The culinary training organization Stone Soup PDX recently relocated its operations from downtown Portland to the Beacon at Glisan Landing building on the corner of NE 74th Avenue and Glisan Street. Educational programs are currently underway inside the storefront space, and their publicly accessible cafe will open in March 2025, when they expect residents to move into the apartments above the shop. This location will provide people facing employment barriers with critical job skills through a 12-week program.
Stone Soup occupies three adjacent storefronts in the newly constructed NE Glisan Street building. The corner cafe will operate as a community-facing space, selling morning coffee, pastries, and cookies. Throughout the weekdays, they intend to have a more extensive menu in the cafe, offering soup and other meals prepared in the training kitchen next door or from the group’s production kitchen on SE Powell Boulevard.
The third Montavilla storefront serves as Stone Soup’s classroom. In the space, program participants receive basic instruction and engage in weekly “check-ins” with the support services coordinators who work to ensure students have the supplies needed to succeed in the program. According to Ellen Damaschino, Executive Director at the nonprofit, this can include help with transit, work-appropriate clothing, or USB cables needed to keep their phones charged. Damaschino explained that culinary skills are the central curriculum in the program. However, the instructors also teach workplace success tactics to help people find jobs and stay employed in various fields. “Some of our participants are also interested in using the skills we teach in resume building, getting to work on time, and working with others to maybe enter other fields, which is OK with us. Culinary is [just one] way for us to get people into work,” said Damaschino.
Stone Soup PDX opened in its original location on NW Everett and Broadway in 2019. They operated primarily as a cafe and training kitchen until COVID-19 forced a shift in the group’s operations. “So it slowed down a lot during the pandemic, and that is when we really kicked up the Community Meals program,” recalled Damaschino. “We make about 1,500 meals a week for the community. Those are for places like shelters, mental health facilities, and transitional housing. So exactly the places that our participants come from.” That shift allowed the organization to open a production kitchen on SE Powell Boulevard, where program participants spend their final four weeks cooking meals that volunteer drivers transport to Portland locations.
When Stone Soup backed away from serving walk-in customers downtown in favor of providing delivery meals, they expanded training operations wherever they could. However, that downtown space was not ideal for the growing program. “It was originally opened as a restaurant and a cafe, and they were making the basement downstairs into a school. So when Catholic Charities approached us about this space [on NE Glisan] that would have an externally facing cafe again, a brand new kitchen, and a classroom space, it was very enticing to take that space and jettison our old space, which wasn’t really working for us,” said Damaschino.
The Beacon at Glisan Landing offers 41 Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) units above the ground-floor storefronts. Damaschino sees an opportunity for a symbiotic relationship with the building’s residents and the families living in the adjacent affordable housing complex. They want to create programs teaching home cooking to their neighbors and work to assist those around them with access to healthy foods. PSH program operators may also guide some residents into the program. “We mostly have a referral in program, you can join just by signing up, but we have found that it is better if people are in some kind of housing, whether it’s transitional or shelter. We have found that people who are housed have had better success in the program,” explained Damaschino.
Many students are recently houseless and need help finding employment that can secure stable housing. However, Stone Soup designed programs for anyone with employment barriers, including young people without any work experience, people who recently transitioned back into the workforce, or those looking to switch jobs but have limited resources. “We recently had a graduate in his 60s who wanted a career change. [He was] on a fixed income and felt worried about retirement. Now, he’s working at a retirement community as a chef. So that’s a success story for us,” remarked Damaschino. Program instructors segment the classes into three tiers, each lasting four weeks. All tiers currently have eight people learning culinary and workplace skills. Damaschino explained that they intend to grow the program’s 24-person capacity to 30 with this new location. The organization often has around 35 to 45 people waiting for a place in the program, providing a sustainable flow of participants.
The menu taught to students changes with each class and the season. “Our community meals vary in what we make. We also try to engage the participants and meet them where they’re at. In the first and second tiers, we ask what they want to learn, matching them with skills that are also going to get them jobs. Often, in the community kitchen, we’ll make lasagna or enchiladas. We always have salads, and we [make] nice soups and stews in the winter,” said Damaschino. “We tend to make meals that shelters respond to. We want to make things that kids are going to eat, and the parents are going to eat in the shelter. We want them to be nutritious and we follow the county’s guidelines, so we have a dietitian that we work with.”
As Stone Soup transitions into this new space, they hope to build the same level of community integration they developed in their years downtown. “We partner with our community. So, if we had too many onions, we would offer them to other nonprofits in the area. People were giving us food, and we were giving them food. We want to make ourselves visible and useful,” explained Damaschino. The group works to avoid food waste and shares practice meals when they have a surplus by allowing participants to take food back home to their communities.
In addition to a core group of instructors who came to the program from culinary or social services professions, Stone Soup relies on ten to 20 volunteers per week who distribute prepared meals to the customer organizations. Damaschino explained that they intend to keep growing their educational offering, filling the gaps in Portland’s food-related employment sector. “We want to see Stone Soup as the premier workforce training program. All the culinary schools are gone from the area,” remarked Damaschino. She feels Portland has a significant need for what this organization can offer the community. People can already see weekday activity in the storefront now and should expect to see the cafe open in March.
