There are nearly 70 million Americans with a criminal record and more than 2 million currently incarcerated nationwide. Ohio alone houses 50,000 of these individuals, costing the state more than $1.3 billion annually. Most of these people struggle with finding a job once they return to society. Not enough employers want to hire a convict, especially not a convicted felon. Because of the many difficulties they face, one in three released prisoners (some 20,000 are released each year in Ohio) wind up back in prison within three years of being freed. Without job and life skills, many of these people don’t stand much of a chance in society. Edwins Leadership and Restaurant Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, is a nonprofit whose mission is to give formerly incarcerated adults the skills and support network they desperately need for successful reentry into productive employment. It offers a six-month program for former convicts to learn restaurant, leadership and entrepreneurial skills.
Brandon Chrostowski, founder and CEO of Edwins, was inspired to create the nonprofit after he received a second chance (see “Steak au poivre, cabernet sauvignon and second chances” in this issue). He began his career in the culinary world as a bus boy but worked his way up, apprenticing at Chicago’s famous Charlie Trotter’s and working for Paris’s longest-standing Michelin 3-star restaurant, Lucas Carton. He received an associate’s degree in culinary arts and a bachelor’s degree in business and restaurant management from the Culinary Institute of America. He recently spoke to Religion & Liberty’s associate editor Sarah Stanley at Edwins Restaurant in Cleveland.
R&L: Much has been made about your early brush with the law and how you found a mentor in a Detroit chef who opened a whole new world for you. Is Edwins a kind of way to scale up that gift you received?
Brandon Chrostowski: Exactly, yes. Simple as that. This is about learning a skill. It’s about building esteem. It’s about getting someone from where they are to where they want to be in the quickest way possible.
Talk to us about the Edwins Second Chance Life Skills Center, the residential campus you’re building in Cleveland. How will that help those on the reentry path?
Well, it’s helping right now. We’ve got six guys moved in. One woman. It’s rocking and rolling. It gives someone that complete pipeline from release to reentry in a healthy way. And there’s no homelessness in between.
The center provides housing and a job, the one-two punch. “How do I get a house? I need a job. If I can’t get a job, how do I get a house?” So we’ve taken that out of the equation. The idea is to drive this mission and this experience as deep as possible. We should be able to provide them with whatever we can possibly provide them with, including housing, life-skills training, a fitness center and a library. It includes an alumni house as well, so graduates who need to subsidize cost can go there and live. Yes, it brings the circle together.
You’re providing a structured environment, isn’t that it?
Yes, just as you control a restaurant. If you’re not in the industry, you don’t understand it. People look at it and think it’s chaos.
There’s nothing more organized than a restaurant. You know, we control the flow by the reservations, who comes in, who doesn’t. We control its order by the menu. So the kitchen dictates the menu in terms of what we can and cannot execute. It’s all totally controllable. And the same goes for someone’s return home. If you can help control where someone’s at on this side after school, during school, then you have more success in trying to get them to where they’d like to be. So it just helps guarantee a safe arrival at their goal.
At Edwins, from the first initial steps to completion of the program, only 40 percent complete. Is this because it takes a special type of person to go through this and complete the program?
Yes, we ask a lot from them. First of all, we don’t say no to anyone. So there’s no cherry-picking. Some programs might say, “Hey, these are the five best out of ten,” and then their completion rate’s maybe 90 percent or whatever percent it may be. We don’t ask about previous offenses. We don’t care about previous education. It’s all about moving forward. So that being said, we’ll take on a class of 50 right now. We’ll start Monday. In the first three weeks, we intentionally squeeze. And what does that look like? Students come in at 9 a.m. and leave at 4 p.m. We ask them to memorize. We’re asking them to do things that are very uncomfortable. And someone needs to find comfort in that discomfort. If they can’t, they’re not going to make it in a restaurant. So those first three weeks, we’ll easily weed out 30 percent of the students. After those three weeks, we don’t lose more than 10 percent. We present everyone an opportunity.
With a lot of support and structure.
We have tutors, and we’re offering every tool possible to help these men and women succeed, but if you don’t show up, you don’t show up on time, or if your ego gets in the way—you’re going to fold. So let’s find out now who’s ready and who’s not. But anyone who drops out can still apply in another two months. Every two months a new class starts. They can keep coming back. Maybe they’re not ready now. Maybe they just need to grow up a little and come back later. Making the transition out of prison is not easy. In the restaurant, you’re making ten times more decisions a day at a quicker speed. We let someone settle in, go forward, and then when they’re ready they come back and they’re in.
We see a major shift in prisoner reentry programs to job training and entrepreneurship, and it has been said that the best anti-poverty program is a good job. You have said that “if you work hard, you’ll always be employable.” Does that ring true in what you’ve seen at Edwins?
Restaurants are waiting to hire. If you can work hard and if you know something about your skill, you’re more than employable. You’re a leader. That’s why Edwins is also a leadership institute. We’re not trying to pump out bodies that can prep food. We’re looking for people who can lead in the kitchen.
The example I always give is about when I worked in France. I just bought a ticket and went to France and showed up at this guy’s restaurant. I did not speak the language, but I moved up because they realized, “This guy’s going to work hard. He’ll do anything we ask. He may not understand what we’re asking him, but he knows how to cook, and he does what he’s asked.” And it didn’t matter. Language did not matter. The same held true when I worked in Manhattan. When you have people who are immigrants, don’t speak the language, what do they do? They bang out what they need to bang out. Education, background, nothing matters in a restaurant except what you’re able to do in the here and now.
For those who find employment after leaving Edwins, is there any kind of support system to keep them on track?
Mostly the alumni will kind of check in with us. Nothing can replace that relationship you build with somebody. Nothing. Not a checkpoint, not an HR manager. Culture and commitment and trust is all earned. So most of the time we don’t need to check in with our students. They’ll call us back and say, “Things are going well, and I’m doing this” or “I’m at a crossroads. Should I take this job or that job?” Even if they don’t call us up, we stay in contact with them. Every three months we’re on them. “What’s going on? What’s going on?” Yesterday afternoon we got a call. One of our graduates got thrown out of their place. So someone came and put them right into housing, and we’re sticking by their side until they get back on their feet. It’s a lifelong support system. We’re there when we need to be. We’re family.
Edwins has won broad financial support from foundations, philanthropists and churches. As you’ve grown and served more people, how have you been able to maintain the integrity of your original vision?
When a potential donor comes and has their own idea for what should go on here, they don’t become donors. They can keep their money. I turned down $200,000 because someone wanted to have strings attached. “No, you don’t get it.”
We don’t take any state or federal money. Any donor who wants to have stipulations and new rules isn’t really welcome. Now restrictions are different. So if someone’s giving us money that’s restricted to students’ education, that means instructors and salary. That means pots and pans. Some people say I want it to go just to housing. No problem.
It’s taken me 10 years to get here, from 2004 to 2014 to build this. It could have taken four years if I would have cut corners. We had a vision and were able to stick to it. But sometimes sticking to your ethics will cost you a lot of time. But now look, someone comes in this door, they get a fair and equal opportunity. They need a home, that’s available. That’s all because of doing it slow, steady and without compromise.
I know you chose the hospitality industry for this program very specifically. Ohio restaurants take in $16 billion in sales each year. More than half a million Ohio residents are employed in this industry, which is a growing one. However, do you see the Edwins model as something that could be used in other industries? If so, which ones?
Absolutely. This is the first time in U.S. history that grocery market sales have fallen second to restaurant sales. Seven out of ten jobs in Ohio are centered around food, whether it’s farming, agriculture, a restaurant or food processing. It’s huge. There’s always going to be a job in this industry. But going back to other industries, right now I’m working with a demolition company. So we’re building a curriculum. I’ve tried working with a steel company. They didn’t have the infrastructure to make this happen. I’m working with the county government. The county would like to take this model and inject a little bit of it into the county landscape. So whether that’s people working in construction or on roads or in the county hall, there’s a possibility we can bring this concept to that arena.
There’s not going to be another Edwins restaurant. I don’t want another restaurant. Franchising won’t happen. To be able to touch every person, to have excellent results, to be the best in the world— that’s something.
But we do want to drive our skills deeper, so we’re opening up a fish shop. A meat shop would be next after the dorms. We’re teaching a student how to butcher. We’re also decreasing our cost of goods 30 percent. This is all possible. But the last thing I ever want to do is another restaurant.
So how do you spread the word to other companies, other careers and just build this curriculum out to their specs? It doesn’t cost anybody anything. So I could work with you for a day and say, “Hey, without changing what you do, here’s a way you can mentor someone and teach them what you know in three months, six months, whatever.” But the point is you build out an existing company, existing culture, existing success, and then you find out what makes it successful. And beneath it, you build a subheading, beneath that you try to get accreditation locally, nationally, that can help someone take this and then go elsewhere. It’s super simple.
Another place I’d like to get to is education. And manufacturing. The big five in Cleveland are education, hospital, manufacturing, banking and hospitality.
You put a lot of emphasis on “all the little lessons of humility and hard work” in what you do. Do these old-school virtues still apply in America in the 21st century?
Anyone who has those basic virtues, if you want to call them that, or basic values has an edge. They are the ones leading and building. Very often the worker bees are the ones who don’t have those values and are attracted to something so pure that they’ll work for it. To truly embody it, those are the leaders today. There’s a reason. You know, there’s no TV show, no music video, nothing that’s going to replace hard work. Nothing’s going to replace trust. And nothing’s going to replace someone sacrificing for someone else. There’s nothing that will replace that. But it’s all based on keeping a very clear vision of what’s right and what’s wrong and trying our best to keep it that way.
