Despite sagging sales and a change in store ownership, low-income youth employees who were receiving job training at Evanston’s Ben & Jerry’s will not be left out in the cold.
The ice cream shop, located at 1634 Orrington Ave., opened in March 2003 as a joint effort between Ben & Jerry’s and YJC Enterprises, a non-profit organization formed by Evanston’s Youth Job Center to hire and train local high school students struggling to find jobs. Although many people involved with the venture call the job training program a success, the shop never became financially stable and YJC Enterprises was forced to sell the store, said Ralph Segall, a board member at the Youth Job Center.
“We opened the store largely because we wanted to help find employment opportunities for at-risk youth,” Segall said. “But we didn’t bet on Borders moving, we didn’t bet on the Orrington Hotel remodeling, and we didn’t bet on the two cool summers.”
However, the end of YJC Enterprises’ involvement with the store will not mean the end of job training for current employees, said Bhasker Patel, who bought the store in November along with his cousin, Mike Patel. The men own two other suburban Ben & Jerry’s locations.
The student employees “are going to keep working,” Bhasker Patel said. “We’re going to keep training them here.”
The Patels’ decision to continue training young employees makes YJC Enterprises’ decision to sell the store less painful, said Ann Jennett, who founded the Youth Job Center in 1983 and served as its executive director.
“A lot of the kids got a lot out of it,” she said. “It’s a learning process for all of us.”
Ben & Jerry’s, which regularly joins with non-profit groups to open franchises as part of its PartnerShop program, was impressed with YJC Enterprises’ enthusiasm despite its small size, said Chrystie Heimert, director of public relations at Ben & Jerry’s.
“It was tough to say no,” she said. “I think we may have overlooked some issues about feasibility, particularly their financial situation and what they could afford to do. We waive the franchise fee, but they still have to have significant resources available.”
With the training program intact and new ownership taking over, Jonathan Perman, executive director of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce, said it is possible to view the change in ownership as a “glass half-full” situation.
“They’re not going out of business,” Perman said. “From the consumers’ standpoint, there’s no difference. There’s still a Ben & Jerry’s.”
Reach Ryan Haggerty at [email protected].
