“If we can get our foot in the door,’’ said Lyndia Downie, president, “people are surprised that the food is as good as it is and the people are as professional as they are.’’
Businesses such as iCater are popping up more and more as nonprofits look for new ways to help pay for their programs, said Alnoor Ebrahim, a professor at Harvard Business School’s Social Enterprise Initiative. DC Central Kitchen, a Washington meal service and job training program for the poor, also runs a catering business. Catholic Charities in New Orleans operates a restaurant.
The trend, in part, is the result of an economic downturn that hurt fund-raising, but increased demand for services, said Ebrahim.
For Pine Street, which also runs a social enterprise business that provides home repair and maintenance services to homeowners and nonprofits to support a handyman training program, the challenge is keeping the focus on providing social services, Ebrahim said.
“It creates a more difficult job,’’ he said, “because the board has to be able to keep the mission first and foremost and also balance the nonprofit work with the for-profit work.’’
The real test, he added, is: “Will their trainees get jobs that will help them climb out of poverty?’’
The year-old corporate catering enterprise builds on Pine Street’s institutional food service operation, which provides meals to detox centers, halfway houses, and other nonprofits. Together, the culinary enterprises bring in about $1 million a year to provide job training for people in Pine Street Inn’s transitional programs and housing units, or those referred by other social service agencies. Pine Street is hoping to double the catering business and expand the size of its training program, which serves about 100 people a year.
