When Chef Brandon Chrostowski was eighteen years old, he wasn’t working in the hospitality industry. Instead, he was dealing drugs—and got caught. Fortunately, for him, he went in front of a “forgiving judge” and was given probation.
After being given a second chance at life, he was mentored in the culinary arts by a man he calls “Chef George,” and this “good dude” taught him that perfect practice makes perfect. And it’s these two events—being given probation and being mentored—that created the foundation of what was yet to come. This includes propelling Brandon into mentoring people in prison and those recently released, providing them with valuable culinary skills and so much more.
Brandon attended the Culinary Institute of America with a dream to become the world’s best French chef. There, he found out that he was really pretty good. While apprenticing with the legendary Charlie Trotter, Brandon absorbed the message that there are no boundaries—that he could accomplish whatever he’d set out to do. So, he flew to France and, while still in mid-air, thought about how he couldn’t even read or speak French.
The good news: hard work doesn’t have a language and, in France, he worked at Lucas Carton, the longest-standing Michelin 3-star restaurant in Paris. After learning the intricacies of a French kitchen, he decided to return to the United States.
Back in New York, Brandon received a call from Chef George, giving him the bad news that someone they both knew—a man named Quinton—had been murdered. Receiving that news while being surrounded by shiny copper pots in a restaurant kitchen was surreal and led to the thought that he, Brandon, could also mentor people to help change their lives.
This served as the impetus of Brandon teaching culinary skills to men in prison and, in 2013, the opening of EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute. His ambitious plan? To change the face of re-entry into civilian life. He chose Cleveland, Ohio for his restaurant boot camp because the city had the second worst high school graduation rate, and he began providing six-month training programs for people who’d been imprisoned for robbery, kidnapping, and even murder.
Thirty percent of his students have made it through the program, and six hundred have graduated so far. Although the country’s recidivism rate—the percentage of formerly imprisoned people who reoffend—is quite high, less than one percent of Brandon’s students have gone back to prison.
His non-profit program is funded from his own restaurants and private donations with no government funds. Private donations range from four dollars’ worth of quarters in a plastic bag from a seven year old to quarter million dollar ones.
Brandon uses the power of food to educate and mentor—and then goes far beyond that. His goal is to rehumanize participants and knock down barriers. So, he helps them to get IDs, bank accounts, and health insurance and to develop a life plan. Free housing is available with workout facilities, a library, child care, and a small farm.
To control their supply chain and teach additional skills, EDWINS now also has a butcher shop and a bakery. The NFL team, the Cleveland Browns, provides transportation to EDWINS. Program participants are never asked why they were in prison, instead being treated with dignity. Brandon also created a thirty-hour course that those still in prison can take on their tablets, and there are currently 80,000 active users.
When asked if any of his graduates are now in the culinary industry, Brandon shared that a few of them have opened their own places and a couple have food trucks. And, as a real benchmark of success, there are those who now embrace sobriety and those who get their children back. It’s not as glamorous as what you might see on TV, he said, but these are real humans living real lives—and he hopes that we’ll be the generation that finally figures out how to help them succeed with integrity.