Beautiful Rainbow Café is an eatery like no other.
It’s located inside the Gadsden Public Library where it is beloved for its delicious and wholesome, made-from-scratch vegetarian dishes served in a bright, airy, inclusive space decorated with big, colorful murals. It is gourmet garden-to-table with its own organic garden in Underwood Park right across the street. And it’s a thriving, award-winning work-based learning program that helps young people with special needs and cognitive disabilities grow their social and work skills as well as their confidence and self-reliance.
It also is the first of its kind in the country—a full-service restaurant staffed entirely by students with significant learning challenges.
The idea started with a single garden bed.
I learned that when I visited for a story for Alabama News Center. You can read it here and see a cool video, too.
Café director Chip Rowan was a special education teacher for severely impacted middle school students in the Gadsden City School system, and he says, “I was … very frustrated at the outcomes we were seeing with students using traditional teaching means.” The textbooks and worksheets just weren’t reaching these kids. He knew a hands-on, active approach to lessons with practical applications would be more effective. So, this avid gardener decided to cultivate some changes.
Rowan and his students planted a garden, and the students developed their functional academic skills as they tended that garden. Soil samples became the starting point for science lessons and social studies discussions about conservation and climate change. Students honed math skills by measuring plant growth, using scales to weigh the produce, and graphing their harvest yields. A daily garden journal prompted students to write, and non-readers became readers.
Then Rowan, a skilled, self-taught chef, naturally took this to another level.
In 2015, he received a grant from the Alabama State Department of Education to fund the first-ever summer program for students with disabilities in public schools. Space at Litchfield Middle School was renovated into a commercial kitchen, and Rowan and his colleagues taught professional culinary skills there. Every Thursday, they would invite the public in to visit and taste the dishes the students had created. Former Gadsden Public Library Director Amanda Jackson was one of those visitors, and she suggested that Rowan create a real café—one that operated year-round—in a disused part of the library. Rowan envisioned something like Pie Lab in Greensboro, which, before it closed in 2020, employed teens and disadvantaged youth and fed the town’s sense of community.
After a series of grants and some renovations, Beautiful Rainbow Café opened in 2017 and was immediately embraced by the community. Today, you’ll still find lines out the door during the busy lunch service.
“I think it’s been successful on a number of levels,” Rowan says. “I think we’re successful as a program in getting students hired … in Gadsden restaurants and all kinds of places because of the expectation level we have for the students. A lot of students who are segregated in self-contained classrooms for disabilities have very few expectations being placed on them, and a lot of them even get the idea that they can’t do things—they have sort of a learned helplessness. Here, we have the expectation (that) you’re going to make crème brulee. You’re going to make eggplant parm. You’re going to learn how to do it, then you’re going to do it on your own, and people are going to come in here and pay money. So, the expectation level works with the students, and they become transformed.
“Why are we popular with the community? First, kudos to Gadsden; they’ve been so open to us. But I think when people come in here, they see the quality of the food. They see that we run a spick-and-span operation. We have consistent 100s on our health department ratings. The students are taught ServSafe techniques from the National Restaurant Association. And this is not the kind of food you typically get in Gadsden; this is a little bit elevated. So, I think because of all of those reasons we’ve been extremely successful.”
Beautiful Rainbow pulls mostly from its own organic garden for the foods served here. But they do rely upon a local community of growers for some things like the organic free-range eggs from Miller Farms, honey from Eastaboga Bee Company, and seasonal produce they don’t grow themselves from Owl’s Hollow Farm and Toad’s Leap Farm. A partnership with Etowah Garden Club puts fresh flowers on every table every day. They go to producers like King’s Olive Oil Company for the blood orange-infused olive oil in the popular carrot cake that’s topped with Dayspring Dairy caramel frosting.
The food production of the café’s seasonal menu is sophisticated. On a recent Friday after the lunch rush, chef Chris Wood instructed Mi’angel Chambers on how to use an industrial-size kitchen torch to caramelize the top of a beautiful crème brulee. Baked goods, like everything here, are made fresh daily and change from day to day.
The café has an aspirational vibe; all the dishes—like red curry butternut squash with paneer and forbidden rice—are creative and crafted with care.
A recent menu included eggplant parmigiana made with eggplants from the park garden and a house-made gluten-free topping; savory quiche with a homemade crust, organic eggs, a variety of cheeses, and freshly picked veggies; locally famous homemade pimento cheese on whole wheat sauteed in butter; black bean, local corn, and smoked Gouda quesadillas; a Greek salad that’s currently summer-perfect with fresh watermelon, local lettuces and herbs, cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, red onions, black olives, organic vinaigrette, and homemade cheese crackers; and vegan Beyond Meat burgers and meatloaf. There’s orange blossom lemonade, herbal iced tea with an exclusive blend from Tea Town Alabama, and Mama Mocha’s artisan French press coffee.
Students working here do everything—they greet the customers, take food orders, run the point of sale, make the meals, craft the pastries, and wait on tables. Their academic skills like math and reading find practical applications each time they follow a recipe. Every customer interaction builds social skills and confidence; each meal prepped and cooked is work experience. Their ServSafe training prepares them for a variety of culinary-related jobs. The students learn how to save and manage money with the wages they earn, and their success builds their sense of self-worth.
Rowan, who teaches at Gadsden City High School, works with case managers to identify students who would benefit from working at the café. These are students who might otherwise be overlooked and thus underserved. The café offers them a place to discover and nourish their potential. Rowan is retiring soon but says there’s a plan in place for Beautiful Rainbow to continue to shine.
Beautiful Rainbow is supported by Alabama Power Foundation, United Way of Etowah County, Alabama Cooperative Extension System, and others. “The Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama has been critical to our success both in granting us money for start-up and other things,” Rowan says. “They also administer our payroll for us. That’s huge. It’s very important … that the students are paid because they’re working. They deserve to be paid. And it also opens up another avenue for us to teach finances and financial literacy.”
The program has earned statewide and national acclaim. Governor Kay Ivey awarded Beautiful Rainbow the Governor’s Seal for excellence in work-based learning as well as the 2019 Partnership of the Year Award for the program’s exceptional efforts in recruiting and hiring people with disabilities.
The mission of the Beautiful Rainbow program has always been to help its young people live independent lives, to teach them academic and interpersonal skills that will gain them employment and encourage them to become valuable, contributing members of their communities. The program focuses on a population that is often marginalized in schools, in the workforce, and in society.
“To see people transformed from being in a segregated situation where people maybe think they’re ‘less than’ to seeing them shine in an environment like this—in the public where, like I said before, people are coming in and paying money for their work. We’re proud of that,” Rowan says.
To date, more than 55 young people have found employment in the community because of their work at Beautiful Rainbow. They work in other restaurants, hospital cafeterias, and school cafeterias all over Gadsden.
“But also, recently, there’s been a trend among colleges and universities to open up post-secondary programs for students with significant intellectual disabilities,” Rowan says.
So, a couple of his students are going to college.
Chris Underwood, who works as a chef at Beautiful Rainbow (and has mastered the beloved carrot cake) is attending Auburn University’s EAGLES program (Education to Accomplish Growth in Life Experiences for Success). “It’s very selective,” Rowan says. “And his area of interest is culinary. Auburn is an excellent place for that, and he is going to be working at The Laurel, which is on top of the Culinary Center, this coming semester. So, that’s been a great success. He wants to be a chef. He is very ‘chef-y.’ I can tell you that.”
And Isaiah McFarlin is headed to the University of Alabama’s CrossingPoints program where he will be studying sports management. “It’s another highly competitive program,” Rowan says. “We’re seeing that because of the work experience our students have, because of their social skills and financial skills as a result of their work in this program, they are great candidates for that kind of honor.”
But Rowan says there’s something else he’s proud of, too.
Someone “with a heart for people with special needs” once told him: “‘You have normalized being around people with disabilities.’ So, if we have done that, then that’s a big accomplishment,” Rowan says. “If we have made people comfortable working with and associating with people with disabilities, then I think that’s a huge success.”
Inside the Gadsden Public Library
254 S. College St.
Gadsden, AL 35901
256-390-1999
Hours:
Lunch served Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.
Afternoon coffee, tea, and sweets until 5 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and until 3 p.m. on Friday.
Beautiful Rainbow Peanut Butter Granola Bars
Put 2 ½ cups of oats in a bowl.
Add 1 cup chopped pecans, 1 cup chopped cashews, ½ cup pistachios, ½ cup chopped almonds, ½ cup chopped walnuts, ½ cup roasted peanuts. (You can substitute nuts for ones you prefer as long as the total amount stays the same.)
Add ¼ cup flaxseeds and ½ cup sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds.
Add 1 cup dried cherries and 1 cup golden raisins. (You can substitute other dried fruit.)
In a pot on the stove, melt together 1 cup of honey, 2 cups of peanut butter, and ¼ teaspoon of almond extract (optional).
Pour honey mixture into the oat and nut mixture and mix well.
Put mixture in a baking dish lined with parchment paper and sprayed with nonstick spray. Press mixture evenly in pan.
Let mixture set in a cool place for about an hour.
Using parchment paper edges as handles, lift out of pan and cut into bars.
savor 