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Kula Café has successfully graduated and placed their first group of students in Asbury Park restaurants.

Situated in the Springwood Center on Springwood Avenue, the restaurant is both a community café and a job training program.

Local youth who face “profound obstacles to employment,” like lack of education and having children of their own, are given hands-on service industry training at the café, according to Roger Boyce, director of the city’s Business Development Center [BDC].

The first group of four students began the training program on March 1. All have now been successfully placed in restaurants within Asbury Park, said Boyce, who still checks in on them from time to time.

“The beauty is you see a transformation before your eyes of these kids that come in here,” Boyce said. “The transformation is mind-blowing.”

The BDC is also headquartered in the Springwood Center and owned by local non-profit group Interfaith Neighbors, Boyce said. Interfaith Neighbors partnered with local restaurateur Marilyn Schlossbach, owner of several Shore-area restaurants including Langosta Lounge, Dauphin Grille and Pop’s Garage in Asbury Park, to bring the Kula Café to realization.

Kula provides a sixteen week hospitality-focused training program to students who wish to work in front-of-house positions as servers, bussers, runners, and hosts, within area restaurants, Boyce said.

Participants receive four weeks of life and employment skills training; eight weeks of hands-on training in the Kula Café; and a final four weeks of paid placement in a partnering restaurant where they can demonstrate the skills they have learned in the program.

During the paid placement, Boyce checks in with students and restaurant owners weekly. It is one of the key factors to the program’s success, he said.

“A portion of their life is a struggle,” Boyce said. “In here, it is a positive environment. So when they leave the Kula Café, they do lose a bit of that positive environment when they are in the workforce. That’s why that follow-up is so über critical.”

Wendolynne Escobedo [pictured at top], general manager of the Kula Café, also sees the transformations that take place as one of the program’s biggest benefits.

“Coming into the program they are very quiet, they’re not making eye contact when they talk to people,” she said. “Kevin was probably our best example, he was very quiet and shy and then towards the end of the program, we couldn’t get him to close his mouth.”

Neptune resident James Belcher [seated at left in photo above] and Kenneth Morgan [seated at right] of Ocean Township met at the café to discuss business.

“The service was OK,” Belcher said. “You can tell they are still in-training.”

Both are return customers to the restaurant and have had different servers every time, so they are unable to judge the progress of any one server, but say the food at the restaurant is always good.

One of the current participants in the program, 20-year-old Neptune resident Ibn Bahaweston [standing in photo above], thinks the program is challenging but considers himself a “people person” and loves talking to customers, he said.

Bahaweston is one of five students who will soon complete the second stage of the program and take on a paid placement in an area restaurant.

“I don’t want to leave [the program], but I know I have to,” he said.

Kula Café is located at 1201 Springwood Ave. Hours are 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, but they are looking to expand their hours in July. They serve an array of healthy food options at reasonable prices for both dine-in and take-out.

For more information, contact Heather Schulze or Weldolyn Escobedo at 732-455-0514.

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