[Danielle Balocca]: Hey Medford Bites listeners, I'm really excited to present today's interview as it combines a few of my favorite things. Coffee, the public library, and inclusivity. I also want to give a quick birthday shout out to my son Cole who turns six on Friday. Happy birthday Cole. If you want a birthday shout out on the podcast, you can email me at medfordpod at gmail.com. Hope you enjoy the episode. Hi, thank you both so much for meeting with me today. If we could start just by introducing yourself so you could say your name and your pronouns and just a bit about who you are.
[Dina Caloggero]: Hi, my name is Carol Nigro, and I'm the founder and CEO of Chapters Coffee Carts in Medford. We're a new nonprofit company that has come to the Medford area. and we will be setting up a supported worksite in the new Medford Public Library in the near future. Our mission of our company is to set up supportive worksites in local communities to provide an opportunity for all individuals, regardless of their race, color, identity, skills, abilities, to have a safe place to work and earn a paycheck. We started about two years ago with an idea of building a company such as this. And two years later, we're happy to see it finally coming to life.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: I'm Heather McKinnon, pronouns she, her, hers. And I am the president of the board of directors of Chapters Coffee Carts. I have been on board for about a year and have been through a lot of the nitty gritty of getting us up and running. I am the mom of a child with autism and other associated diagnoses. Um, he is actually what brought me two chapters. He was a student of miss Carol's and, um, pardon me. We always say it's because of Henry that we managed to get together and accomplish this, um, great, great project and bring it to fruition. Um, we're just absolutely delighted that we have. secured the space and the library and that this sort of love child idea has come to life and that we're doing it.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great. So before we dig into some of those things that you brought up, it's prompted a few questions for me, but I'm wondering if, so every episode I ask guests to answer the same question, which is, what is your favorite place to eat in Medford and what do you like to eat there?
[Dina Caloggero]: Well, since COVID, we've been not eating out a lot, but we have had an opportunity to discover new takeout places in Medford. And one of our favorites is Iris's restaurant. I believe they're on Salem Street. And we love their subs and their pasta dishes. It was really a great find for us.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's a new one. I haven't heard about that one before. Maybe it's not new, but it's new to me. So thanks for sharing.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: I like nappies. It's in my old neighborhood where I have my first home here in Medford. And so I like to get the lemon, basically pasta limon. And it's just absolutely delicious with their homemade pasta.
[Danielle Balocca]: Mappies is also on Salem Street too. So we talked about chapters that, and it sounds like you're starting up at the library soon. Carol, you mentioned, you called it a supported worksite. Could you describe what that is? What does that mean?
[Dina Caloggero]: A supported worksite means that we will set up accommodations for our employees. So if an employee needs a checklist by the register to do the job, we'll put the checklist there and we'll train them how to do that checklist and how to incorporate it into their job skills. We also have students from Medford High School who will be coming over to join us. And they will be bringing support staff with them to kind of ease them into working in a public setting. And again, they'll set up accommodations. Some of our students may not be able to put on their aprons correctly. So we can break that down step-by-step and show them, train them, teach them how to do that and hopefully become independent in all skills that they need to work in a cafe.
[Danielle Balocca]: Sounds like breaking down some of those barriers that might prevent some folks from working in a less supportive environment.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: And we're doing it on a more macro level as well, where we're, providing job applications, job interviews, really trying to prep our future employees for entering into the broader workforce. So we're trying to, we're really trying to ready our employees for a pipeline into the broader Medford system of businesses.
[Danielle Balocca]: I imagine that will or does already involve creating relationships with those businesses and kind of connecting, using this as a stepping stone for folks to get employed in other businesses.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: Yes, we're hoping that through our connections, through relationship building, that we will be able to create a pipeline for our employees once they're ready to join the broader workforce.
[Danielle Balocca]: What other hopes do you have for your employees or for this program?
[Dina Caloggero]: We hope to give them an opportunity to earn a paycheck, to become more viable in the community, to feel like they are a part of the community. And what better place than the library such a central location for Medford. It's just, it's a great, great location to be a part of the community. And again, we hope to give them experience, confidence so that they can move further out into the community. It's our hope that by creating relationships with other local Medford businesses, with perhaps some of the food businesses, Dunkin' Donuts or some of the other food services in Medford Square, that they perhaps can see our employees working at the library and say, hey, we have a opening at our store. Would you like to come work for us now that you have that experience?
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: And just to build upon that, you know, people with disabilities are entitled to be taxpaying citizens. And we are hoping to enable that by giving opportunities that maybe aren't available to them to begin with. So we want to support them in their training in order to lift them up and get them into the pipeline of the workforce.
[Danielle Balocca]: I think it's so impressive what you've been able to accomplish during a pandemic. And I wonder, um, Heather, you talked a little bit about a personal drive for this project and, um, Carol, I'm wondering like, what's, what kind of drove you to, to start this organization?
[Dina Caloggero]: We about two years ago, we were, you know, just thinking my husband and I were thinking in our heads, wouldn't it be nice to have a coffee shop in Medford in we could hire people with disabilities to come work for us. And at that time, it was just a thought. And then we learned about this new public library coming to Medford and we discovered that there was going to be a cafe space in the library. So the two kind of connected and we saw that opportunity and we just couldn't pass it by. It was just such a great chance to be able to find that location and to be able to work at the library. So we created Chapters Coffee Carts specifically to be in this location. And we've spent two years building the company. It's taken a lot of work. There were times We almost stopped, but we forged ahead. The pandemic naturally has caused everything to be delayed. The library has been delayed opening. We're finding now getting supplies for our own shop is a challenge. But again, we just kept going. We never gave up. And COVID has definitely put a twist into all of our planning, all of our timelines, getting licenses, getting certificates, everything's been delayed. But we never gave up. And here we are today, hiring our first employees.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's really exciting. I've heard that food service can be kind of a highly regulated business. So I'm sure there's like, there were some sort of bureaucratic hoops to jump through. I wonder about like any sort of, I think a theme of this podcast tries to be about inclusivity, right? And so, and certainly everywhere there are barriers to that. And I wonder if there have been any barriers for you all in terms of starting a business that is so intentionally inclusive. I wonder about sort of the stigma that we can experience around people with disabilities, if any of that's come up for you.
[Dina Caloggero]: Not really. Once we introduced what we wanted to do to our Medford community, people came on board and were so excited and so supportive. This is something that Medford wants. Their support has been unbelievable. We have over 1,000 people now following us on Facebook. So in that regard, I think as a community, it's something that everybody wanted. But again, just working through all the legal aspects, all the rules and regulations, that was our our hardest hurdles to overcome.
[Danielle Balocca]: It's great to hear. Heather, would you add anything?
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: I would just say that we put out a petition while we were getting close to the RFP process, the request for proposals for the actual library space. And we have over 650 signatures there as well. And of course, you get different people who sign on to a petition than you do who follow you on Facebook or Instagram or what have you. So the overwhelming support of this community has been really outstanding and has made it really easy to forge forward even during the harder times.
[Danielle Balocca]: It's great to hear. Is there anything that like it would help for folks to know how they could continue to support chapters? Are there anything that you need from the community in terms of support for the next sort of phase?
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: So what we are doing is we're actually putting together, one thing we're putting together is an Amazon wishlist for supplies and things like that. Carol, you had, you were going to say something and I cut you off, I apologize.
[Dina Caloggero]: that's okay as a nonprofit. we're always trying to find donations or supplies. Anything that can help. With help support our coffee cart as a nonprofit it's not our intention to make money, the money that all the money that we do make is. supplied back into the business.
[Danielle Balocca]: Have you decided what type of coffee you're going to serve?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yes.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: Our coffee is such a great question, Danielle. Thank you for asking.
[Dina Caloggero]: Mr. Coffee Roasters from Medford has agreed to make our own special library blend for the library. So we're excited to bring that to our coffee stand.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's really exciting to me. I love their coffee. I was so sad when they stopped serving it at the actual shop, but now we can just go to the library and get it, it sounds like. So I can put a link in our show notes to your Amazon wishlist, if that's helpful. And I'm wondering if you have any idea of when you'll open in the library.
[Dina Caloggero]: No specific date, but it most likely will be in April or right at the beginning of May. So pretty soon.
[Unidentified]: Wow.
[Dina Caloggero]: So exciting.
[Danielle Balocca]: Is there anything else that you both, either of you want to make sure to mention about chapters?
[Dina Caloggero]: We're just, we're very excited to be starting up and we can't wait for the Medford community to come out and come have a good cup of coffee and a great experience visiting us in the new library.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: We're really excited about bringing this to the community and to showcase our talent as well. I think it's going to be a really wonderful, wonderful opportunity for everyone.
[Danielle Balocca]: I can't wait to see it and in person. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about it. I can direct people to your Facebook page and to the wish list. And hopefully we'll be able to see it all in person soon.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: Thank you so much.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Thank you so much to Carol and Heather. As I stated a few times during the interview, I'm really excited to visit Chapters, the library, as soon as possible. Links to ways to support Chapters can be found in today's show notes. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. And as always, if you have feedback about this episode or ideas for future episodes, you can email medfordpod at gmail.com. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast never bites