Our manifesto
We are all designed to dream.
Dreams are the ink with which we write our stories. We learn to dream the moment we take our first steps: We’re told we can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. That we’re limited only by what we dare to imagine, and how hard we’re willing to work for it.
But for some of us, there are limits. Some of us don’t get to write our own stories.
If you’re a young person growing up in the juvenile justice system, you get one chance to show the world who you are. Your worth is determined by a system that values the mistakes you make rather than the person you could be. Instead of surrounding you with people who believe in you, the system takes them away. Instead of showing you a path forward, it puts up barriers that hold you back. And instead of writing your own story, you end up in the margins of someone else’s. Every young person is full of potential, but when they live in a world that doesn’t believe in them, they stop believing in themselves—and they stop dreaming.
As successful restaurateurs, we know that food can take you anywhere. So when we saw how the juvenile justice system limits a young person’s potential, we had an idea: Use food to help young people find their greatness.
At Cafe Momentum, we believe all youth deserve to dream without limits. Through our restaurants, we help justice-involved young people build pathways out of incarceration by creating a space where they can realize their full potential. By giving them a place to learn about life, where there’s no limit on how many chances they get to get it right. By giving them a place to get to know their community in new ways; and to get to know themselves not as a statistic, but as a story of endless possibility. By meeting them where they are, walking alongside them with love, and surrounding them with unconditional compassion. Because when we believe in young people, there’s no limit to what they can achieve.
Restaurants can’t change the juvenile justice system, but they can create a way out. They can change a community—one meal, one person, at a time. Because we need food to stay alive, but we need dreams to live.
At Café Momentum, we’ll serve you a delicious meal—but we do more than fill stomachs. We help young people believe in themselves. We give youth a place to dream.
Go back to Who we are