How my grief gave birth to intention and a business plan to change kids' lives

How Tender Greens uses business to solve big problems-- and how you can too

Tragedy struck during my sophomore year in college, when a drunk driver hit a good friend of mine who, after surviving in a coma for a month, died. As it is with most traumas, the event changed me. In fact, his death set me on the path that has led me to where I am today as an entrepreneur, chef and human being.

The death was upsetting for many reasons, including how it cut short the life’s path of somebody with so much potential. I promised myself after he died that I would do something meaningful with my life because he couldn’t.

That intention stayed close to my heart as I went through college in Philadelphia, often passing homeless people sleeping on grates just to stay warm. There, right in front of me every day, were people desperate for compassion and help, left out in the cold because then-President Reagan had closed the institutions that dumped them on the streets. And there I was, walking by them. I wanted to help give them the tools to sleep in beds, rather than on grates.

It wasn't until I started Tender Greens, however, that I could help them in a real way, rather than just donating to a nonprofit. At Tender Greens, we encouraged employees to volunteer eight hours every month to a cause that captivated them. If Tender Greens also found the cause especially compelling, we too would chip in. Eventually, most of our outreach at Tender Greens revolved around Stand Up For Kids, a crisis intervention group set on getting homeless youth in Venice off the streets. 

Very quickly, it became clear that these were not bad kids, just kids with backgrounds so challenging that they fled into the streets, without skills, without money, without much in the way of hope. Most of their stories were roughly the same: they slept on a friend’s couch for awhile, but then were on the streets. And then they started getting into trouble — drinking, drugs, stealing to eat, to get money, maybe to occasionally find a warm room.

I was happy to help these kids, yet something about feeding them on a Tuesday only to see them hungry again on a Wednesday didn’t sit right with me. Nor did buying them blankets or writing a big check before heading back to the rabbit hole of everyday life.

We were simply massaging symptoms, rather than eliminating or at least diminishing the root problems. People lacked sturdy foundations — instead they floundered in the depths of poverty. Liberation from those depths was no easy feat — not only were they stuck, they couldn’t see anything else.

Too many nonprofits get mired in battles for fundraising and organizational bureaucracy. I felt that as business owners, we could create our own intensely focused nonprofit that could remain fixed on the objective — offering kids paths out of poverty — due to self-funding through company revenues.

So we created the Sustainable Life Project. To avoid distracting my team, I devoted time after work and on weekends to creating a program that first identified trustworthy kids who needed a chance, and then taught them the basics of culinary arts and farming.

We started off small, inviting a handful of promising kids to the program. One day a week, they would work in the restaurant. Another day, they worked on the farms of local suppliers, where they not only harvested food, they tasted fresh-from-the-fields foods — a first-time experience for most of them. We taught them basic knife skills, and how to cook. And after three months, we offered them a job at one of our restaurants, starting in the dish pit.

A few of the kids graduated with lots of excitement, only to unravel a bit. Mental health issues likely stemming from their PTSD-saturated childhoods or biochemical issues, were an occasional problem. Some of the hires didn’t work out.

Eventually, we pressed pause on the program. We were experts in kitchens and cooking, and business, and we had partners who knew a lot about farming. But we understood we also needed people who could deliver educational and legal support to these kids. We needed people trained in providing overall life skills that would help them acclimate into the mainstream. The Covenant House California became that invaluable partner, giving the kids sturdy foundations in physical, educational, vocational and spiritual well-being.

Tender Greens also started doing a better job preparing the kids for the workplace, which forced us to dig deeper — a welcome development. These kids needed more guidance and protection, they needed more help adapting to the rigors of daily work and the complexities of a mainstream society far removed from their extremely challenging backgrounds.

We assigned only one intern per restaurant so he or she was never overlooked and the restaurant wasn’t overburdened — we aimed to make sure each kid received all that we could give. We also recruited Kevin Faist, who had spent a decade guiding youths as a case manager for Homeboy Industries, to provide that support. He would answer those 1 a.m. phone calls and work closely with them during moments of intense stress. 

To ensure graduates were prepared for the job, the internship was extended to six months, and tasks were divided between the dish pit (a humbling, difficult and in the end rewarding station) and then, in food prep, which truly gave kids life skills by teaching them how to cook. Both stations helped accustom them to important aspects of all jobs: about pacing, about understanding and meeting expectations, about savoring the feeling of a job well done.

Today, seven years later, the Sustainable Life Project is integrated into our business operations, with its own budgets and its own team. We’ve had a couple kids graduate to culinary school, and some who’ve been part of Tender Greens now for six years and have climbed out of those depths of poverty to become restaurant managers.

The Sustainable Life hires have become some our best, most loyal employees — in many ways, these relationships feel more like family than traditional boss-employee connections. Others who join the Tender Greens family often say they heard about the Project prior to seeking employment, and they count it as a top reason for their interest in working at the company. I like to say the Sustainable Life Project is a window into our soul.

Of course we aren’t the only food professionals reaching out to help our communities — this industry is positively packed with inspirational leaders including Alice Waters, Jamie Oliver, and New York’s Tony Hillery, who uses urban farming in New York to introduce kids to mentors in accounting, technology and engineering. Tony doesn’t just grow vegetables. He grows kids, nurturing them into strong, capable, worldly, contributing young adults. The vehicle for this transformation? Food.

We embrace Tony’s mindset, and are applying it to several other missions at Tender Greens, including the Spice of Life Project, which raises awareness for biodiversity by turning to global seed vaults to plant, grow and serve forgotten foods in our restaurants. Spice for Life started with a tiny seed of idea, which grew roots and shoots and then spread into something like an ecosystem, with a large group of chefs, farmers, the Prince of Wales and the Global Crop Trust all playing roles in its mounting vibrancy.

I think as business owners and executives, the onus is upon us to do more, to look beyond the balance sheet and figure out ways that we can help solve the world’s many problems. Government has key functions, but we can’t just leave it to elected officials and government employees to solve problems while all we do is examine profit margins, or occasionally pose for photos holding enormous cardboard checks trumpeting our latest nonprofit donation. We need to think of our businesses as engines of problem-solving savvy, as bold partners with the other people and groups working hard to make the world a better place.

Think big? Sure. But start small. The first step can be one person, or one project. As successful business people, we understand how to scale with wisdom and that is how we approach the Sustainable Life Project, helping kids in the depths of poverty to glimpse what’s over the horizon.