Charlotte West, Open Campus
Drew Hanchett had always loved to cook. So when he found a culinary curriculum on his tablet while sitting in a cot in a county jail in Tucson, Arizona — videos on French knife skills, sauces, butchery — he worked through all of it. “I was so happy to find a course on something I was already passionate about,” he said.
Hanchett had no idea that, more than a year later, completing that curriculum would land him in Cleveland, enrolled in an in-person culinary training program. Hanchett is one of about 120 people EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute has flown to Cleveland after completing the program’s tablet-based curriculum, now available through Edovo, an educational app on prison tablets in almost every state.
The digital content is the latest expansion of a program that has spent nearly 15 years making the case that culinary training — paired with housing, jobs and wraparound support — can be a path out of incarceration.
Those like Hanchette who complete the digital course and want to pursue the in-person training can apply to come to Cleveland, with flights sponsored by the Cleveland Browns football team.
The program is the brainchild of Brandon Chrostowski, a Detroit native who was arrested as a teenager, got probation instead of prison time, and was mentored by a chef whom he credits with changing the course of his life. He spent years cooking in New York, Chicago and Paris before settling in Cleveland — which he chose, he has said, because the data pointed to it as one of the most distressed cities in the country.
“There’s a way to change the world through food and hospitality,” he said, “because it changed mine.”
Charlotte West covers prison education for Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education. She writes College Inside, a newsletter about education and employment during and after incarceration.
EDWINS started as a culinary class at Grafton Correctional Institution, a men’s minimum security prison, in 2011. It eventually became what it is today, a community hub in Cleveland’s Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood — a butcher shop, a bakery, a culinary library, student housing, and a French restaurant that recently reopened in the old Nighttown location in Cleveland Heights. Around 1,000 students have graduated since the program started, according to program staff. The program was also the subject of Knife Skills, a 2018 Oscar-nominated documentary available free on YouTube.
During the pandemic, electronic tablets became more common in prisons across the country. They aren’t connected to the internet, but allow incarcerated people to message friends and family and access approved entertainment and educational content. The EDWINS tablet curriculum introduces people inside to the fundamentals of French cooking through videos, reading assignments and tests. “It’s giving people a good foundation on how to cook, what to cook, how to visualize it,” Chrostowski said.
Hanchett, who already had experience as a home cook, learned things like how to make fresh pasta. “I wrote all the recipes down,” he said. “But what it did most was set me up for what they taught in person — how they make their recipes. I already knew how they did it and why.”
Hanchett arrived in January and is due to graduate in August. When he got to Cleveland, he kept waiting for a catch. It never came. The in-person program confirmed something he had always wondered about himself — he had been a home cook for years, praised by everyone around him, but never knew if they were just being nice. EDWINS, he said, answered that question. He’s planning to stay and work in Ohio after graduation.
Hanchett’s experience is part of what Derrick Speights, EDWINS’ director of reentry services, has come to expect from students who travel to Cleveland for the program. He spoke during a tour of the bakery and butcher shop at the National Conference for Higher Education in Prison in April.
“The people that I fly here usually don’t have a whole lot of problems,” he said. Fewer distractions, less pull from their old lives.
“Every piece — the butcher shop, the bakery, the library — all of this is based off a student’s need,” Speights said. “Brandon has always said, ‘If one student needs it, every student needs it.'”
The butcher shop and bakery also serve the surrounding community. “This neighborhood is in the middle of a food desert,” Speights said. “So, to be able to get access to reasonably priced food and good cuts of meat is a big deal.”
The businesses serve a dual purpose. They are where students train, and they help keep the program financially sustainable. Chrostowski describes the model as vertically integrated: students produce the bread, the bakery sells it, and it’s served in the restaurant. Revenue helps offset the cost of the program.
The rest comes from individual donors, foundations and capital campaigns. EDWINS does not take state or federal money — a deliberate choice, Chrostowski said. The program is also expanding — most recently adding an oyster bar and seafood classroom at the restaurant, where students will hone in on the butchery of fish.
The six-month curriculum covers business basics, culinary math, food safety and gastronomy, but the real training happens on the floor. Students spend the first two weeks in intensive instruction, then rotate through the butcher shop, the bakery and the restaurant — three months in the front of the house, three months in the back.
“You’re not just sitting there peeling onions,” Chrostowski said. “You learn business basics, culinary math — with the idea that you have the potential to lead, manage.”
Many students arrive convinced they want to be a chef, Speights said, only to discover over six months that they’re better suited somewhere else in the industry. “I love to see people come in with one focus and watch them evolve as they go through the program,” he said.
The program runs about six classes a year, with roughly 15 students per class — around 75 students annually. At any given time, enrollment hovers around 60. Students receive a stipend of $400 a month while they train; $100 of that is held back and returned as a lump sum at graduation.
Graduates don’t earn a culinary degree but come out with the skills they need for success in the restaurant world, Speights said. “No one says, ‘Did the chef have a two-parent household? Did the chef go to college? Has the chef been incarcerated?'” he said. “No one cares. I came for the steak, I came for the chicken, I came for the salad I love. Can you make one?”
Speights speaks from personal experience. He enrolled in a culinary program straight out of high school, spent a lot of money, and never finished. “If you’re 18, 19, just getting out of high school, and you think you’re interested in culinary arts — why not try the free six-month program?” he said. “Determine if this is really for you. And then after graduation, you can still go and sign on a dotted line for thousands of dollars.”
Speights puts the job placement rate of EDWINS graduates at 95%. Some graduates go on to work in top restaurants in Cleveland, though not everyone ends up working in the restaurant industry — and Speights says that’s fine.
“Culinary arts might just be a safety net for you,” he said. “Times get hard, you get laid off, you run into a restaurant, you make your money. That’s OK with us. The goal is that you don’t go back to prison.”
EDWINS estimates its recidivism rate among graduates at less than 1%. Almost 18% of people released from Ohio prisons return within three years for a new crime, according to the state’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Research from the same agency found that formerly incarcerated people who completed vocational training while inside were significantly more likely to find stable employment after release — and that vocational training, employment and financial stability are linked to reduced likelihood of returning to prison.
The program is not easy to get through. Speights says he typically starts with about 80 students on the roster. Around 60 show up the first day. Fewer than 10 graduate. “Adulting is tough,” he said. “This is a two-year program in six months, and we’re working with people who have never had a job, never had to work a 12-hour shift.”
That leaves $300 a month to live on, which Speights acknowledges is tight, particularly for people supporting families. Housing is available on campus, but it’s designed for individuals, not families.
Many people who don’t finish the first time come back. “Every class that we start, we’ve got somebody who started it in the past, didn’t complete it for whatever reason, and then come back and say now is the right time,” Speights said. “We’re not just giving second chances — we give third, fourth and fifth chances.”
Louis Fields went through the EDWINS program at Grafton Reintegration Center in 2017, before the tablet curriculum existed. He now works as The Marshall Project’s outreach manager in Cleveland. He wasn’t drawn in by a passion for cooking. “I just wanted a skill that could lead to me creating a life for myself,” he said.
The program was rigorous in a way that stood out. “It was the first program I took in prison where you had to actually work towards something,” he said. “A lot of the things they offered in prison were just based on attendance.”
Fields didn’t go on to work in the culinary industry, but the connection to EDWINS didn’t end when he left Grafton. In 2020, while still incarcerated, he was running a literacy initiative and EDWINS let him use the bakery to host a book event. “They are the real deal,” he said. “Anytime I get an opportunity to talk about something that’s working in Ohio dealing with reentry and reintegration, I’m always going to give them a shout out.”
Edovo is a content distribution partner of College Inside. This story was reported and edited independently.
