Volunteers of America Wyoming & Montana will be opening the doors on Sheridan's newest solution for dinner planning, Catering for a Cause. The venture is a new idea in social enterprise, a model that is gaining momentum as the economy continues to weaken. Volunteers of America will be providing certificate training in the food services industry to its clients, while providing generous and nutritious meals to individuals, businesses, and events in the community. “We serve hundreds of clients in 23 programs at Volunteers of America Wyoming & Montana. You would be shocked at the percentage of these individuals who do not have the skills necessary to gain employment in our community,”said Heath Steel, vice president of operations at VOA.
“Catering for a Cause provides a value-added service to our clients through essential training in food services, transactional accounting, and customer service. This is a tremendous opportunity to empower our clients,” he added. “We will give them the training they need to begin taking on life themselves. This is a win-win for everyone in the community.” Catering for a Cause will begin serving dinners in December, and will add boxed lunches, specialty trays, and event catering beginning in February. The service will be available Monday through Friday, excluding holidays.
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“We will begin offering take-home family-style dinners to the residents of Sheridan beginning on Dec. 1st,” according to Executive Chef Kellie Carroll. “We believe we offer a very well-done, nutritious product at a reasonable value to families and individuals on the go. We are also excited to begin our lunch program to continue teaching our clients new techniques in food preparation and time management,” Carroll said. “This will help our clients to gain the training needed to go out in our community to work in food services.”
Volunteers of America Community Affairs Director PJ Treide said that food donations to the Community Shelter and their pantry would not be used for Catering for a Cause. “We will be ordering all of our food items for Catering for a Cause through Food Services of America and we hope to build relationships in the summertime with some community gardens as well,” Treide said. “Any income earned from this program will be used to support the 23 programs we offer in Wyoming and Montana.”
Orders can be made by calling at least a day in advance to 673-4685. Questions and bid requests for specialty trays and event catering can be e-mailed to c4ac@voawymt.org.