The NFL Players Coalition and Stand Together Foundation teamed up with Café Momentum, to bring a unique gourmet food truck to the Super Bowl, at Radio Row and the NFL Experience, and provided free food samples to NFL Superbowl team members, staff, media, and attending fans

The meal was prepared and served by graduates and Ambassadors of the Momentum program giving attendees the opportunity to meet young people who landed in the juvenile system and witness what they can accomplish with the right support and opportunities.

 The statistics are stunning: while the State of Texas’ recidivism rate among juvenile delinquents is 48.3 percent, the rate among Café Momentum participants is 15.2 percent.

“When kids exit the juvenile justice system, they lack the support and resources they need to be successful. Our model has proven that when communities build a system of support around a young person, our youth can achieve their full potential,” said Chad Houser, CEO and Founder of Café Momentum and Momentum Advisory Collective. “We are honored to take part in the Super Bowl again this year in partnership with the Players Coalition and Stand Together Foundation. We are spreading awareness of the failures of our nation’s juvenile justice system by offering a better way to transform the lives of justice-impacted youth.”

The partners have hosted previous events with NFL athletes and Legends including a pop-up dinner in Miami for Super Bowl LIV and a pop-up food truck and black carpet dinner for Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles.  

 
The Momentum model was co-created with the youth it serves, and the vision is to inspire a new model for youth justice. Of a recent cohort of youth, zero percent have been adjudicated or reconvicted. These youth are gaining life skills, education, and employment opportunities to help them lead lives of meaning and contribution.

“The future of all American youth matters. Too many of our young people don’t have the leaders or support they need for success. This is even more prevalent with our juvenile justice system,” said Shaun Alexander, NFL Legend and Stand Together Ambassador.

 “Café Momentum has created one of the most positive, influential models I’ve seen for justice-impacted youth. They are creating a family for the kids in the juvenile justice system and the results are winning their futures. I believe this can change the juvenile justice system and like I’ve said before, my goal is to have a Café Momentum in all NFL cities. Activating at the Super Bowl is a step closer to making that a reality. ”

“Players Coalition is honored to collaborate with like-minded organizations like Café Momentum to host this event,” said Anquan Boldin, Players Coalition Co-founder, 2015 Walter Payton Man of the Year and Super Bowl XLVII Champion.

This program is proving that, when given the proper support from the community, the sky is the limit for these young and talented individuals. I’m inspired by what the young men and women at Café Momentum have achieved, and by what the program’s model could mean for the many justice-impacted young people across the country.” said Alice Marie Johnson, CEO of Taking Action for Good (TAG), Criminal Justice Reform Advocate, and Stand Together Ambassador.

https://standtogetherfoundation.org/news/nfl-inspire-change-players-coalition-cafe-momentum-and-stand-together-foundation-host-super-bowl-food-truck-pop-up-and-activation-to-build-national-awareness-a/

I learned about this by listening to Mike Rowe's podcast, as he interviewed the multi year Best Chef of Dallas award winner, and restaurant owner, Chad Houser. 

It takes about an hour to listen to, but I recommend you stick with it, it's amazing what Chef Houser accomplished when he realized he could enable kids in juvie, in jail, etc to have a reason, purpose, passion, and career path the instant they get out of jail. 

Returning to civilian life without a opportunity to avoid the problems that land you in jail, is one reason most convicts are headed back to jail in less than 3 years. 77% do. 

For teens, some problems are worse, as they can't get a job (due to age) anyway, and to simply have meals and a place to sleep, some have found it easier to stay in the jail system. 

Mentoring works. The apprenticeship program works. It's life changing. 

The program started with an ice cream competition, judged by the public, and a teen who was in jail won, OVER the culinary school students. He simply made better tasting ice cream... and so began the interest of this chef, who made it his goal to help the teens, and face it - society in general, because if jailed teens don't get a lifeline out of the problems that put them in jail, they'll create kids with out a parenting team, and those theoretical kids are far more likely to be doomed to all the social problems that will cause them to end up in jail. Parenting is damn important, and my life is an example that being a kid of divorced parents, makes succeeding in this challenging world, much harder than it is for kids with a set of parents who are involved in trying to set their kids up for success in careers, relationships, etc. 

https://embeds.audioboom.com/publishing/playlist/v4?boo_content_type=channel&data_for_content_type=5060313#Give%20the%20Children%20Knives%20and%20Fire
https://cafemomentum.org/about/

Chef Houser launched a series of pop-up dinners beginning June 2011. One Sunday a month, he took these juveniles into a top restaurant after it closed to cook and serve a four-course, private dinner. The Juvenile Department would drop them off for two hours’ training – that’s all. He sold tickets to the pop-up dinner, the first dinner sold out in less than 24 hours, and many who attended said, “This could be my son.” The stereotype was broken. Now, they sell out in seconds, at $100 a plate.

Café Momentum gets teens out of the Dallas County Juvenile Department and they stay for a year’s paid internship, which includes employment, education, life skills, and case management and mental health services.

Two examples out of many reveal the power of Café Momentum. One young man, who completed the program in April 2016, became the first-ever, high school graduate of his family. He attended Richland College and won an award from NASA as a summer intern. Now, he is obtaining a degree from the University of Texas at Arlington to prepare him to pursue a career with NASA.

Another young lady was homeless at the time she came to Café Momentum and had no family support. She later graduated magna cum laude at El Centro and is now a medical assistant at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas.

https://www.traditionseniorliving.com/inspiring-people-chad-houser/

Every meal of fresh, locally sourced, new American cuisine at Café Momentum is prepared and served by young people involved in the program under the guidance of award-winning chefs. 

Restaurant work is hard. New employees at Café Momentum often start washing dishes, but Houser insists, “Dishwasher is the most important job—it impacts all of us.”

I believe he stated in the podcast with Mike Rowe, that 85% of chefs started at dish washers, and 90% of restaurant owners did too. It wouldn't surprise anyone that everyone in the restaurant business, got started with washing dishes. (in grade school, 4-8th grades, our school kitchen had a help the cook week, and you know - it was doing dishes, and cleaning tables) 

The year long Momentum internship starts with a six day orientation that results in a ServSafe certification. Interns are paired with case managers to identify needs and set goals. While they work their way through all areas of the restaurant, case managers help interns schedule financial education, parenting classes, and career exploration. 

Café Momentum has it's own high school, where every single one of the interns, if they have not already graduated through our high school, are currently in this high school and on track to graduate. It  went from a 54 percent dropout rate to 100 percent attending and/or graduating high school rate. Yes, this Chef has a high school, and it's more effective than public school!

More than 60,000 youth under age 18 are incarcerated in U.S. juvenile prisons on any given day. About four times that many youth are placed on probation each year. And most of those young people aren’t receiving education and training, work experience, mentors, or even someone who'll be helpful and supportive. 

In the state of Texas, it costs $127,000 to lock up a juvenile, with a 50/50 chance that you’re going to do it again in 12 months. 

There was a study done several years ago that shows the financial impact is between $1.7 million and $2.3 million. 

That doesn’t include the cost of the victim, and it doesn’t include the cost to perpetuate that cycle from generation to generation. 

Of the more than 1,000 youth that have been in the Café Momentum restaurant and chef program, it's roughly saved Dallas taxpayers over $40 million by getting teens out of juvie, and jails, and keeping them out by changing the course of their lives.

This is a proven example that shows how money that is budgeted to incarcerate youth in our county, could simply be invested in them instead, at half the amount, and result in something far better and far more enriching for the community, less costly for taxpayers, and game changing in terms of crime, suicide, divorce rate, etc. 

No doubt the Boy Scouts have a similar positive impact

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanderark/2022/11/15/how-a-dallas-restaurant-became-a-national-youth-development-system/?sh=280b8fbc7dc7

is a 6-year-old, award-winning restaurant, consistently been ranked as one of the top restaurants in Dallas since the day we opened our doors. And we take a lot of pride in that, because it proves that our staff can and will rise to whatever level of expectation is set for them, as long as we’re giving them the tools, resources, and opportunity.

Over the course of those 12 months, they end up working their way through every station in the restaurant. They will spend time being a dishwasher, a prep cook, a line cook, a bus, or a server host or hostess, and a food runner. 

We ran a special on a Saturday night recently and we told the interns, “Whoever sells the most specials gets a free entrée at the end of the night.” Well, one young man sold us out of every single special we had in the first 45 minutes we were open. Here’s the catch, he wasn’t even waiting tables. He was a busser, and he realized that he was the first point of contact with every table because he filled the water glasses. He would walk over, fill up the water, engage in small talk, employ his sales pitch. At the end of it, he would say, “So, just let your server know I told you to order the special.”

Going into the pandemic, a supporter explained the situation in the Richardson Independent School District. Their students would likely not be returning after spring break and the schools would be shutting down. 

Unfortunately over half of the student body, who looks to school as their primary source of food nutrition would be in a bind. While there are programs set up to make sure that there’s food supplemented at home during spring break, there is not a program set up for the week after spring break, and the week after, and the week after. 

So, Café Momentum was quickly converted into a food distribution hub and made food and meals for food insecure students and their families within 72 hours of that problems realization.

Over the course of the first 14 weeks of the pandemic, it produced over 350,000 meals for food insecure students in Richardson and Dallas ISDs and several other organizations across Dallas.

https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/state-of-the-american-dream/houser-creating-opportunity-for-at-risk-youth  This is President George Bush 43's organization

Now, circle back to the gourmet food trucks. Is there a simpler, small business success story, than a person who owns and operates a food truck? If it's ice cream, coffee, sandwiches, or pizza.... food trucks are just great, and they don't require investors to enable a brick and mortar restaurant. Many cooks get into gourmet food vans just for that reason, it's not as impossible as starting your own restaurant. 

Café Momentum is proving that a restaurant and a program is actually a new model for the way the juvenile justice system should operate, a model that says, “When a young person comes from trauma, and hunger, and housing insecurity, they shouldn’t be put in handcuffs and isolated and told they’re bad. They should be wrapped into an ecosystem of support. And provided tools, resources, love, an opportunity to truly achieve their full potential in life.”