NEW ORLEANS — At Café Reconcile, to-go orders for Thanksgiving dinner are double what they were last year.
In this year of the pandemic, picking up Thanksgiving doesn’t seem so unconventional, but it can be invaluable. Those orders and the customers in the main restaurant all help to keep Café Reconcile’s non-profit mission alive.
“We feel like we’ve weathered a tough year, both for our staff and the young people we see and serve,” Gerald Duhon, Executive Director of Café Reconcile, said.
For 20 years, Café Reconcile has helped more than 2,000 at risk youth get jobs in the restaurant and hospitality industries. But there’s a big question mark over those industries now, and the café is adapting.”
After the first wave of COVID-19, countless graduates from the café’s program lost their hospitality jobs, including Delvin Davis. He had just started working at a hotel in March. After just one day, that work dried up.
“Not many restaurants were open, not many hotels were open, and you kind of was like figuring well what else can I do?” Davis said.
The café’s leaned into its history of job training. It quickly pivoted and in some cases became more like a hub of human resources.
“Everyone knows us as a great place to eat, but we’re also workforce development that connects young people to jobs,” Duvon said.
The café was able to bring Davis back to the same place that helped him almost 8 years ago. Now, he’s helping train young people who come from similar circumstances as he did. Now, instead of being a pipeline to the restaurant business, Café Reconcile wants to be a conduit for employment in general.
“We also have to consider what else, other than hospitality. So, the term that we use is pathways,” Duhon said. “There are other pathways.”
“What we’re teaching our young people doesn’t just apply to hospitality right? I think we’re teaching them basic skills where they can feel successful in any range any field they want to do,” Davis added.
The community’s generosity makes all this possible. And perhaps more than any other year, the café is offering its gratitude this Thanksgiving.
