Finding Sweet Comfort at The Port Washington Bakery

In light of October’s National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Patch stopped by this week to see what’s been cookin.’

, director of development for Garden City based Community Mainstreaming Associates, helps operate group homes for people with disabilities and has worked hard into getting them employment.

“We have people who have achieved so much independence,” Puritano said. “Some of them have actually moved out of a group home and live in apartments on their own. The one thing they couldn’t do was get jobs.”

One of those people who lives in an apartment with a roommate is Sweet Comfort Bakery employee Paul Marcellino.  

Marcellino has worked at the bakery since December 2009, and at 57-years-old this is his first ever paying job. He takes the 7:30AM bus to work and always makes it on time.

“It’s nice, I like it here,” said Marcellino who has been in a long term relationship with a woman named Maryann, does his laundry, balances his checkbook, walks all over town and is an avid Mets fan. “What I like about it is that I am learning new stuff and getting to be more advanced.”

Marcellino said he likes to do the dishes, bakes when needed and helps the other employees around the bakery; and with his hard-earned paycheck he likes to buy magazines, CDs or presents for his girlfriend and family.

“Our executive director always tells the story about making a peanut butter sandwich,” Puritano said. “You get your bread, you put peanut butter on one side, jelly on the other and you put it together. For a person with a developmental disability, it’s walk to the cabinet above the sink, open the cabinet, get the bread out, put the bread on the counter, untie the bread. It’s broken down into 60something steps and if they get hung up on step 12, even though they can do every other step, the task doesn’t get done.”

“We opened this [program] with the full intention of offering employment and we break the steps down,” Puritano said. “We don’t care if it takes you 100 steps, we’re going to break it down and we’re going to work with you to get you the support you need to make [that peanut butter sandwich].”

The bakery supported Puritano’s mission, she said, because it requires a repetition of task, a certain level of structure and a tangible object that comes out at the end of a project.  

Everything found in the bakery is something the 40 percent disabled employees can make, which is why Puritano said you won’t see elaborate 10-tiered cakes.

“I’ve gotten to do more,” Marcellino said who feels he has grown since he first started his job. “I call here when needed.”

Puritano said Marcellino has learned to pick up the phone to ask to pick up shifts and pitch in when someone else can’t work, and he even teaches new employees how to perform tasks.

“That’s just one of those things you learn from being on-site and being supportive,” Puritano said. “Paul is just overall one of the most well liked people. He is an all around greast guy, he works really hard and he is a total success story.”

Even though Sweet Comfort Bakery still isn’t profitable, Puritano said they are very grateful for the grant money and funding support they receive.

“We’re not self-sustaining yet, but there are some wonderful foundations that have really embraced our mission and we’re very grateful because adults with developmental disabilities are just underserved,” Puritano said.

For the upcoming holiday season, the bakery has started their new gift basket business and big orders are already coming in. It also launched an online shopping website and Puritano said it is pushing for businesses.

“Businesses have a choice,” she said. “You can have your $40 gift go to a profit agency or you can have your $40 gift go to us. Either way the person getting it is still getting something good, it’s just a question of how you want to spend your money.

“We’re really working, we have an amazing board of directors, we have an amazing staff and we really believe in this project,” Puritano said. “Sometimes it’s not convenient or practical or affordable to do something that just needs to be done. We just believe in it and we’ve seen the results in our guys and that just makes us even more committed.”