After four years of honing barista skills and baking cookies, Jerome Wong – a person with disabilities (PWD) – was promoted from barista to supervisor at Foreword Coffee Roasters’ (FCR) Temasek Shophouse outlet, and then to cafe trainer.

FCR has eight outlets in Singapore, and 75 per cent of the employees are PWDs. Established in 2017, it is a social enterprise cafe that offers employment opportunities to this group of people, and those with special needs and mental health conditions.

Wong is also in charge of Foreword Bakehouse, which was set up in mid-February and is located at The Promenade @ Pelikat. In addition to being a takeaway kiosk, the Bakehouse doubles up as a central kitchen for FCR.

Lim Wei Jie, co-founder and director of FCR, said: “We are hoping to reduce the lead time for corporate orders – previously, it was 10 working days – to three to five working days.”

The Bakehouse will also serve as a training ground for new staff, before they are placed at one of FCR’s outlets. 

Practising behind the scenes

Lim said: “We feel that there is a need to train the new employees who are not ready to go out and work at our public cafes yet. So this will give them more time to practise ... before they are able to face the customers and work at a faster pace in the cafes.”

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Under the supervision of a trainer, new staff will learn the required skills for working at a cafe. If the newbies cannot adapt to the fast pace, they may be placed instead at the Bakehouse. 

Nadi Chan, who is also co-founder and director, said: “We have trainers who are moving around the different outlets.”

FCR set up a training and development team in January, which includes the co-founders and Wong, as well as dedicated trainers. The team’s tasks range from curriculum development to hands-on training. 

The training processes are tailored to each staff member’s needs and capabilities.

Lim explained: “For us, it’s very customised training. The trainers need to know the unique characteristics of every staff (member), identify the challenges that (they’re) facing, and then work on these issues individually.”

Innovative thinking

Tan Eng Tat, director of employment and employability at SG Enable, noted that having a PWD on the training team “brings about innovative thinking, unique perspectives and creative ideas on how to make the business more inclusive for its customers”.

The Ministry of Manpower indicated that based on data collected between 2022 and 2023, the employment rate for PWDs is 32.7 per cent.

Chan noted: “PWDs are a very misunderstood and stigmatised group in Singapore. Very often, people think that they are not able to contribute very productively to society… By creating the system where they are able to succeed, we’re actually helping them to overcome all this stigma as well.”

Lim said: “If we face any challenges, errors or mistakes at the cafes or in the workplace, we will... (see) what we can do to make things easier for our staff… That will help us to create the standard operating procedures that we follow.”

The co-founders impose a minimum standard for all employees. Check-ins are done every three to six months, depending on how new the employee is. 

They noted that employers might be “fearful” when it comes to hiring PWDs due to “uncertainty” and higher costs.

However, Lim said that that is a misconception, as sometimes it is just about making existing processes clearer in terms of the workflow, Lim said.

Scaling up

FCR is set to open its ninth outlet in Esplanade in mid-June, which will be its largest outlet yet. 

The social enterprise hopes to scale up its barista skills course to make it more comprehensive and better prepare PWDs for work.

A 100-hour course is currently being developed, and cover aspects such as food preparation, and workplace safety and health. FCR plans to have three runs of this course this year. 

FCR was a winner of the Social Enterprise of the Year award at President’s Challenge Social Enterprise Award in November 2023.

It is also a member of raiSE (Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise), a sector developer that has supported it with funding, capability-building programmes, resources and networks.