This barista has a latte luck.
A former school assistant with autism nearly became homeless before she found a job at a Manhattan café that employs “differently-abled people.”
“When I came to the city [from Florida], I had a hard time finding a job and was specifically told that my autism was a burden and I would never find a job,” Rachel Barcellona, 27, told The Post this week. “I was almost homeless.”
Midtown’s Café Joyeux – “happy café” in French – became Barcellona’s saving grace, and has been her home away from home for roughly the last year.
The inclusive establishment officially opened in March, when Barcellona met the café’s other employees with Down syndrome and autism. It’s a population of which about 80% are unemployed.
The roaster on East 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue is one of more than a dozen globally that employs a total of 154 people with cognitive disabilities, ranging in positions from cashiers and baristas to kitchen workers, cleaners and even managers.
For employees like Barcellona, Café Joyeux has provided a chance to not only earn a living, but to make meaningful connections with other New Yorkers.
“I could write a whole book about how the job has helped me but just [to] start, it has helped me with social interaction because I’m very much introverted,” Barcellona said.
“When people come in, I love making them smile, hoping they have a joyful day and I love making the coffee and food for them. So it’s really helped me with meeting new people – and that’s really important to me.”
Since the first US location’s opening, CEO Sylvie Giret told The Post the café-restaurant has been flooded with catering orders – the latter of which where most revenue is generated, alongside coffee bean sales and donations.
In fact, the eatery is so overwhelmed that it’s hiring four more people with intellectual and developmental disabilities for a ghost kitchen — only offering pickup and delivery orders — opening this September.
“We have a mix of both autism and Down syndrome,” Giret said. “They’ve been treated as and sometimes even told they were burdens. So we offer them the opportunity to be seen, to be heard, to be treated like ordinary people.”
Inspiration for the café began in 2015 when co-founder Yann Bucaille-Lanzerac began offering sailing classes to formerly incarcerated people and people with disabilities – that is, until one of those students, Theo, asked for a job, Giret said.
Bucaille-Lanzerac and his wife launched the first Café Joyeux in Brittany, France in 2017, complete with Theo’s face adorned on the logo printed on each coffee cup. The chain has since grown to 19 cafés across France, Belgium and Portugal and has even supplied its own line of coffee beans to the NFL and Moet.
New York City was the “most perfect city” to launch Café Joyeux’s US expansion as it’s the “most diverse, inclusive [and] open to the world,” Giret said.
“I think diversity and resilience is what makes this city so unique.”
Developer Boston Properties – the same trust behind the Times Square Tower and 360 Park Avenue South – offered a former Starbucks location to the chain after it “fell in love with the mission.”
“We felt that Midtown is constantly running fast,” Giret added. “It was the best place for us to start and for people to be … And this is a moment where you rediscover human encounters, which is not exactly the first thing you think of when you think about Midtown Manhattan.”
At the yellow-tinted java joint, customers can select from a variety of menu offerings, ranging from craft coffee and tea beverages to French-inspired croques, sandwiches and pastries.
Café Joyeux said it takes the appropriate steps to make sure its employees are comfortable behind the counter – such as partnering with organizations like the American Association for People With Disabilities to find the right candidates.
Once candidates are evaluated – no formal interviews are conducted, Giret said – their skills are tested with a supervisor “to observe how they respond, how they react [and] how they interact” to stressful situations.
“After that, if we feel that the candidate could thrive in this environment—- it’s from their end or our end,” Giret said. “Some of them are going to say no, it’s not for me or we’re going to say we don’t feel it’s a good fit.”
Lucky brewers handed job offers are provided with six to eight weeks of training – supervisors are also available on the floor at all times to make sure employees have the right level of support. Most employees are assessed biannually depending on how much attention and support they need, Giret said.
“These people have been treated all their life as burdens,” Giret added. “We care for them — when we see that they have more anxiety on this, we pull them out and fix that with them and then bring them back on to the floor.”
Every employee gets between two and four hours of training and ever-evolving seasonal menus mean new orders to learn – but it’s a welcome challenge, Barcellona said.
“The training has been a lot more vigorous these days, because we have our new spring and summer menu,” she said.
“We have days dedicated just to learning about different allergies people might have so it’s really intense. It’s like you’re going back to school, and I really love that because education is very important to me.”
Customer Harrison Gottfried, 29, told The Post Wednesday that the café’s mission hits close to home.
“I care about the mission: as someone who is neuro-divergent, it’s important to support the people who support us, because we’re creating inclusion,” he said.
Gottfried isn’t the only New Yorker who agrees with the mission: last month, New York State’s Office for People with Developmental Disabilities spotlighted a short film inspired by a true story at Café Joyeux, dubbed “47.”
“Just breaking down that barrier of stereotypes [that] people with disabilities can’t work. They can work,” he said. “You just got to give them an opportunity to use their skills and allow them to have employment.”
