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Culinary expertise meets community service for justice-involved teenagers at Café Momentum Atlanta
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LISTEN: Café Momentum serves Southern cuisine to its customers in Atlanta, but it also does more than that. The nonprofit is also working to change the lives of teenagers who have been in juvenile detention. GPB’s Ellen Eldridge explains.
The kitchen at Cafe Momentum Atlanta is big, and much brighter than the intimate dining room.
Antonee Pryce’s dessert station is tucked in the back, where she works slicing fruit and whipping cream. A mixer sits on a steel counter next to a sink, whirring.
Today, Pryce is making strawberry shortcake.
The teens in this program — which is part-internship, part-rehabilitation — gravitate toward this “sweet spot” where they feel safe to talk to her. To vent. And while she listens, she also puts them to work.
"So, I also kind of push them along and say, 'Hey, if you're gonna hang out back here, everybody's gotta do something,'" she said.
Both of Pryce's grandmothers were scratch bakers, but Pryce said she was too young to learn much from them.
"Old Southern women, they don't have written recipes," Pryce said. "Everything is a dash here and a pound there."
So, she started with trial and error, and then attended culinary school, where she learned the formalities of cooking.
After school, Pryce moved to baking and pastries.
"Being on the hot side of things just wasn't my cup of tea," Pryce said.
The art of dessert making taught Pryce to have more patience with herself.
Baking requires a lot of patience and accuracy.
"It's a gradual process and it kind of correlates into how we grow in life," she said. "That nothing comes easy, nothing comes quick."
Her students get excited and interested in baking food such as biscuits, which she taught a teenager to make.
"I said, 'Next time, I'm gonna stand and watch and I'll guide you, but you'll do it from start to finish.' So it gives them a sense of empowerment," Pryce said.
As the interns learn to cook by watching, Pryce is learning how to help by listening.
"Being a good listener is really key when we're doing this, because we can talk all day long, but they're in a space where they need to be heard," she said.
Three-time “intern of the week” RJ said he is learning how to handle responsibility.
"You can't have nothing if you don't work for it," he said. "You can just expect it to come to you."
The 16-year-old started in April with the second cohort of Cafe Momentum Atlanta interns.
"What's exciting is I'm learning new things, new experiences, you know, better opportunities," he said.
He is one of about 25 teenagers currently learning how to take care of themselves by serving others.
"I like cook some good old spaghetti with some chopped up sausages, a lot of cheese," he said. "I put a little sugar in mine, too. I like a little sweetness with the bread on the side."
Benjamin Wills, the executive director of Café Momentum Atlanta, said the cafe works with 15- to 19-year-olds who have been involved with the justice system within the past year.
"They're doing things like learning about conflict management, healthy relationships, resume building, having access to mental health therapy, as well as working in a casual fine dining restaurant three nights a week," Wills said.
In 2022, more than 800 kids were in youth detention statewide, and the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice reported 1 in 4 teenagers would be charged with another crime within a year of release.
Georgia is one of a few states in the country that prosecutes 17-year-olds as adults and sometimes incarcerates children as young as 13 in adult facilities.
So, the stakes are high for programs like Cafe Momentum, which partnered with the department’s Juvenile Justice Reentry Services program for their first group of interns.
Quintin Heard — also called "Q" — is the restaurant program manager. He’s a big guy, a former Marine.
He says a five-star kitchen can be a stressful environment. And he’s often the one teaching the interns how to cool down.
"You're working with youth who probably haven't had these type of experiences before so sometimes there may be emotions that we have to kind of work with hurdles that we had to get over and so I just help out with being able to kind of manage those situations in real time," he said.
Skills they’ll need in the kitchen — and in life.
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