By Daryl Major

COCO Cafe earns international award for continued support of people with disabilities

Sep 19, 2016 | 4:44 PM

CEDAR — More accolades for a Cedar-based cafe and catering company.

The COCO Cafe, established in 2011, was recently named one of 18 winners of the U.S. based ‘Ruderman Best in Business Award’.

It recognizes businesses across North America for hiring, supporting and employing people with disabilities.

COCO Cafe General Manager Melanie Cadden says their program changes lives.

“We’ve gotten to see the impact that it has with our staff who have been with us for three, four and five years. And we see people going from very closed-in and very quiet, shy people to coming out of their shells, being a little bit more outgoing, learning skills that they can take with them to other places,” says Cadden.

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With the impact the program has on people, it’s natural to want to see the concept grow beyond Cedar.

“What we’d like to see is more COCO’s. So we’d like to see maybe an island franchise, up and down the island to start or seeing more spaces. You can only put out so much volume in one location. There’s only so many hours of labour. So when you create another location, you’ve just doubled your hours of labour.”

Cadden says COCO Cafe has 35 employees, half of whom have developmental disabilities.

She adds she has 24 people waiting to get into the program.