What’s unique about this Gadsden restaurant? It’s more than the food

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By Olivia McMurrey

Kim Hood, a regular patron of Beautiful Rainbow Café, describes the eatery inside Gadsden Public Library as “a big hug with wonderful food.” 

While that could apply to many restaurants, Beautiful Rainbow Café is unusual. Students with significant cognitive disabilities staff the café, and it’s one of few vegetarian-only restaurants in Alabama.

On a recent Thursday, the lunchtime rush was early. Eight employees were focused and working fast in the kitchen. Chip Rowan, a special-education teacher who envisioned, founded and directs the café and the Beautiful Rainbow program, said the students work well under pressure.

“They’re fully engaged and productive and doing something that they enjoy,” Rowan said.

After operating for seven years – and becoming a community fixture many residents say they can’t imagine Gadsden without – the café is preparing for a major transition when Rowan retires at the end of July. The Gadsden City Schools system, which runs a vocational program for the café’s student employees, has put together a team to keep growing the award-winning, experiential learning initiative.

‘Motivated to work’

In addition to teaching in special education for two decades, Rowan previously practiced disability law. Those interests planted the seed that eventually sprouted Beautiful Rainbow Café.

Joblessness among people with intellectual disabilities strongly influences overall workforce-participation rates in Alabama and nationally, Rowan said. In 2023, a larger percentage of people with disabilities were employed than in any year since data collection began in 2008. Still, only 22.5% of people with a disability had a job, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

“Among people with severe disabilities, the unemployment rate is even higher,” Rowan said. “So we’re talking about over 80%, when we’re talking about people with more severe disabilities.”

A major factor contributing to those numbers is lack of work-based-learning programs for the cognitively disabled community, he continued. 

“They’re not being exposed to or taught not only a skill that they could use, but also all of these behaviors and customs that one needs to have in order to be a successful worker,” Rowan said. “How to get along with others, how to resolve conflict, how to be on time, how to pace yourself, how to keep good personal space.”

Once equipped with these soft skills, people with cognitive disabilities make excellent employees, he said.

“What an employer is going to find when they hire a person with a disability who’s been through a proper training program is somebody who’s very loyal and very motivated to work,” Rowan said. “They’re just very, very excited to have the opportunity.”

Reggie Lindsey bears this out. He arrives at work early almost every day.

“I wake up around six something and then I’d be like, sitting outside the café, just waiting for somebody to come open the door,” Lindsey said.

Roots in the garden

In 2015, Rowan did a study of 80 students who had completed traditional, classroom-based, special-education programs in Gadsden City Schools. The study revealed not one had been employed, nor were any enrolled in training programs that would lead to employment.

“I felt like this was just an unacceptable result,” he said.

Rowan started implementing work-based learning strategies with an organic garden bed on school grounds. 

“We found we could teach all kinds of functional academic skills,” Rowan said. “The kids would go out every day, measure the growth of the plants, come in and graph them. We did a garden journal every day that helped many of them learn to read.”

Next, the program added a commercial kitchen at Gadsden City High School and began serving meals to community leaders. An invitation to use space in the library followed, and the café opened in February of 2017. Students brought their garden with them, locating it in a park across the street. They continue to tend the garden while also catering events and running the restaurant.

Sophisticated Southern fare

Rowan said people initially showed up at the café because they were curious about a restaurant run by students with disabilities, but he thinks they keep coming back because of the eclectic menu and organic ingredients, which he credits with delivering a tastier product.

“Even though we do some great Southern cooking, we’re a little bit more elevated than your typical, small town kind of food,” Rowan said. “And also it’s nice that it’s chemical free and therefore it’s healthier for you as a person. And it’s also healthier for the environment.”

Back in the café, Kim Hood and Beth Kidd, also a regular patron, say Beautiful Rainbow is the most sophisticated restaurant in town. Hood ordered her favorite item, the vegan crab cakes.

“You would never know that’s not crab,” Hood said. “The dill sauce is phenomenal. It’s just very lemony and bright and fresh. It comes on a bed of greens with some corn. It’s just delicious.”

Kidd ordered gazpacho, a cold soup, and the spinach quiche.

“This is the freshest soup I’ve had,” she said. “It tastes like the garden in a bowl.”

She was equally complimentary of the quiche.

“The kids learn how to make this crust,” she said. “It’s just very flaky, very tender.” 

Steve Taylor and two of his friends, Jamie Sledge and John James, have been eating at the café once a week since it opened. 

“I’m not a vegetarian,” Taylor said. “I love meat, but I love the food here.”

Changing lives and boosting the workforce

Sledge says they also enjoy witnessing how the Beautiful Rainbow program changes students’ lives.

“Watching what they do with the students that come here is just astounding,” he said. “It makes you feel good about public education.” 

Rowan said almost all students start the program with some level of learned helplessness because of how they’ve been treated.

“So when they get to have this kind of experience where they’re creating on their own, they’re earning money, they’re interacting with people from all walks of life in the café – they transform from people who have these kinds of dependent behaviors to people who are confident and who can operate much more independently in the community,” he said.

Isaiah McFarlin said the most important thing working at the café has taught him is to trust his own judgment.

“I try to be self independent and do things without nobody telling me to do it,” McFarlin said. “Like if I know what’s got to get done, I do that.”

Rowan said the program’s goal is to help students obtain private employment or move on to post-secondary education. Through an employment-matching service, Beautiful Rainbow has placed 60 of its students in other Gadsden-area jobs. Two program participants have enrolled at universities.

Making a difference regionally

Beautiful Rainbow also is having an impact outside of Gadsden. With help from students, the program has created an online curriculum of 100 instructional videos that teachers across the South are using to teach work-based skills to people with disabilities. The program cooperates and consults with other Alabama school systems, including the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, which will open a coffee shop in the fall, and a program in Albertville that runs a sandwich shop.

Beautiful Rainbow has won many awards, but the one Rowan is most proud of is the 2022 Governor’s Seal of Excellence as Alabama’s Best K-12 Work-Based Learning Program.

“The reason why I’m proud of that is because we competed against some excellent work-based-learning programs in the state, but all of those programs were for typical students,” he said.

McFarlin, who is set to attend the University of Alabama’s CrossingPoints program in the fall, said his favorite task at the café is serving as ambassador.

“I go out and check on customers,” he said. “It makes me feel very happy and very joyful to be around people and to talk and work.”

Kidd said the feeling is mutual. She started coming to the café when her late husband was battling cancer.

“It was just a sweet getaway from all the stress,” she said. “Ever since, it’s been a very healing place to come and gather with friends and, of course, with the students.”

After the restaurant’s summer session is over, Rowan will transition to an advisor role for the restaurant and the Beautiful Rainbow program. Patrons said they will miss Rowan and are thankful the school system is continuing to support a vibrant part of Gadsden’s social and culinary fabric.

“It’s just a one-of-a-kind experience,” Kidd said. “It’s just amazing to watch and be a part of this community.”