Phoenix’s Mission Possible Café serves more than just food

PHOENIX — A Phoenix eatery is doing a lot more than just serving food.

“Mission Possible Café is essentially the vocational development program for the Phoenix Rescue Mission,” said Nicole Pena, the Mission’s director of public relations.

The eight-month restaurant and kitchen management training program takes people formerly homeless and-or drug addicted and helps them rehabilitate their lives.

Taking over the former Oaxaca Restaurant at 15th Avenue and Van Buren Street, Mission Possible Café is the graduate program — sort of speaking — for the Phoenix Rescue Mission.

“This restaurant helps our clients in our program learn all the skills they need to effectively run a kitchen, to manage food service, to work in the industry,” Pena said.

Pena says the old Oaxaca, which shared a wall with the Phoenix Rescue Mission, sat vacant for almost three years until a donor raised the money to purchase the property for the Mission.

“We had to do a lot [of] interior rehabilitation and get the kitchen ready,” Pena said. “It took about three-to-four months to do that. Now we have our Mission Possible Cookies, which is an online cookie business, and our Mission Possible Café, running out of this same facility.”

The aim of the Mission’s vocational development program is to train people for more than just entry-level jobs.

“That is why we went the route of kitchen management,” she said. “We want people to come in and work as kitchen managers, assistant managers, and those type of jobs.”

Mission Possible Café had a soft opening on Oct. 2, but they are planning a grand opening on Friday.

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