Hugs Cafe gives employees with disabilities a chance to shine

New restaurants don’t always open with speeches, a ribbon cutting and a moderately-sized crowd waiting for the doors to open. And the western stretch of Live Oak Street, down from Exall Park, might not be where you’d think to go to sit down for a meal.

But then again, Hugs Cafe isn’t a typical eatery. It’s also a nonprofit organization.

Hugs Cafe Inc. was inspired by founder Ruth Thompson’s work with people in the intellectual and developmental disabilities community. She started teaching cooking and life skills to her disabled adult students in McKinney in 2008. This led to her developing the idea of a cafe that employed people like her pupils to enrich their lives through training and work experience. To that end, Thompson opened the first Hugs Cafe in 2015 in downtown McKinney.

The cafe allows people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to show off their skills and potential through providing additional understanding and support, volunteer Shannon Varner says.

Much has been accomplished since then. Hugs (Hope, Understanding, Grace and Success) reached a major feat as the second cafe opened in December in the Wilson Historic District.

Simone Sterling, a 19-year-old who works the cash register at Hugs Cafe Dallas, recalled day one on the job.

“It was fun and exciting,” she says. “I felt like they were going to love me and treat me like family.”

So far, this has happened. Sterling also says the customers have been “very nice and very polite, no complaints, no attitudes.”

“And they love me, too, so it makes me feel joyful,” she says.

The Meadows Foundation on Swiss Avenue offered Hugs a partnership and a building for the restaurant. Thanks to the foundation, which gives grants and donates to organizations serving Texans, Hugs Cafe is able to operate rent free. This means that funds that would’ve been spent on rent can now go back into operating the restaurant, instead of asking donors to help cover those costs, Hugs Executive Director and CEO Lauren Smith says.

“Too often, individuals with disabilities are overlooked and underestimated,” said Peter Miller, who recently retired as The Meadows Foundation president and CEO, at the ribbon cutting. “Hugs Cafe has changed that. They show every single day that when people are given an opportunity to contribute to work and to be seen and valued, they become stronger and so does the entire community.”

White Rhino Coffee ​​founder and CEO Chris Parvin also attended and spoke at the ribbon cutting ceremony as a Hugs Cafe partner. White Rhino Coffee Foundation donated a fully automatic espresso machine to the cafe.

“We make great sandwiches. We make great cookies. But I’ll be honest, our coffee was ‘eh,’” Smith said at the ribbon cutting. “As we knew that we were going to have to expand to not only give a restaurant that was hopeful but a restaurant that was busy and had products that customers were going to be excited about for breakfast and lunch, White Rhino Coffee came in as not only a philanthropic partner but an in-kind partner with their coffee, their coffee equipment, their time and talent of their resource team.”

The food served at Hugs is made from scratch, except for the bread, says Smith, whose favorite menu items are the grilled Reuben sandwich ($14), the Greek salad with chicken ($16) and the wedding cake cookie ($3).

Aside from sandwiches, salads and sweets, Hugs Cafe also serves breakfast. Some of the offerings include a classic plate with eggs, toast, fruit and bacon ($13), buttermilk pancakes ($10), and a biscuit sandwich — a favorite of Sterling’s — with cheddar cheese, egg and sausage paired with breakfast potatoes and fruit ($12).

When she was off the clock, Hugs Cafe Dallas hostess Shannon Wakefield ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, which is made with herb cream cheese, cheddar, swiss, provolone, tomato and bacon, and a cup of tomato basil soup ($14 for the meal).

“(My sisters have) been to the one in McKinney for years,” the 56-year-old Lake Highlands native says. “They just thought this would be fun for me working in a new restaurant because they think I’m such a people person.”

Volunteers also work at Hugs Cafe, like Varner. Her high school-aged son with “high-functioning autism” participated in the Hugs Training Academy in Dallas over the summer and then got hired for a position at the cafe. Varner says he loved that educational experience and earned his food handler’s license, plus some other certifications.

Varner heard Hugs Cafe was looking for volunteers, so she joined because she has restaurant experience, and she’s used to the hands-on work that comes with being a homeschool mom.

“They wanted volunteers that were able to help without taking over job responsibilities, like teach as opposed to doing it for (them),” she says.

Smith says Hugs takes the concept of accommodations a step further by offering everyone the right to have those.

“I would say to you as someone that I would be looking to hire, ‘What makes you successful at work?’ and you knowing that answer is a good thing for us, and if you don’t, then we try to work with you to figure that out,” she says. “But that’s not reserved for someone with an intellectual disability. So we try to reframe the word ‘accommodation’ about individual preferences to thrive in the workforce, and everyone should have those.”

Hugs Cafe Dallas, 2918 Live Oak St., 469.301.6900, hugscafe.org