We sell to the broader community as well since most retail clients are hospital staff, patients and visitors. We have advertised through internal communication within CAMH. The main success factor in increasing our revenue was getting people to know us and our products in our service area. The sales are of smaller scale, averaging about $4 per order for retail and $300 per order for catering business. Since then, our revenue and sales volume has grown but the model has remained the same. Revenue Modelįrom the beginning, College Street Café and Catering had two revenue streams, the retail business and catering that work together. CAMH assisted in getting the facility ready and taking care of equipment repairs. We already had experience in launching and operating social enterprises and in running food business. The team collaborating to develop and implement the plan for the social enterprise included people from Working for Change, the staff of CAMH, and the manager of Out of This World Café. Receiving funding from Toronto Enterprise Fund to hire a manager at College Street site allowed us to use existing kitchen space that had been available to prepare food onsite and also open a second retail food service space on Russell Street in May 2014. At that time, we prepared food at another site and shipped it over daily to College Street. In the first phase, we opened a small place at 250 College Street. Thus, in terms of developing the idea, we already had this type of business in place: it was matter of scaling it up to a much larger business. We had already successfully operated Out of This World Café within the hospital but decided to phase in slowly as we were not ready to take over all three new restaurants at the same time. The idea of College Street Café and Catering originated in 2012 when the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) approached us to take over all the retail food service onsite. Having a strong relationship with the hospital community, we work with consumer survivors. Community BackgroundĪs part of Working for Change (a nonprofit organization established in 1994 to provide employment opportunities for people with mental health issues), College Street Café and Catering is connected with other social enterprises under their umbrella, Out of This World Café, which has a long and successful history of operation within the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. As one of several social enterprises operated by Working for Change, College Street Café and Catering is connected with Out of This World Café operating at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. We are a food retail and catering business with a wide variety of products. College Street Café and Catering provides employment to people with a history of addiction and mental illness.
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