America’s “independent sector”—its civil society—is the best-funded and most robust in the world. It consistently develops new and effective approaches to some of the nation’s most serious social problems. Since 2001, the Manhattan Institute has sought to identify and recognize some of the most promising social entrepreneurs and the new non-profits they’ve founded, based on their own original ideas. The more than 50 winners of the Richard Cornuelle award, named for the writer who coined the term independent sector, have addressed challenges as diverse as teaching English to new immigrants, building facilities for charter schools, helping older Americans “age in place,” developing science and engineering curricula for high schools, and helping African-American college students continue through to graduation. Most are supported entirely by private philanthropy. In this column, part of a series of six, I’ll profile this year’s winners of the Cornuelle award—and of the $100,000 William E. Simon Prize for lifetime achievement in social entrepreneurship, named for the late Secretary of the Treasury and author of A Time for Truth. Past winners have included Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy and Brian Lamb, founder of CSPAN. This week I spotlight Edwin's Leadership & Restaurant Institute, which operates one of Cleveland's best French restaurants, run by a staff, many of whom were not long ago in prison.
It’s a serious understatement to observe that, as a young man, Brandon Chrostowski did not seem likely to become a top French chef at restaurants in New York and Paris. Nor was he likely to lead a Cleveland organization helping those newly-released from prison to get positions in such restaurants. Prior to getting his first restaurant job—as a busboy—he had, age 19, held positions at a gas station, a bowling alley and a florist shop, among 22 odd jobs in his native Detroit. His career path, to the extent he had one, was, as he puts it, to be "either dead or in jail." In fact, he'd already been arrested by federal marshals and faced a 10-year prison term. (The formal charge that stuck was "fleeing and eluding.") It was a judge’s decision to place him on one year’s probation instead, which led him to that restaurant job—which, once he was taken under the wing of the owner, led him through a long series of unlikely steps—from learning how to poach and to braise, to his acceptance to the famed Culinary Institute of America—and on to New York and Paris.
The unlikely nature of his life’s story led the man everyone at EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute calls simply Brandon to come to an important conclusion: that, with the right sort of help and training, it would not be unlikely for others who’d been in trouble and lost their way to forge a career in the world of fine dining, food service, and hospitality—industries he knew are always looking for reliable, well-trained employees. As someone who'd had to take on such tasks as cleaning a kitchen stove with a Q-tip and scraping the ice off the alley in back of the restaurant, he believed that "if you work hard, you’ll always be employable."
It’s a view of the world—and, specifically, of the opportunities for good pay and the chance for advancement that restaurant work offers even the most disadvantaged–that led Chrostowski to give up his life as a literal top chef to found EDWINS (an acronym for Education Wins, as well as a tribute to a mentor). Today, after its opening in 2013, it's both a school and one of Cleveland's top French restaurants, staffed by 25 ex-offenders, most of whom had never held restaurant jobs—or, in some cases, any legal job—previously.
That what began as a goal Brandon set for himself while working in a bistro in Tribeca has actually come to fruition says a great deal both about Chrostowski’s vision and his drive. It also says much for what turned out to be the fertile public-spiritedness, philanthropic, and volunteer culture of Cleveland, the city to which Chrostowski chose to move in 2007 for the sole reason that its city schools’ high school graduation rate was among the lowest in the nation. It seemed, in other words, to be a place where the project he envisioned would be needed. A few key events say a great deal about how and why social entrepreneurship thrives in the United States.
The fortuitous chain of events began in the summer of 2010. Brandon was playing club football—and happened to me on the same team as Matthew Fieldman, an experienced Cleveland fundraiser for non-profits (who, in fact, had served as development officer for a previous Cornuelle award winner, the Cleveland Clinic-linked Med-Wish International). Recalls Fieldman, “I didn’t know anything about the guys on the team except their first names. So I just knew Brandon as “lanky guy who could catch a pass.” But they would later meet off the field—first at L’Albatros, Cleveland’s top French restaurant, where Brandon was head chef (where they introduced themselves more formally) and then, two weeks later, at Cleveland’s Foundation Center. When Brandon explained that he was there to research the steps needed to start a 501c(3), Fieldman offered to help. He became a member of the newly-forming board and organized a garden party “friend-raiser” that led to EDWINS’ first major donation: $25,000 from the chief executive of a local industrial sand company. It was the first major charitable gift she and her husband had ever made. The EDWINS business plan went on to win a local social enterprise award (the Cleveland Social Venture Partners prize)—and the board convinced Brandon to quit his job at L’Albatross. In a dramatic speech (at a local version of a Ted Talk) he announced that decision, still looking and sounding very much like a blue-collar kid from Detroit’s East Side. (His grandfather was a United Auto Workers official; his father a factory worker for TRW.)
Donations began to roll in, some virtually on the spot—and totaled $1.6 million over two years, almost all from local Cleveland philanthropists and foundations. So did volunteer labor—helping to renovate a bankrupt wine bar in Cleveland’s famed Shaker Square, long a high-end retail setting but more recently struggling and much in need of a good restaurant. Donors interested in helping ex-offenders find good-paying jobs were complemented by others interested in helping to revive Shaker Square—including the owner of the historic shopping complex, who offered free rent. Just six months after Brandon quit his day job, EDWINS opened its doors to rave reviews—including one that not only raved about the lobster bisque, the frogs’ legs, and the rabbit pie, but gave Brandon credit for "birthing one of Cleveland's best new restaurants on the backs of 'un-hirable' ex-cons."
Here’s how it works. Ex-offenders who have served time for any offense at all are eligible to apply for the sixth-month EDWINS training course. None is admitted except after being interviewed by Brandon (he rejects 10 percent, he estimates). Many have heard of EDWINS by word-of-mouth; many have long enjoyed cooking but never worked in restaurants other than fast-food franchises. A number have actually been recruited from behind bars; even before opening the restaurant’s doors, Brandon had begun teaching at Ohio’s Grafton Correctional Institute, where he piloted his idea by staging a formal dinner for his early donors—inside the prison, using only the prison kitchen equipment and inmate staff. (Key donor Jennifer Deckard, chief executive of Fairmont Minerals, remembers it as "one of the most moving experiences of my life").
The Institute follows a curriculum Brandon modeled on his studies at the Culinary Institute. It makes for some incredible scenes: tough-looking, tattooed guys in wife-beater T-shirts studying the wine regions of France, for instance. The EDWINS course is demanding, including “culinary math, nutrition, gastronomy, safety, and sanitation”—and many wash out. Of 50 admitted, only 20 typically graduate. Those not weeded out move from the Institute to the restaurant floor, where they work with 9 professional staff members, rotating among the full range of serving and food preparation jobs. They’re paid a $200-a-week stipend for doing so. The restaurant is deliberately over-staffed—such that there’s always someone to fill in when a trainee must be pulled aside for guidance. (One of the staff calls EDWINS the restaurant equivalent of a teaching hospital.)
The results to date are impressive, to say the least. Over the past year, the restaurant itself—typically filled to 85 percent of capacity—took in $1.2 million in receipts and generated a $225,000 profit. Those earnings offset more than half of the $400,000 in costs associated with the training institute. The results for graduates have been similarly impressive. Nine classes have graduated 65 students (classes were smaller at the start), of whom 61 are working, all in the restaurant and hospitality industries, earning between $12 and $16 an hour. The most common placements are as line cooks or pantry-stockers (in the “back of the house”) or as server or host (in the “front of the house”). Some 75 percent work in the back of the house. Their employers include not only top Cleveland restaurants but also one in Cambridge (MA) and one in Rouen, France. All must leave EDWINS after six months. None has returned to prison; four incurred parole violations that EDWINS helped them resolve, as it also helps with other legal matters (often working out a less-burdensome schedule for child support payments).
It has, as one would expect, not always been smooth sailing. There have been near-fights, trainees with drug problems who relapse (they are sent to programs but not necessarily dismissed). The staff includes a social work case manager.
"It’s fragile," says Brandon. "I tell them one person could ruin it for everyone." Still, 24 restaurants have expressed interest in hiring EDWINS graduates—and placement has been no problem.
For his part, Brandon has ambitious plans. He hopes EDWINS can develop a consulting practice to advise other industries how to train and manage ex-offenders—of which America has millions, a majority of whom return to prison within three years after release. This is no pipe dream. His board includes a partner at Deloitte’s Cleveland office. EDWINS is planning to buy two abandoned buildings in Cleveland’s dilapidated East Side Buckeye Road area—and to convert them into dormitory and classroom space. It would, in other words, be a different sort of Culinary Institute, a campus in which Brandon Chrostowski’s vision would take permanent form.
2015 winners, Manhattan Institute social entrepreneurship awards:
William E. Simon Prize: Norman Atkins, Relay Graduate School of Education: A revolutionary education school focused on effective classroom teaching.
Richard Cornuelle Award Winners:
Bard Prison Initiative, Ellenville, NY: College degrees behind bars
Edwins Leadership and Restaurant Initiative, Cleveland, Ohio: Culinary arts training and job placement for ex-offenders
Found in Translation, Cambridge, MA: Immigrants using their language skills as medical interpreters of major hospitals
Sarrell Dental Centers for Public Health, Anniston, Alabama: First-time dental care for thousands of poor Alabama children
Team Rubicon, Los Angeles, CA: Veterans applying military skills to disaster relief
