By Sunayana Prabhu
RED BANK – A new robotics and futuristic-themed training café for individuals with special needs won unanimous approval from the borough’s planning board Nov. 20. The café’s owner will be leasing the vacant two-story building previously occupied by Hobbymasters at 62 White St., across from the borough’s paid public parking lots.
Robo CAFÉ will add to the inclusive community growing in the borough following approval in September of the state’s first housing complex for neurodiverse individuals, Thrive Red Bank, LLC., on Shrewsbury Avenue. The café will be about a mile – an approximate 20 minute walk – from the housing complex.
The multipurpose training café is the brainchild of Manalapan resident Ross Yellin, CEO and founder of the for-profit organization Inclusion Pathways. For adults with disabilities over 21 years of age, “integration is the most important thing,” Yellin told The Two River Times after the planning board meeting. As an individual with Tourette’s syndrome, ADHD and OCD, Yellin said his purpose for the café is to channel his energy to provide “meaningful employment” and social opportunities for neurodiverse individuals.
The current two-story, 9,300-square-foot building will have several components with a basic kitchen and 28-seat restaurant to provide social and vocational training opportunities in the food service/preparation industry. However, it will not be a full-service restaurant.
“The idea is to bring people in, possibly give them small meals or snacks, light fare, not a full-service type thing,” explained John Anderson, the attorney representing Inclusion Pathways at the meeting. The restaurant is “not really this organization’s prime revenue model,” Anderson said. “They do make money by working with Medicaid and billing for those services they give for special needs.”
Robo CAFÉ will also include a small retail space and a “maker space or a lounge space,” project architect Mike Simpson of S.O.M.E. Architects, P.C. said, where games and items made by neurodiverse individuals can be purchased, and recreational activities such as ping-pong tables, board games among others will be available.
Additionally, a second-floor administrative office space will be dedicated to assisting special needs individuals with employment and housing applications.
Building renovations will be geared toward meeting any accessibility requirements. Simpson told the board some modifications to the streetscape will be made as well.
“It’s pretty much his (Yellin’s) invention. Nobody else is running this program,” Simpson said. “There’s really not another model like it and the hope is that this becomes one that will be very successful, that can be taken elsewhere.”
The current operational model will include “six to eight staff members total in the building at peak,” Simpson told the board, with 15 to 20 people attending the training program. In total, “you could have 40 people on site, it’s conceivable, at a peak training time,” he said.
“We liked the idea of having a larger space not because we anticipate to fill up the whole space but because we like to have a variety of different things that are going on,” Yellin said at the meeting.
Robo CAFÉ would be open to the public weekdays from 3 to 8 p.m. and weekends from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays, the café will run training programs for employees and volunteers who work there in food service.
The article originally appeared in the November 30 – December 6, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
