Street Fare is a social entrepreneurship venture established in 2011 by the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless. At its beginning, it is a cupcakery that bakes gourmet mini-cupcakes for sale at the Boulder County Farmer’s Markets as well as by special order. The program aims to create a truer sense of community through the structures of trade and business by employing and training clients of shelter services to enrich and engage our shared community.
Street Fare operates from within the hearth of the Boulder Shelter in its professional grade kitchen. The kitchen produces roughly 75,000 meals over the course of a winter season, but sits unused during the day when the shelter is closed for services between 8am and 4pm. This is when the baking happens! The ovens fire up, the burners alight and the mixer whirls up the best icing this side of the Mississippi. Just as the kitchen transforms from dining hall to gourmet bakery, Street Fare transforms the baking-impaired, into culinary whizzes working towards the perfect cupcake. They learn about the science of baking and how to organize a kitchen as they battle the finicky worlds of cake making, caramel, ingredient sourcing, sales and marketing. Imaginations are challenged to come up with new flavor compositions that will keep customers drooling. Most importantly they focus on team work, accountability and how good it feels to be proud of a job well done.
These skills are real and marketable, but sometime that feels beside the point. The utility of what is gained through work with Street Fare is often overshadowed by the lessons and love that is shared. It is rare that a social entrepreneurship venture so boldly transgresses class lines: the poorest and most outcast citizens producing gourmet items for sale at Boulder’s expensive social hub. The contrasts and frictions that arise are, at times, uncomfortable, but have proven interesting, worthy and even beautiful in their experience and contemplation. It is odd that the notoriously trendy cupcake is providing a safe platform over which people can commune, but it is undeniable. As people from all backgrounds satisfy their pallets, they also come together in support of the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, as an institution and as a group of people. Boulder is a small city that has the resources and opportunity to form a family all its own and Street Fare enables everyone, if nothing else, to come to the table and share a bite or two. Host Nikki Kayser spoke with Sarah Haas and Timothy John.
