interviews
EAT OFFBEAT
by Manal Kahi
June 15, 2019
This interview with Manal Kahi, co-founder and CEO of EAT OFFBEAT, was conducted and condensed by frank news.
EAT OFFBEAT is a New York City based catering company that works exclusively with refugees.
How did you get started on this work? I know the crux of the business is in hiring refugees, are there particular guidelines about who qualifies as a refugee?
Manal: We're a catering company. We deliver authentic meals that are entirely conceived, prepared, and delivered by refugees here in New York City. Basically the model is we hire talented refugees who are looking to be in the food industry.
They happen to be with the UNHCR, they happen to be refugees by status – but they are chefs by nature.
We train them, for those who haven't had a professional culinary training or haven't had experience working in profession kitchens – we train them so they become profession chefs, we help them scale their recipes and then we deliver their dishes. It's the way they make it at home but they prepare it at our commercial kitchen and we deliver that to mostly offices and private parties or events all over New York City.
image via EAT OFFBEAT
Does hiring a refugee have any complications or benefits?
Manal: Complications? Not necessarily. They are usually referred to us by the IRC, the International Rescue Committee, and maybe that's a good place to answer your question of how we decide they're refugees.
We have a partnership with the IRC, which is one of nine resettlement agencies in the U.S. They help refugees. They help them even before coming here, they provide assistance to refugees filing for refugee status back home.
And once someone is approved they go through the very lengthy security process. They get to the U.S. and the IRC is mandated by the government to assist them in the settlement process. That includes picking them up at the airport, finding accommodations. Part of the assistance they provide is also finding jobs or employment and this is where we come in. Whenever we're hiring they send us candidates who are looking for a job who are recently resettled or who simply just want to be in the food industry. And that's how we hire.
So to answer your question on definition of who is a refugee for us, it's really whoever gets referred to us by the IRC.
Are you hiring full-time or part-time?
Manal: There's a good mix of both. It's a blend. Anyone who's a chef, who has items on the menu, who is contributing to the menu, that's a full-time position, because we need that chef to be at the kitchen whenever we get an order. We have a few positions that are more part-time.
How many people are you working with at the moment?
Manal: We're close to thirty people day to day.
Wow.
Manal: And that includes every function. That's chefs, sous chefs, delivery operators, customer service, everything all together. And it's a mix of refugees but also a couple of Americans. Especially on administrative functions.
Are you looking to expand beyond New York City?
Manal: Not necessarily and definitely not right now. We would never say "Never", that might happen an some point but for now our focus is really on New York City alone.
Are you set up as a for-profit business or a 501c3?
Manal: We are a for-profit business.
Do you feel like you're mission driven?
Manal: We are definitely mission driven. Definitely heavily mission driven. It's what guides us, it's what defines us, and it's part of who we are. At the same time we see ourselves as a food company first, we are definitely food centric, we're people centric, and the mission is very heavy. But it's very important that we are making money because that's the only way we can actually achieve our mission and keep hiring people and keep paying them decent wages.
Business is super important but for us it doesn't makes sense unless there is the social mission part attached.
Can you tell me a little bit about your own background?
Manal: I'm originally from Lebanon. I came here as a graduate student in 2013. My background was in environmental management. My goal was to go a bit more into international climate affairs. I was working on climate affairs in the Middle East and I wanted to go international. That's part of why I chose to come to New York, to be close to the U.N., multi-national institutions or organizations. And then when I came here, I was a bit disappointed with hummus in grocery stores –
I heard.
Manal: So that's really what sparked the idea initially. I started making my own. I got my grandmothers recipe and when that became successful here we thought why not commercialize it.
The first step was the hummus, the next step was...
Manal: Exactly the first step was the hummus and clearly the idea was not just make hummus and sell it, it was initially to have it made by refugees here who were being resettled here in New York City who wanted to share their hummus recipes with the rest of New York and commercialize that. That was really the idea early on. Then after that we went to studying the market, looking at the idea and we thought it was much better to go global. We though why not open it to any refugees coming from all over the world and discover these recipes that, just like hummus, are so much better when their homemade or made by someone who knows how it should taste.
We hire based on talent and passion for food regardless of where people come from, but so far it's been very diverse.
Do you think that it's hard for refugees to find work placement?
Manal: From what I see, my own personal opinion, it's different when you're an immigrant versus when you're a refugee. The only difference is, mainly when you're an immigrant you made the choice yourself, so very often you would have taken English classes, you made the choice as to where to go and when to go and why to go. But when you're here as a refugee very often you actually had to.
And why that makes it a bit harder is because when you come as an immigrant, when it's you're own choice, you may have come as a student, you have a bit more leeway and a bit more time to give it more consideration and decide whether you're going to go and what you're going to do exactly. Whereas if you come as refugee very often you just have to flee and you have to make it work with whatever.
I wouldn't say it's extremely hard to find a job. Jobs are available. It's similar to anyone who's looking for a job. It is definitely much harder to find a job that is a decent wage and a good job that makes you proud and that brings your dignity back – because very often you don't have transferable skills, you probably don't speak the language, so if you had training as an accountant before coming here it's much much harder to find a job as an accountant than to find a job at something else you're not necessarily passionate about.
Is there anything you've learned in the process of working with refugees about the refugee process?
Manal: One thing we've learned is that simply by providing a work environment and an atmosphere where people form a community, and they help each other even indirectly by being part of that kitchen and part of that community, people start to integrate and adjust and get adapted to their new lives much easier than when they're isolated and do not have a supportive community around them.
I see it happening in our kitchen.
I see a very high level of resilience that I think is notable and particular. All of our chefs, you can just see it, they're ready to do whatever it takes to succeed and they're very committed to the work they are doing. They are also very adaptable. Whenever we have a problem, something going wrong, everyone is very involved in the work and passionate about it and finds a solution. I think there's that added characteristic that is very common among everyone who's on our team.
What are your goals moving forward?
Manal: We have three goals. The first is to provide quality jobs to talented refugees who want to be in the food industry. The second is more about New Yorkers – it's about introducing New Yorkers to this menu and off the beaten path cuisines and somehow connect them, build bridges, between them eating our food at their homes or offices and us cooking in the kitchen. And the third ultimately is about changing the narrative around refugees, showcasing a different and more positive story.
What do you think the current narrative is around refugees?
Manal: That's a good question. Very often the narrative is around a more negative rhetoric, "they are stealing our jobs, not contributing to the economy, taking resources away." Or if it's positive it's all about how vulnerable the community is and how they always need charity, they always need help. Those are two concepts we are trying to change or at least provide one example where it's not necessarily the case, and we really push our customers to shift perspectives a bit, change perspectives a bit. Because in our case we refugees, we immigrants, are actually helping New Yorkers discover something new. It's all about shifting the table on that.
We're a 'for profit' we're not a 'non-profit'. Part of that is to show our chefs are contributing to the economy. They are contributing to making a richer food scene here in New York. They're active contributors to the economy. They're adding value. They're bringing value. And that's the other thing we want to highlight. They're not relying on charity, they're not taking they are contributing, they're paying their taxes.
The narrative becomes less about pity and charity and more about contribution and resilience.
Manal: Exactly!
Seeing people for who they are and what they have to bring rather than the status they came with.
image via EAT OFFBEAT
interviews
Robert Neer: U.S. Military History
by Robert Neer
April 24, 2018
This interview with Robert Neer, a professor and scholar of U.S. Military History, was conducted and condensed by Tatti Ribeiro for frank news. This is part 1 of an ongoing conversation.
1.
My name's Bob Neer. I'm a lecturer at Columbia University and teach a class there called Empire of Liberty: A Global History of The U.S. Military, which I've been teaching for the last several years. So I have a little bit of a perspective on how history of the U.S. military has been taught. Naturally when I first started teaching my course I started looking around at other universities to find a syllabus that I could copy, because that's the easiest way to get started teaching a course. And I was absolutely stunned to discover that at the top American universities, the most selective ones, had almost no courses focused on the U.S. military. There were military history courses about, for example, the campaigns of Alexander, or the way that the German army was successful at the beginning of World War II. Things like that. But if you wanted to understand the U.S. Army as an institution in the context of the history of the United States, at those schools, it was very, very difficult to find out much about that part of our past. There are places where one can learn that history, West Point for example, the service academies, and some state institutions that are centers of excellence for the Study of Military History. Ohio State University for example. But at the institution I was teaching at, Columbia, and other similar elite universities there was very little. Which I found really quite striking because historically American universities have taught a lot of military history, and it's been a very popular subject for people to learn about. So I've talked to people and tried to understand why that might be.
It would seem that one aspect of that change is that there's been a broad shift in the role that universities play. In the past in this country, they would educate a kind of social elite in many respects, and that was often very closely related to the officer corps.
I'm talking about 200 years ago, or 150 years ago, a considerable period of time ago. So a smaller fraction of the overall population went to college and the officer corps, as in Europe, was a place where people from socially elite families could often find a socially elite position.
Those classes were very focused on the actual practicalities of military history. Why Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo, or how it could be that Britain ruled the seas. Not so much the way that history is taught today as a broad inquiry into the past, and the forces that shaped the present. So one thesis was that the role of American universities has changed ,and therefore the subjects that they teach have changed, and therefore, especially at these elite schools, there wasn't such a demand for that kind of practical military history.
Another thesis was that in the wake of the Vietnam War, American academia in general had turned away from the military. So historically, in this country, there's been quite close connections between institutions of higher education in the military, and certainly that continues today. The tremendous protests that convulsed these institutions of higher education, especially the most elite institutions, were dramatically affected by these protests. The reaction has been in many cases to turn away from the military.
And finally I guess you could say that although in many respects American universities are meritocratic and have generous financial aid policies often in practice, they generally serve the people who already have money and resources.
Most people who have to have a job, and find that to be a job that is relatively remunerative and attractive financially, end up joining the armed services.
I think it's a very important aspect of our past because studying the past is really kind of a way of studying the present. For example, the United States each year spends more money on its military than of all of its institutions of postsecondary education. So all the colleges, all the business schools, all law schools, all the Ph.D. programs, all the community colleges, everything after high school combined — is less than the spending on the military. So that's kind of a lot of money, and an important sort of statement of the country's social priorities. And it's beneficial to learn where it came from as a way of understanding the present.
2.
Let's talk a little bit about how it might be useful or valuable to study the history of the U.S. military. As I mentioned before, history is really just a way of talking about the present.
And if you go and look at the history shelves in a bookstore or on Amazon, I think you'll see that the vast majority of history books that are sold have been written in the last 10 to 20, years as opposed to 100 years ago. Even though the past hasn't changed. So in that sense, it can really illuminate the present.
We're right now in these very long conflicts in Afghanistan and greater Iraq, let's call it against Daesh. It's useful to consider whether that's unusual in our past, or consistent with earlier precedents in the United States. It's popular in many respects to call this current conflict a new type of war, or a forever war, or a conflict which is unprecedented. And it is unprecedented in certain respects. I would say for example, in its global reach, in the thesis that we can use military force almost anywhere in the world without having a specific declaration of war against that particular country, which was characteristic of U.S. military engagements earlier in our past in many respects.
But in fact, the history of the United States, and part of the United States is success I would say, is because of its exceptional ability in warfare, and in the exceptional achievements of its armed forces - dating back to the inception of the country. So if one considers the conflicts with the Native Americans to be a kind of generalized Indian war, as it's sometimes described, then that might really seem to be like a much longer conflict than even the current war in Afghanistan.
And if you look at American history, one characteristic presentation of it, the one that I was taught in high school, was that the United States was essentially a peaceful country that was forced into certain wars at limited times in its past because of perhaps misunderstandings, or the bad behavior of others.
For the early part of the country's history, as I mentioned, there were constant conflicts with Native Americans in different locations, as well as more precisely defined wars with European powers, for example the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Spanish American War. So in that sense it helps to appreciate the current conflict, perhaps not so unusual, and that in turn for people who want to modify it in various ways, arms them you might say. If you think that this pattern is objectionable, you need to be aware that it is perhaps characteristic of the country and people will react accordingly if you try to modify it. If you think that it should be encouraged, you have great resources to draw on ,where you say that one reason the country is the way it is now is because of this past practice.
That's just one example of how studying the broad scope of the history of the military in the United States helps to understand contemporary events at a level of detail and context which is extremely empowering, but which you really can't get if you're not familiar with the fact that there were dozens of wars against Native Americans, that the first time that U.S. troops were ordered abroad was by Thomas Jefferson against the Barbary pirates, that was a war fought in North Africa. I mean maybe many Marines know that because of the song, but most people who live in this society don't know that.
It's also worth considering the extraordinary power of the military in this society right now. If you look at how we spend our money, which in any family, or for any individual, is is a strong statement of what's important to them. We spend more money each year on our military than on all postsecondary education combined. Maybe by necessity, maybe because it leads to our success. Maybe it's a good thing or a bad thing, but to put it in the context of the relative importance of these different fields, suggest to me that everybody in the United States should be familiar with this history, as much as they're familiar with works of literature, or the basic principles of physics, and mathematics, or all the other things our students are taught, because it's such a critical part of our contemporary existence. To shut yourself off from that leaves you almost blind to that important area.