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The Culinary Arts Program and the Cookie Micro-Enterprise
The Culinary Arts program prepares trainees for careers in the food service industry, concentrating on baking and pastry arts, cooking science and methods, presentation, and preparation for small and large orders for a variety of occasions. The delicious results, including a variety of sweet and savory breads, pies, cakes, cookies and fruit/’chocolate bars for any occasion or group function, are available through The Arc Bakery.
The Story of The Arc’s Cookies
From the kitchen of The Arc’s Culinary Arts program came a successful micro-enterprise that’s really taken off over the past three years and is on track to become self-supporting—a goal for all our micro-enterprises.
The Arc’s incredibly delicious Classic Crunch Chocolate Chip Cookie
debuted on shelves at ShopRite in New London on August 1, 2016, creating jobs and economic opportunities for people with IDD as well as a buy-local option for cookie connoisseurs of all ages.
They’re now available in 22 stores region wide, and also available for sale online.
Partnerships with local businesses like ShopRite in New London, where we bake the cookies, foundations including Dominion Energy and Greenwich Porsche/Harvard Business School, and the Mentoring Corps for Community Development all contributed to realizing our dream of bringing a product to market that would support our vocational training initiatives as well as our fiscal bottom-line.
The result was, in our opinion and that of pretty much anybody who’ve tasted them, one of the best chocolate chip cookies on the market. (But don’t take our word for it! Try our cookies as soon as you can!)
Trainees from our Culinary Arts program are involved in all aspects of production, from making the dough to using the equipment and the oven to packaging, delivery and mail-order shipping. The cookie production crew works with the Culinary Arts program to create custom orders for corporate events, display tables, special occasions, weddings—from individually wrapped and branded to an entire mountain on a tray.
The Culinary Arts program prepares trainees for careers in the food service industry, concentrating on baking and pastry arts, cooking science and methods, presentation, and preparation for small and large orders for a variety of occasions. The delicious results, including a variety of sweet and savory breads, pies, cakes, cookies and fruit chocolate bars for any occasion or group function, are available through The Arc Bakery.
The Arc ECT’s Classic Crunch Cookies can be found at these and other great locations:
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Express Shipping
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Lamplighter Trading Post
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Highland Park Market
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Herb's Country Store
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Ivy's Simply Homemade
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Ace Hardware
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Putnam Super Market
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McQuades Marketplace
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Fiddleheads Food Co-op
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Flanders
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Tri-Town Foods
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Big Y - Groton
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Big Y - Plainfield
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Big Y - Norwich
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Big Y - Danielson
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Stop n Shop - Groton
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Stop n Shop - Norwich
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Shop Rite New London
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Pfizer - Compass Group