If you've been having a hard time finding kitchen staff who show up ready to work, Stone Soup PDX is worth knowing about.

Stone Soup is a nonprofit culinary workforce development program in Portland that runs 12-week cohorts of 10 to 12 people and graduates somewhere between 100 and 125 folks a year. The model is pretty simple, with hands-on kitchen training, job readiness coaching, and paid work experience all aimed at helping people build stable careers in the food industry.

I visited their space earlier this year, and the thing that stood out right away is that the kitchen is a real kitchen. Classroom on one side, working kitchen on the other, and the day I was there the cohort was working through the difference between stocks and broths and stews while our tour kept getting nudged out of the way with calls of "behind" and "coming out with a hot tray." Nobody slowed down for us, which is sort of the whole point. The culture of a working kitchen is there from day one.

What graduates can actually do

By the time someone wraps up the program they've logged 130 hours of hands-on kitchen time, and that covers a lot of ground: knife skills, mise en place, stock and soup production, sauteing, grilling, roasting, braising, deep frying, flat top and egg cookery, grain cookery, sauces, baking fundamentals, and composed plates. They've also run commercial equipment like combi ovens, tilt skillets, industrial mixers, and commercial dish systems, all in a production setting rather than a demonstration kitchen.

It's not just the cooking, either. Every participant works on the things that get them hired and keep them employed, so that's resumes, interview prep, personal pitches, career mapping. They finish with a Food Handlers Certification and the option to add an OLCC permit. From there, Stone Soup's Employment Specialist handles placement and then stays in touch with both the grad and the employer for up to a year afterward. So, if something isn't clicking once they're on your line there's an actual person you can call.

Their placement rate right now is 62.5%, and they only count it as a placement if the person holds the job past that first rough 90-day transition stretch. Grads have ended up at Grand Central Bakery, Bollywood Theater, Salt & Straw's Manufacturing Kitchen, and Union Gospel Mission, among others.

Who they serve

Stone Soup works with adults who are facing barriers to stable employment, so that's housing instability, recovery and reentry, financial hardship, gaps in a work history. A lot of operators come in assuming these folks will need extra hand-holding or won't be reliable, and it usually turns out to be the opposite, because when somebody has cleared real obstacles just to get into a kitchen and then made it through a tough 12-week program, they tend to show up invested in a way you can't really train into a person.

Imogen's story

Imogen came to Stone Soup kind of sideways. Her girlfriend worked the cafe bar, so she was already coming by a lot to drop her off or pick her up, and she'd sit with a coffee and work on a film script, and the place got comfortable long before she ever thought about enrolling.

She started the program as a trans woman who wasn't sure how the room was going to feel, and that worry didn't stick around. "People were really welcoming," she said. "I felt accepted, and that made it easier to just focus on being there and learning."

The part she really lights up about is Tier 3, the last stretch, when the formal instruction backs off and you're just expected to work. "There's more trust. You're given responsibility and expected to handle it." That's about when things shifted for her: "I can do this. I'm ready for what's next."

After she graduated, she started picking up shifts at the cafe, putting the training to use and telling anyone who came through the door about the program. Stone Soup had always hoped the cafe could become exactly that, and with Imogen it did.

How to get involved

Hiring is the most direct way in but it's not the only one, and Stone Soup is happy to have operators come through for externships, mock interviews, guest instruction, site visits, equipment donations, and sponsorships. This fall they're starting up a Guest Chef Series that brings Portland chefs into the kitchen to work alongside the current cohort, and last year's Soup Cook-Off pulled in Akadi, Ox, Kachka, Magna Kusina, Xiao Ye, and more. If you want a real presence in Portland's culinary pipeline, this is a good door to walk through. | Rebecca Donley, Oregon Hospitality Foundation

Want to connect with Stone Soup PDX?

• Luke McCullough, Employment Specialist 
• Prescoln Visathep, Program Manager

More at stonesouppdx.com or @pdxstonesoup on Instagram.

Stone Soup PDX is a member of the Aligned Partner Network (APN) and Catalyst Kitchens.

_{[Photo from left to right: Paul Paz (WaitersWorld), Susan Nielsen (Portland Workforce Alliance), Tina Lancaster (Oregon Hospitality Foundation), Matt Miller (Miller’s BBQ & Catering), Rebecca Donley (Oregon Hospitality Foundation), Prescoln Visathep (Stone Soup), Matteo Loera (Stone Soup), Angela Nelson (Travel Portland), Luke McMcullough (Stone Soup)]}