Sunflower Bakery and Cafe

Sunflower Bakery offers three programs to help prepare young adults and teens for future successful employment: The Pastry Arts Employment Training Program is a 26 week program that prepares students for employment in bakeries, supermarkets, restaurants, catering companies and other food-related businesses and consists of formal professional pastry chef-led instruction, ServSafe and employee development training, on-the-job training, an 8 week paid internship in our production kitchen and assistance in securing employment. 67 young adults have graduated from our Pastry Arts program since 2010 and over 80% of our graduates are securing successful employment. The Café Sunflower Employment Program, located in North Bethesda, Maryland, prepares participants for jobs working in "front-of-house" environments and consists of 3 months of on-site formal instruction at our Café, employee development in areas focusing on customer service, barista training, and employee development training including work ethic and attitude, communication, time management, and goal setting, resume development and job search skills. If successful in the instructional phase, students are then hired by the Café for 6 months of employment. We have two Teen Job Exposure Programs: our Summer Teen Exposure Program (one week sessions) and our new After School Teen Exposure Program (one afternoon a week for five weeks). Participating teens produce and bake a variety of pastries from cookies to bars to cupcakes, and gain a basic understanding of what it is like to work in a professional production bakery. Sunflower’s Job Exposure programs are approved under the Pre-ETS program of the Maryland Division of Rehabilitation Services (DORS) at no cost to families who are enrolled.