At 17, Brian Beckwood had already spent a few years on his own. Hoping to set his 20s up for success, he decided to “get (his) stuff together.”
After graduating from Evanston Township High School last spring, Beckwood lived with his grandmother temporarily before deciding to leave and look for work placement. Beckwood came across nonprofit Connections for the Homeless, which referred him to Curt’s Cafe and set him up with housing.
“I cannot name another job I’ve been to that would help me this much,” Beckwood said. “It feels like a genuine love and help from people, like a real community that really wants to help.”
Founded in 2012 by Evanston resident Susan Trieschmann, Curt’s Cafe provides a nonprofit workforce development program for young adults living in what the organization deems “at-risk situations,” according to its website. These include circumstances like recent release from incarceration or homelessness.
Program participants, or students, rotate through back-of-house and front-of-house training at one of the cafe’s two locations in Evanston and Highland Park over several months, while also receiving social services like case management, GED prep and housing assistance, said Niki Moe Horrell, the director of development at the cafe.
“You can’t be defined by the stupidest thing you ever did as a young adult, right? It’s just not fair,” Horrell said.
Beckwood began the program at Curt’s in January, joining nearly 700 young adults who have gone through the program since its founding, according to Horrell.
Horrell said the organization tries to keep its student cohorts small to support a focus on “personalized, individual needs.”
Some students who are in high school only work Saturdays. There are currently also four participants from the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, who come with their parole officers.
Horrell said the program’s three-year recidivism rate hovers at just around 5%.
Most students complete the program’s about 500 hours in a few months, receiving a $9 per hour stipend for back-of-house work and $10 for front-of-house responsibilities, she said.
Afterward, students go into a variety of fields. Some stay in food service, while others pursue trades like HVAC and construction, enlist in the military or go back to school. Some graduate from Curt’s and go onto the Youth Job Center in Evanston, where they receive more assistance with job hunting and career development.
Although Beckwood said some colleagues are more difficult to work with than others, he recognizes that everyone has had their own experiences and traumas. He pointed out that a lot of people are uncertain of the path they want to take, whether that be “the good way, the bad way, the long road, the short road.”
Despite this, he described Curt’s as being similar to a family. He said the organization has helped him get lights for his apartment, and he’s been able to talk to his manager about improving his culinary skills.
Upon joining the program, Beckwood said he “automatically took a liking to the kitchen.”
He noted that he was already familiar with front-of-house training, having previously worked at a pizzeria and Chick-fil-A. Still, he said his love for food didn’t start in food service, but at home, while observing his mother and watching cooking shows.
One afternoon, Beckwood tried his hand at cooking with cornmeal — with little success. Now, Beckwood said he plans to enroll in a culinary program in Chicago in November, where he’ll build his knife skills and learn sauce making while also earning a manager’s license.
Beckwood said applying to the program at Curt’s requires a certain intentionality.
“If you ever end up at Curt’s Cafe, it’s like a road in your life where you decide, ‘Okay, I want to do this,’” Beckwood said.
John Thomas graduated from Curt’s in the fall of 2017. He’s worked at Backlot Coffee for the last two years, and is currently the shift lead for back-of-house operations, supervising the line and making sure food is being delivered to customers in a timely manner.
Thomas says he will visit Curt’s for a free meal on occasion and said that stopping by the cafe is important to him because the program was such “a big part” of his life.
To him, the program was formative in a way that went beyond kitchen skills. He was 17 when he first walked through the doors — a teenager who, by his own admission, didn’t always make it to school.
“It’s always nice to see people that saw my potential when I was young and then see me growing into it,” Thomas said.
Behind the organization’s network of support, finances remain a constant pressure.
Executive Director Tanya Jenkins, who joined Curt’s as the interim executive director in 2024 after 20 years as an Evanston police officer, said many assume nonprofit funding simply must support programming.
That financial reality looks different for Curt’s, which also needs to maintain its cafe locations.
“We want our cafes to be profitable, but it’s difficult to get to a place of profitability when all of our students eat for free, and they eat not just one, sometimes not even just two meals a day, and food costs are continuing to rise,” Jenkins said.
Curt’s provides assistance to its students beyond free meals at the cafe, which further complicates its finances. For example, if a student is securing housing, the nonprofit will assist in furnishing and setting up their home. Students have also requested financial assistance for groceries and other daily needs, Jenkins said.
In 2024, Curt’s received a $2 million grant from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, which was split between the organization’s endowment and a renovation project at its Central Street location last year.
According to Jenkins, the cafe stayed open throughout the construction, but the noise made it hard for customers to hold a conversation, and foot traffic slowed considerably.
However, she said supporters stuck with Curt’s and have now returned to a brighter space.
The organization’s catering branch also provides a regular revenue source while offering students an opportunity to gain experience in that line of work.
Catering Manager Amy Heppner, who is approaching her 10th year at Curt’s, said the most valuable thing the program teaches is communication. Since only about half of graduates go on to work in food service, she said, learning to show up on time and call ahead when something goes wrong matters far more than culinary skills.
As she sees it, her job is to prepare students to meet the expectations of their next job. She said she avoids learning too much about students’ personal lives so she can enforce expectations around punctuality and communication to prepare students for future employers who might not have that same leniency.
“I do want to have sympathy, but I’ve also got to teach them that this isn’t what’s going to happen next time,” Heppner said. “When you leave here, when you leave this program, they’re not going to be like me.”
This forward-looking perspective shapes much of the cafe’s approach toward working with its students, as well as influencing how Curt’s defines success. The cafe prioritizes outcomes that serve student’s individual paths over completion of the program.
Curt’s ethos of supporting students in whatever way necessary is something that Thomas said he experienced firsthand nearly a decade ago.
“They never let you give up on yourself, and they never give up on you over there,” Thomas said. “It’s really important to have people around you like that when you’re growing into being a young adult.”
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