We recently connected with Valerie Herskowitz and have shared our conversation below.
Valerie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Any advice for creating a more inclusive workplace?
For the past 10 years, The Chocolate Spectrum has been offering apprenticeship style training for teens and adults with autism and other developmental disabilities. These classes help to train the individual not only in learning to make pastries and chocolate, but opportunities for customer service, packing and shipping, learning organizational strategies for success in the workplace, and business social skills. In December 2022, we launched a new program called Sweet Inclusion Program. This program is offered to not only students with special needs, but also typically developing students as well. This program offers the opportunity for Teens and Young Adults both with developmental disabilities, and those without to learn to work together in a real workplace.
Many people with special needs have limited life skills resulting in isolation from the community, including few social interactions and high unemployment. Yet a growing body of research indicates that learning alongside typically developing (neurotypical or NT) peers can significantly expand this target group’s life skills while also promoting awareness/appreciation of differently abled people by NT community members. We have experienced firsthand the effects of including former apprentices in The Chocolate Spectrum retail workplace, engaging with community members and our NT lead instructor. The Sweet Inclusion Program responds to these community needs and benefits.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
In 1993, my life was about to change course in a matter of a blink of an eye. At that time I was a young mother, with two children, as well as a speech, pathologist, working in the community of special needs. My oldest son, Hunter, was four years old at the time. As a speech pathologist, I recognized that his speech and language was not developing properly, and at the age of one years old, I had begun working with him to develop appropriate speech and language. It was a success story. However, my other son, Blake, who was two years old at the time. was not developing appropriate speech and language, and was not responding as well as his older brother Hunter had to intervention. He was making some progress, just not the type I would’ve suspected. Family members were urging me to get him to a professional who could help me figure out what the problem was, however, being a professional in the developmental, disabilities world, I thought I knew best. Finally, I made an appointment to see a developmental pediatrician. And in that day, and July, 1993, Blake was diagnosed with autism. And the course of my life changed in a very dramatic way. My life at that point became Autism 24/7. I lived and worked with autism. All through the years, I noticed there were lags in services for this population. When Blake was three, I couldn’t find any recreational programs for him, so I started a special-needs gymnastics program at a local gymnasium. In 1999, realizing that individuals and their families with autism had difficulty accessing, recreational and community based programs in the community due to the fact that the individual with autism had problems with the environment due to their autism, my husband and I started the National Autism Registry (NARY). We began organizing events that would take place in venues where management was willing to change some of the environmental controls, like lighting and sound to make it more Autism friendly. We even started having monthly backyard parties at my house, where it wasn’t unusual for us to have 150 to 200 people. This was the beginning point in which our organization began support for individuals and families touched by autism.
As Blake grew older, I noticed every step of his life span was a difficult transition due to the fact that they were such a lack of services. And what was difficult for Blake was also difficult for others like him. So when he needed a more comprehensive therapeutic intervention program, I turned my speech therapy practice into a more comprehensive program and opened our therapy center. When the existing special needs camp programs were inappropriate for him because he needed more 1 to 1 help, I started a summer therapy camp program which offered him more 1 to 1 experience.
As he grew older, I knew that one of the most difficult transitions would be when he graduated high school as this is the most difficult point for many individuals with special needs. By 2010, our family had moved out of the town we were living in, and therefore I had sold my therapy center. I was still working as a speech, pathologist, but only part time. This was the first time in my adult life I could remember having some leisure time. And I decided to embark on a training program to learn culinary pastry skills, which had been a bucket list item for me for many years. Blake, by this time, was in high school, and I noticed that when I was practicing in the kitchen, he would come in and demonstrate interest in participating in my baking adventures. This was the first real interest that I had seen lake taken anything to be honest, so I was happy to encourage this interest. I also started working with his class once a month where we would bake delicious products and share with the school. I even volunteered at some of the other local high schools in my community. Eventually, I became interested in chocolate , and enrolled in a very well-known chocolatier training program. And in the spring of 2013, I graduated as a certified Chocolatier. Coincidentally, Blake graduated a month later from high school. Though I had searched high and low for two years for a post secondary school program for Blake, I was coming up empty-handed. And my fears had come true. Blake had graduated from school to the couch.
So I did the only thing I could think of, Blake and I started making chocolate out of our house and giving it as gifts to everyone I could think of. Friends and family. We’re more than happy to accept our delicious gifts, but after a while we still had too much time on our hands. Or I should say., Blake had too much time on his hands. So we decided to officially start a business which my other son, Hunter, coined The Chocolate Spectrum.
We began marketing our chocolate items in shows around town, and also online. Those sales were not plentiful. At that point, we were able to keep busy. Eventually people found out about it in our community of special needs, and parents began asking me if their adult child could come to my house and make chocolate as well. of course I felt this was a great opportunity for Blake to have more social experiences as well as to meet the needs in our community. So after a short period of time we had up to 14 people coming during the week to make chocolate with Blake and sell it in our community. eventually two of the individuals became very skilled and I hired them as employees.
In 2015, we had outgrown our home kitchen and I began looking for a bricks and mortar location where we could not only manufacture our products, but also sell them in the retail market. This wasn’t something I really wanted to do because of the responsibility, but I realize that if we were going to continue our business, we either had to “go big or go home.” so in June 2016, on my 60th birthday, which was entirely coincidental, we opened up our shop in Jupiter, Florida. And since that time we have been training students both adult and teen, who have developmental disabilities in the art of making pastries and chocolate products, as well as teaching customer, service, organizational, and business communication skills.
Recently, I recognized that it was important that those going through our training programs needed to have an experience that emulated the real working world for them. It was at this time I just started the Sweet Inclusion Program.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
At our shop, we have both a manufacturing area as well as a retail area. I decided early on, that it was very important to me that all of our chocolate products be made on site. I know there’s other shops that bring in their chocolate from other locations and other vendors, but this is not the vision I had. , but this is not the vision I had so so all products are made on site. The food business is not one I would recommend to anyone. It is very complex, timely, and costly. There are so many items that must be done to ensure that your product is safe to eat at all times. There are licenses and inspections that must constantly be updated, and everything is a procedure and must be documented. Luckily, and coincidentally, I am an extremely organized and procedurally-based person by nature. Otherwise, I could not run this business. If you think about it, I’m running three separate businesses under one roof: a manufacturing business, a retail business and a training program. Most people would do one not all three! When I graduated from Chocolatier school, I did have some knowledge about running a chocolate business, but that was just the beginning. I took extra courses at that time in learning how to store chocolate and maintain appropriate shelflife, and other safety features which was very helpful.. I also hired a consultant to help me get the shop put together in a professional manner, as well as how to select appropriate products for manufacturing at that time. All the coursework and consulting work that I invested in paid off well.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
As many people can attest to, Covid was a game changer for many of us in business. In 2020, we were faced with the problem of having to temporaryly closed down our training programs, our retail store, our in store and out of store events, and two satellite locations that we had established in the previous years resulting in a loss of a great deal of our revenue stream. What we had left was our online shop and the ability for our retail customers to pick up curbside. We threw ourselves in to those revenue streams, but the implementation was very tricky back then. Everyone worked different shifts, so that none of us would be in the room with the other. One of our employees became the out of shop person and basically just did post office runs. Somehow, we manage to keep ourselves in business. It was totally a reimagined mode of operation., but somehow I managed to continue to pay most of our staff, which was very important to me. I did apply for government assistance, which was important to us being able to stay afloat. Fast forward, in the spring of 2021, we were able to bring back our training programs which was very important to me. We did it in a limited way with less students at a time in the shop and required vaccines and masks. My goal was to make us the “safest workplace in the world..”. So as time went on many students did get Covid but we had zero community spread at the shop.
Our retail shop reopened shortly there after and at the time we require customers to wear masks. That was often not met with enthusiasm but again I wanted to keep our staff and students safe.
We have still not totally come back to where we were previous to Covid. Though we are doing out of shop events, we are not doing in shop events at this time, and though we no longer require vaccinations, our staff and students still wear masks in the back of the shop where the manufacturing occurs. Also, our satellite locations have never reopened due to the fact that they were located in other businesses that are not themselves back to normal.
We are here. We are still afloat. We are still working. We are still having fun. It was and continues to be a challenge, but it is made me stronger and more confident that I can change directions when I need to and still be victorious.
Contact Info:
- The Chocolate Spectrum: https://thechocolatespectrum.com/
- Online shop: https://thechocolatespectrum.com/online-store
- Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/thechocspectrum/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thechocolatespectrum8503
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thechocolatespectrum/