byCarl Kozlowski
Not only is the Inspiration Café an intriguing idea, it has a fittingly interesting history. Ten years ago, Chicago policewoman Lisa Nigro regularly came face-to-face with the desolation of homelessness on her patrols in the Uptown neighborhood. Rather than just ignore it or accept, each night she packed a Radio Flyer wagon with coffee and sandwiches to give to people waiting in line for beds at area shelters.
Nigro wanted to do more than just feed these people, though; she wanted to restore their dignity. Rather than constantly waiting in line for such basic necessities as food and shelter, what if the homeless had a place to go that not only served them meals, but waited on them like customers in a restaurant and even taught them how to work in the food-service industry? Welcome to the Inspiration Café. While a staff of seven has built on Nigro's original mission, the goal remains simple and the same: to provide a sense of friendship and dignity in a city that's often cold and uncaring.
"We offer our guests a restaurant-style atmosphere, volunteer waiters and a full menu of food choices," says Development Director Anne Klassman. "We have real silverware, real dishes, fancy omelets, pancakes and breakfast burritos. Last night for dinner we had twelve [kinds] of pizza, plus salad with pesto. It's practically a competition among our volunteers and chefs to come up with the most elaborate food items."
Klassman joined the café in February after leaving a marketing and event-planning career at Williams-Sonoma. She first learned of the organization while in graduate school at DePaul, where she was involved in a school project to develop a for-profit café run by Inspiration alums. While the "café-within-a-café" never took flight, Klassman found herself devoted to the cause.
"The opportunity was really compelling and I was excited by the direction they were going in," she recalls. "It's a great feeling to know you're at least a small part in helping other people become successful."
The café's fancy foodwork is currently taking place in a rented space at the Lakeview Church of Christ while the group's home undergoes a $170,000 expansion - including the addition of a 3,800-square-foot kitchen and administrative offices. Those offices will offer a wide variety of services to help guests get their lives back on track, from twelve-step meetings to personalized case management, job training and placement and even massage therapy. The assistance is so intensive that the café only works with twenty-five pre-selected individuals at a time; they've graduated more than 900 people so far. Participants must be violence-free for a year and substance-free for at least a month before entering the program, which averages nine months.
"While we're serving our seven breakfasts and four dinners a week, we're also teaching them the importance of meeting a schedule; all meals are mandatory and they have to be on time for them," says Inspiration's Executive Director Betsy Gutstein. "We've also managed to train some of our guests directly in the restaurant business, like one recent guest who received food-certification training and now works at a bakery in Evanston."
The café doesn't leave its program participants hanging after they graduate: alums are entitled to up to eight free meals per month, as well as two bags of free groceries twice a month from the café's pantry. In addition, they provide positive role models for current guests by returning to cook meals and lead counseling sessions.
Such innovative ideas have caught on, with fifteen homeless-oriented restaurants now operating worldwide. But along with growth comes an ever-growing need for funds, and Gutstein and Klassman have thought up creative ideas for raising them. On June 25, the café reaches out to the young professional crowd with a benefit at the nightclub Circus; Uptown Alderman Helen Schiller hosts the event, which includes light fare and an open bar for $20.
And starting this August, an array of the city's top chefs will conduct a series of fundraising Cooking With Inspiration classes, on everything from "Pies - Just In Time For Thanksgiving" and "One Pot Meals - Cooking for a Hectic Lifestyle" to "Game Cookery - Wild At Heart."
The Inspiration Café is currently located at 4554 North Broadway, (773)878-0981.
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.