Dining With A Purpose: CT Restaurants with a Mission

Fire by Forge is a social enterprise of Forge City Works, which uses the power of food to create opportunities, build careers, and strengthen the community.

Trainees at Fire by Forge gain hands-on experience in a real restaurant environment, learning the skills they need to build meaningful careers. Once they complete the program, they have access to transitional employment, externships, and apprenticeships, helping them take the next step toward self-sufficiency.

The menu at Fire by Forge is “Pan-American,” with flavors and cuisine representing the countries of North, Central, and South America. This concept reflects the diverse cultures and influences of the Frog Hollow neighborhood, as well as the backgrounds of many of its culinary trainees.

When you dine at the restaurant, order catering, or shop at The Grocery on Broad, its affiliated grocery store, you directly support job training, internships, and apprenticeships for individuals overcoming barriers like poverty, incarceration, homelessness, and addiction.

Coffee for Good is an independent nonprofit, whose primary mission is to improve the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities by reducing the unemployment rate in that community.

The nonprofit operates a coffee shop, open to the public, as a training platform to give people with differing abilities the skills to find competitive employment. The platform is crucial to its mission: reducing unemployment levels within the local community and increasing workforce diversity.

Trainees earn minimum wage while learning and working at Coffee for Good, and after six to 18 months of training, the organization helps its graduates to find competitive integrated employment in their communities.

Graduates are working everywhere from Bridgeport to White Plains, N.Y., according to its website, with employer partners including Aux Delices Cafe, Britt & Co Bagels, The Bruce Museum, The Cafe at Greenwich Library, Chartwells Food Service (Wilton High School), Gregorys Coffee (Greenwich and Darien), The Home Depot, Honey Joes Coffee, Keough's Hardware, Marcia Selden Catering, The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, Sarachek Law, and YMCA-Greenwich.

BeanZ & Co. is an inclusive coffee café employing people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities. The business has a mission to expand awareness of and reduce the 80% unemployment rate of individuals with IDD, and to promote inclusive workplaces everywhere.

Kim and Scott Morrison, the owners of New England Pasta Co. in Avon, partnered with friends Noelle and Tim Alix to open the café in 2018. Both couples have an adult daughter with Down’s syndrome, and they were looking to their futures, as well of others with IDD who age out of the school system at age 21.

“It is our goal to change the lives of everyone who is a part of BeanZ & Co. from our employees, to our customers, to our community partners by providing a workplace and gathering space where everyone is welcome,” the owners note on the website. “By doing so, we aim to inspire other businesses and organizations to follow our lead.”

The café serves breakfast and lunch Monday through Saturday, along with coffee and baked goods.

Gather 55 is more than a restaurant – it’s a social enterprise of Hands On Hartford, built “on the belief that food has the power to bring people together.”

Hands On Hartford serves Hartford residents through food access programs, homeless outreach and prevention services, permanent supportive housing, and health supports. Gather 55, its associated restaurant, offers daytime breakfast and lunch with a pay-what-you-can model, and an evening dinner menu four days a week.

Guests looking for breakfast or lunch can pay a minimum of $3 for a meal, or sign up for a volunteer shift at Hands on Hartford to receive a meal voucher. Dinner is a three-course, $55 menu with recipes crafted by visiting guest chefs on monthly rotations. Past chefs have included top Connecticut names like Ashley Flagg, Renee Touponce, David Standridge, Billy Grant, Tyler Anderson, and Emily Mingrone.

The dinner operation helps power the daytime café and Hands on Hartford’s food access programs, but Gather 55 also sets aside reservations for guests who cannot pay, and accepts requests in advance for these customers.

Bear's Smokehouse, a barbecue restaurant with locations throughout Connecticut and in Asheville, N.C., is known for second-chance hiring. Nearly 70 percent of its employees are returning citizens, re-entering the workforce after incarceration. 

Co-owner Jamie McDonald was honored for his work by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation in September 2025, with the "My Journey" award reflecting his "belief that meaningful work can be a foundation for recovery and renewal." The restaurant also guarantees a minimum wage of $20, according to its website.

Cafe Real, a coffee shop with two city locations, has become a community gathering place in the West End of Bristol. Owner Eduardo Garces is a native of Colombia,who sources the cafe's beans directly from a farm owned by his family there. 

Garces is also the father of a son with Down's syndrome, and as his son went through special education transition programs to prepare for life after high school, he was concerned that other students with intellectual disabilities weren't receiving employment opportunities. Working with state agencies, Garces was able to hire and employ three young men with disabilities, who work two days a week and are guided on the job by supervisors. He said the employees are an integral part of the café team and are warmly embraced by customers and coworkers alike.

Giv Coffee's business model seeks to use global influence to bring about positive change in the international coffee communities, coffee consumers, and the lives of those in need, according to its website. The Canton cafe and roastery donates proceeds from coffee sales to four organizations that owners Jeff and Emily Brooks are passionate about, including Creative Life Foundation (anti-human trafficking work in Thailand); Foundations for Farming (teaching conservation agriculture and sustainability in Zimbabwe and around the planet); Kids of Cascabel (supporting children with disabilities in crisis in Nicaragua) and the Community First School in Hartford.

Giv was named Connecticut's best coffee shop in 2022 by Food & Wine, where editors noted that the owners "genuinely walk the walk" with sustainability, paying fair prices for coffee, and creating and maintaining strong direct relationships with growers. 

Victus Coffee, with locations in downtown Hartford and Glastonbury (within Square Peg Pizzeria), pledges a portion of proceeds from every bag of coffee to local and global causes that promote wellness, empowerment, and advocacy, according to its website. 

Locally, Victus supports Foodshare, the Connecticut Cycling Advancement Program, Team Charlie Thomas Balzano (a team of cyclists raising money for pediatric cancer research), and Open Doors Outdoors, a Glastonbury-based organization that guides veterans, their families, and young people outdoors for reconnection, healthy activity, and healing. 

Beyond Connecticut state borders, Victus supports Team Africa Rising, which assists the development of professional cycling across Africa.