Marketing a Bakery Business

Lemon and Allspice Cookery (the Cookery) is a wholesale bakery and catering business. It began in 1998 with a grant from the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services. The parents of a young woman with an intellectual disability were the driving force behind the project. They parlayed their daughter's skills at baking and selling cookies at a service agency snack bar into a legal business partnership that took in seven more disabled people. These eight have a leadership role in the business that includes decision making at monthly partnership meetings.

The partners are also the Cookery's core laborers, working in shifts to produce baked goods, sandwiches, and bag lunches as well as fruit, vegetable, and cheese trays. They deliver the goods personally using public transit. Customers include a core sympathetic market: community living associations, church and community groups, friends, and neighbors. The kitchen operates 35 hours per week plus some weekends. The partners each work 15 to 20 hours per week. A support worker and job coach work alongside them. Their salaries are paid by government grants.

The Cookery is supported in its ongoing evolution by a nonprofit cooperative corporation called Common Ground. Comprised of interested community members, its goal is to use members'collective wisdom to advance this approach to employment for more people with intellectual disabilities. On the co-op's list of concerns is the fact that, under Ontario's current income benefits program, the Cookery's partners are not allowed to earn more than $160 per month without a 75 percent “clawback” to their income.

A-Way Express is a courier service run by psychiatric survivors. It opened its doors in June 1987 following a feasibility study that generated start-up and initial operating funds. By 2001, the business had grown to 45 couriers, 17 part-time office staff, and more than 1,200 customer accounts. While it began as a worker cooperative, the company currently operates on a combination of revenues generated from its service and grants from the Ontario Ministry of Health. Couriers get around the city on public transit: by subway, streetcar, and bus. Many of their customers are located in government offices and nonprofit organizations, but over half are in the private sector. Couriers work part-time on commission.

Especially during the late 1990s, A-Way Express both contributed to and was supported by the work of the Ontario Council of Alternative Businesses (OCAB). OCAB is an umbrella organization for psychiatricsurvivor-run businesses ...