Puyallup nonprofit opens new restaurant, giving at-risk moms a second-chance
Rachel Hamilton worked the first Saturday breakfast shift at a unique new restaurant in Puyallup.
As assistant manager, she oversees the coffee supply, but Farm 12 was busier than anticipated. Hamilton called for a restock, but no one answered. Scrambling, she got in her car and drove to Seattle to convince her supplier to help.
Two hours later, Hamilton returned with a car full of coffee beans.
She said it had to be done, and she was glad she could be the one to fix it.
“Until I got here, I didn’t see my goals manifest themselves,” she Hamilton to The Herald in a recent interview. “I’m now ready. I’ve taken roots and I’m sprouting.”
Hamilton is one of 60 women and men hired by the nonprofit Step By Step’s new restaurant, bakery and pastry shop: Farm 12.
The restaurant is part of the Germaine Korum Center, which was created to help low-income mothers enter the workforce. Hamilton said the fact someone believed in her changed everything.
“It’s all so new that somebody can consider you to be part of something so big and think that your hands are strong enough to hold it,” she said. “I cannot stress how much of an impact that has been on me personally and professionally.”
The restaurant, named as a nod to the former Van Lierop daffodil bulb farm it sits on, opened in November on Puyallup’s Shaw Road. For much of the staff, a job at the restaurant is an opportunity to become independent after years of struggle.
Rachel Wattam said this was her first job in 10 years. She first heard about Step By Step when she was pregnant at the Tacoma Rescue Mission.
The nonprofit helps struggling pregnant women have healthy births and provides help in the early years of motherhood.
Director Krista Linden said she always wanted the program to expand into helping mothers take that next step to provide for their children.
“We have some phenomenal women, how do we help them not only have their baby but provide financially for their families and to really gain some of those life skills that are keeping them from being perpetually stuck on programs like welfare?” Linden said.
She raised $1.5 million seven years ago to purchase six acres of the Van Lierop property.
With an additional $9 million, Linden has built the Germaine Korum Center, where clients work at the restaurant, bakery and pastry shop, event hall and moss basket shop.
Linden has plans to add an early child care center and a classroom to get moms ready for work.
The women say the program gives them a chance to aim for more.
Hamilton moved to Washington about four years ago to be close to her mother, who died soon after Hamilton arrived. Hamilton said the loss spiraled her into a dark time, during which she discovered she was pregnant.
A Step By Step case manager helped her with more than just connecting to resources, she said. Hamilton returned to the program when she became pregnant a second time. After Hamilton dropped out of college three times, her case manager suggested she find something she was passionate about. Hamilton worked at McDonald’s for eight years and knew she liked food service. Her dream became to own and run her own restaurant.
Hamilton began to tear up when recalling how Linden took her out for breakfast to talk about how Hamilton fit into her vision.
“You always have to crawl before you can walk,” she said. “Krista, I don’t know if she knew I was going to school for restaurant management, but she helped me stand, so I could start walking.”
Jowell Scott, a mother of three, agreed the program is empowering.
“It’s been an honor,” Scott said. “It’s shocking. You don’t ever think that you are worth that, but for somebody to see something in you that you don’t see has been a blessing.”
She works five jobs but said the one with Step by Step is unique because everyone has bonded as a team.
“There’s an expectation of standard here. I like to call it an eliteness,” Scott said. “There is a sense of knowing that it’s tied to Step by Step. It’s a pillow comfort. Not that I know I’m going to get bailed out of every situation, but that I’m working in a safe place.”
Linden has booked 50 weddings for the event hall next year. She hopes the hall and the restaurant make enough money to sustain the nonprofit in three years. She said Puyallup’s support has meant the world.
“The community has come and supported, not just financially,” Linden said. “The amount of people who were willing to come and work for us when we didn’t even have a business that was viable.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2019 at 6:05 AM.
