At Greyston Bakery, Employees and Business Partners Enjoy a Taste of Success

Best For The World: Changemaker Offers Fresh Starts by Hiring Anyone Who Needs a Job, No Questions Asked

UncommonGoods
B The Change

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Greyston Bakery brownies are a key ingredient for some popular Ben & Jerry’s flavors. (Photos by Rachel Orlow, courtesy Greyston Bakery)

By Hadley Leary

Even if you’ve never heard of Greyston Bakery, chances are good that you’ve eaten its baked goods. Ever had a spoonful of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie or scooped your way through a whole pint of Half Baked? Congratulations! You’ve had a doughy bit of Greyston in your belly. It’s no coincidence that those flavors made it to Ben & Jerry’s top 10 list in 2017 — Greyston’s brownies, which you can snag in four varieties at UncommonGoods, are mind-blowingly tasty. We’ll swear to it.

But that’s not all. Like UncommonGoods (and Ben & Jerry’s), Greyston Bakery is a proud Certified B Corporation, and it’s New York state’s first benefit corporation. A 2018 Best For The World: Changemakers honoree— just like us here at UncommonGoods — Greyston was founded by Zen Buddhist Roshi Bernie Glassman in 1982 in Yonkers, New York, and is now best known for its unique hiring model, dubbed Open Hiring™. Designed to break down barriers for those seeking honest work, Greyston’s no-questions-asked hiring policy provides opportunities to locals who might otherwise encounter difficulty obtaining a job, whether that means they’re single parents, have trouble speaking English or once struggled with homelessness.

Uncommon Goods and Greyston Bakery are Best For The World Changemakers, which are evaluated based on measurable positive impact across all impact areas, including community, workers and environment. Find all Best For The World honorees and stories.

Though most of our blog team’s visits are to artist’s studios, we couldn’t resist making the trip up to Yonkers to see Greyston’s facility ourselves. We enjoyed our first visit so much, we came back with the rest of our department in tow.

Cece: My brother introduced me to Greyston, because he was a mixer here. He used to come, and he used to bring brownies home, and he used to be so full of chocolate — and I’m like, “What are you doing?” And he’s like, “I’m working at a bakery! I make brownies!” And I said, “Brownies — and you didn’t bring me home none?”

On our initial trip, we met longtime team members Cece and Raymond and learned about Greyston’s myriad community initiatives, from workforce development courses to housing for formerly homeless people living with HIV/AIDS. Many of Greyston’s employees benefit from the bakery’s work in their community. Raymond, for example, once took part in the Greyston Rangers Transitional Employment Program, where he worked to keep Yonkers’ streets clean. “That was a good experience,” he told us last fall.

Raymond: Regardless of what we do outside, what we do here, it’s like a family. So I try to express that to my kids when I go home and they ask, “How was your day?” I say, “Well, I had a good day … with my second family.”

Our second visit coincided with the launch of something exciting: the Center for Open Hiring at Greyston. To mark the occasion, we spoke with Bonny Olson, Greyston’s corporate gifting and online sales coordinator, about the newly opened hotspot for no-questions-asked hiring — and the organization’s plans for the future.

“Greyston has been practicing Open Hiring … for more [than] 35 years,” Olson told us. After so many years of success, it seemed only natural to begin to encourage other companies to embrace the practice. “We decided to launch the Center for Open Hiring at Greyston to facilitate the adoption of Open Hiring by companies across the U.S. and the world.”

How do they plan do it? By focusing on three strategic areas: education and training, advisory services, and research and programs. “We believe that with our suite of services we will be able to support the adoption of Open Hiring across a wide range of industries,” Olson noted, “thereby opening opportunity for thousands of individuals who are currently considered unemployable.” From hosting round-table discussions to publicizing best practices for Open Hiring, Greyston leaders are poised to do whatever it takes to advance their program and make opportunities accessible to those in need of work.

“The launch of the Center for Open Hiring at Greyston is a huge initiative,” Olson told us. But it’s not the only thing Greyston’s plugging away at now. “In addition to the launch of the center, Greyston is working toward bringing Open Hiring to the Netherlands through the opening of a new bakery in Amsterdam, slated to open in late 2020.”

It’s worth noting that once you’ve seen Open Hiring in action, you’re left with little doubt as to whether it works. After all, everyone at Greyston clearly believes in the bakery’s mission, and their enthusiasm is catching. We left our second visit — where, predictably, we gorged on baked goods — even more excited than we left our first, and we’re eager to see what the Center for Open Hiring will accomplish as it blossoms. And for those of you in the Netherlands, trust us: These brownies are worth chowing down on. Hold out for 2020.

Like Best For The World: Changemakers, all B Corps actively seek positive impact improvement through their business. From Sept. 25 to 27, 2018, the B Corp community will gather to share their impact stories, processes and experiments, helping all companies become stronger changemakers. Stay tuned for updates from the lessons shared at the retreat.

Portions of this post were originally published by Uncommon Goods. B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.

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UncommonGoods offers remarkable designs by independent makers, and we do it with a positive impact on both people and our planet. www.uncommongoods.com