, which Colley said they are absolutely thrilled about: a food truck.

“What we are trying to focus on is community integration, not just having people we serve sit in our building all day, every day, but really taking what they’re learning and integrating them in the community,” Colley said. 

Not only will the food truck bring awareness to the Ability Baking Program and the work the participants learn each day, it will also prepare some of them for jobs.

Oftentimes, Ability Food Truck coordinator Adam Tessler said, when adults with intellectual disabilities try to work in the food industry, employers aren’t sure if they will be able to successfully handle the tasks required. With Ability Baking Company’s recent launch of its food truck, participants are given the opportunity of part-time employment “to learn a serious skill in a supportive environment,” he said, by learning dishwashing, cooking and everything in between that goes into a functioning kitchen. 

“There’s such a speed learning curve to tasks like baking and cooking, so this is a really nice way to teach those skills and teach them really well, without the added pressure of a really harsh timeline or a really fast-paced kitchen,” Tessler said.

During Ability Baking Company classes, baking instructor Jill Malone usually works with eight to 10 participants on a range of different skills and personal goals, which results in them making some sort of food or dessert. 

“One person, even though they’re 40, may be working on learning their colors, while the other person may be working on how to manage money, like the difference of a $1 [bill] and $5 bill, and they can practice all of that in the kitchen,” Colley said.

If Ability Baking Company participants are interested in employment, they will apply for a certain job, do some shadowing work with Malone and then they will actually do the baking, selling, cleaning and other tasks.

Although Colley said Ability Baking Company aims to teach participants skills needed to cook for themselves, in addition to employment skills for the food industry, the original baking classes encourage people of all abilities, even if their caretaker has to help with a majority of the process.

For people with limited mobility, in wheelchairs or who are non-verbal, they make sure every single person they serve has the opportunity to participate in the baking class, she said, even if they need a little assistance. “It means a lot to them,” Colley said. 

“It’s also a really interesting opportunity to get our clients out there and show people that what we are doing, it’s not going to be cute all the time, but we are going to make good food and we are going to do it well and show what those employment possibilities are for people,” Tessler said.

Earlier this year, Colley said, they planted their first vegetable garden near the kitchen, and the program has been incorporating the produce into kitchen activities and recipes. Recently, they made personal pizzas with the vegetables and English muffins. During holidays, they try to make seasonal food like pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving, chocolate-covered strawberries for Valentine’s Day or cupcakes with spider decorations for Halloween. 

Colley said they also consider health and nutrition as an important part of the Ability Baking Program, especially since people with intellectual disabilities often experience a higher obesity rate than the typical population.

“So the goal for the kitchen is to keep making the fun things like the cupcakes, the cookies, the brownies, but with the addition of the vegetable garden,” Colley said.

There are a number of education barriers and specific skills Arc participants might not have been able to gain or had more difficulty accessing during their time at school. Kessler said people have a lot of perceptions about hiring people with intellectual disabilities and whether they might be more difficult to manage or not as productive. But even being unable to read, Kessler said, is something they can work around. 

“The opposite is true,” he said. “With more training and more practice they can [be] equally, if not, more, valuable to an organization.” 

Instead of having the employees prepare the food in the truck all over town, it will be mostly prepared in the Crestwood kitchen, and the truck will serve more as a delivery service, Colley said. 

The food truck was to officially launch in December, Colley said. For the food truck schedule, go to arcofcentralalabama.org/our-services/ability-baking-company.