Kathleen Foley-Hughes is the mother of twins with disabilities. Charlie had always been a social kid, someone who learned by doing. When he reached Terman Middle School, now known as Fletcher, Kathleen began asking a harder question: what would happen after high school, for a student who wasn't headed to college. The only option in Palo Alto bussed students off campus for vocational training.
It was a fine program, she said. But it seemed unfair that students already marginalized by their disabilities had to leave campus to get what she called a fair education. So she asked the district's head of special education for something else: a cafe, run by the students, that stayed on school grounds. The district agreed, on one condition. Kathleen would need to find the furniture, the equipment, and the staff herself.
She and another mother, Karen Lawson, did. The Terman Tasty Treats Cafe opened in 2003, teaching students to bake banana bread, put on a good pot of coffee, and make change. They started a cash box and began working functional math into the lessons. The staff's response, Kathleen said, was as strong as the students'.
The idea followed Charlie to Gunn High School. The Hughes family sanded and refinished the tables for what became the Gunn Gourmet Cafe. Guidance counselors helped identify students who might want to work there. Kathleen bought an espresso machine and taught general education students, special day class students, and their aides how to pull shots side by side. The menu grew. So did the roster of students who found work. “We found a job for every student no matter their challenge,” Kathleen said.
Ada's Cafe grew from both, opening December 6, 2014, at 3700 Middlefield Road. The name is half for a neighborhood grandmother who once fed the kids on her block, half for the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The cafe now employs 42 adults with disabilities. It caters events for 300 people. It runs on what Kathleen calls the Three C's: compassionate employment, commercial success, community values. "Whenever we are faced with something that doesn't seem to fit, we rely on those values as our Northstar," she said. The goal is 100 employees within five years, through future Ada's locations.
She still gets two or three calls a week from families hoping for an opening. Most weeks, she has to say no.
"I know personally that having a job where you are welcomed and supported changes a person's life," Kathleen said.
The cafe runs on grace under pressure most days, Kathleen said. It runs, too, on her belief that people need to gather together in community, on both sides of the counter.
"I know personally that having a job where you are welcomed and supported changes a person's life."