More than a Job
The Story of Cameron’s Chocolate
Ellen and Jim Graham opened Cameron’s Coffee and Chocolate, a bakery and chocolate store in Fairfax, Virginia in 2013. Their mission is to employ young adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities, and Cameron’s Chocolate was inspired by their daughter Cameron’s love of baking.
“A job means much more than just a paycheck; it means self-esteem and a purpose in life.”
Today, Cameron’s Chocolate employs twenty-three young adults, and their products are featured all over the United States. A heartwarming and inspirational interview was had with co-founder Ellen Graham. You will come away with a newfound appreciation for what it means to work for a living wage and feel the pride of self-sufficiency and purpose.
The Back Story
Can you tell me the story of Cameron’s Chocolate? How did it start?
When you are 22, you age out of the public schools. For people with disabilities, there are vocational training centers, and they have all kinds of training. While Cameron, our daughter, was at one of these vocational training centers, she fell in love with baking. She had worked in a Giant grocery store, the equivalent of a big grocery store chain. She loved doing that job, and the people there loved her. She was on a self-checkout lane, and she got to help out people when they got stuck checking out their produce. But she didn’t have anybody to talk to when she went on break. At the training center, she fell in love with baking. So we went and looked at different programs for her. There were no programs that offered her the ability to make baked goods.
Chilmark Chocolates, Martha’s Vineyard
My husband said, “So how hard can it be.” Well (laugh chuckle), it was much harder than we thought, but we started in 2013 with three workers. We just celebrated our 10th anniversary, and we have 23 workers now. Along that journey, there were a lot of things that happened. First, the business would be baked goods, but when we were visiting friends in Martha’s Vineyard, a good friend told us to visit Chilmark Chocolate, which has since sold its business and no longer employs our community. They were so open and embracing.
First, we tried to go to Chilmark Chocolate in August. We drove there, and their doors were locked. We thought, “How the heck do you operate a business when it’s closed on one of the busiest months of the year?” It was explained to us later that the public transport for the workers was so crowded with tourists in August that their workers could not get there. And they (the owners of Chilmark Chocolate) felt like if their workers couldn’t get there, then they didn’t need to be there.
Cameron’s Chocolate - Fairfax, Virginia
When we finally spoke to the folks at Chilmark Chocolate, they were so helpful. They taught me how to dip chocolate and told me where to buy the equipment. They offered to share their recipes with us. We learned so many things along the way, and one of them is that there are regional tastes in chocolate. What people in New England like for their chocolate is not what people in Northern Virginia and Washington, DC, like. We had to buy a brand called Calambo which is a Belgium brand. Chillmark used a different brand. It’s differences, things that we learned along the way. That’s how we got started.
The Community Impact
What is your “cannon” moment – one thing or event that changed the direction of where you were going or was transformative?
The last ten years have been an evolution. The one thing we did that was brilliant is we hired somebody to be our store manager who knew all about restaurants – otherwise, we would have been sunk. I also hire what are known as parallel workers. I now have five teams of five workers and six job coaches because I have one backup. I employ job coaches who are supervisors of my teams, and everybody in our store does everything,
I was always so focused on my workers with disabilities, but I wasn’t thinking about the impact that I was having on the community overall. Working in a coffee shop and a bakery is the first job for many people, and women came to me from different countries, from different walks of life, and with different life stories. Some of them came to me without resumes. And you know, in the business world – you have to realize that I was a banker for twenty years before I did this – I thought everybody had a resume. Well, no, they don’t. And maybe they are not fluent in English, but the question is whether or not they would be a good part of who we are. And so I hired a bunch of people. I hired a woman who had worked at McDonald’s for five years, and they would never put her on the register because she wasn’t fluent in English. I hired another Muslim woman, and she wanted to feel comfortable wearing her head scarf and everything that went along with that. She didn’t have a resume, but somehow, over the ten years, I have gotten a feel for who wants to be a part of who we are. The most significant part of being employed in a setting like Cameron’s is that all of our workers want to be part of a larger community, and to be part of a larger community, we need to embrace everybody.
Cameron’s Bakery and Coffee Shop - Fairfax, VA
Since opening, we have donated our leftover baked goods to a local homeless shelter. The homeless shelter was literally across the street from our parking lot, and our workers would fight to be the person who could walk across the street with the tray. They got to see products they had worked so hard to make being enjoyed by somebody who might not have the money to buy them. That’s not one ah-ha moment, but it’s been more of a process for me.
“The most significant part of being employed in a setting like Cameron’s is that all of our workers want to be part of a larger community, and to be part of a larger community, we need to embrace everybody. ”
Employment is Extraordinary
As an adult invested in supporting this community of people with (intellectual disabilities), what has been your greatest challenge?
A huge challenge for us is that there is a push for people with intellectual disabilities to be paid a living wage, and there is a battle going on across our country as to what is a living wage. Many people who work in our community have part-time jobs at a grocery store, a Walmart, or other jobs like that where they work independently, like Cameron did at Giant. What happens is that as the minimum wage continues to grow with the goal of getting people with disabilities and others who are on the fringe to true financial independence – their minimum wage jobs are cut because of the increase in the hourly rate. In our state of Virginia, the minimum wage has gone from $7.25 to $12.00 an hour. Over the past couple of years, a lot of people with disabilities have lost jobs because of that.
A lot of times, we have a goal to get what we consider a fair wage, but in life, there are always unintended consequences. Everybody agrees that people with disabilities should be paid a minimum wage to help them become independent. But is it working if many of them are losing their jobs that enabled them to be independent?
Click here for part two of the interview.
More resources and information about Intellectual Disabilities to be found on the Inspiration page.