Beyond profits

They're businesses, not social agencies, but their bottom line is geared to helping the needy

Mar 24, 2007 04:30 AM
Stuart Laidlaw
The Toronto Star

Miodrag Mialevic likes most of what comes with working in a kitchen – the smells, the sounds, the creativity, the chance to taste different foods every day.

But there are things he doesn't like, things made all the worse by his clinical depression, such as teasing about his condition or bosses who don't seem to care.

"There was not much sympathy," Mialevic says of restaurants he has worked at in the past.

In the hurly-burly of a fast-paced commercial kitchen, niceties can sometimes fall by the wayside under the pressure of getting good food to hurried wait staff, he says.

Mialevic is now at the Raging Spoon, a catering service run by and for people with mental health conditions. It teaches them to work in a restaurant and to take on more responsibility for the food being produced.

For more see: http://www.thestar.com/Life/article/194656