While my dad was in college, he and a few of his friends started a café. More than 30 years later, that café is still thriving and was one of my favorite brunch spots when I was at Cornell. The restaurant industry usually chews people up and spits them out, so it’s pretty unusual to see any restaurants last that long, let alone one started by a bunch of amateurs. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more college town success stories like Café Dewitt come out of CoFed, which is a Berkeley, CA non-profit that is “empowering students to create ethically-sourced, community-run cafés on college campuses.” CoFed is all about the triple bottom line, as they not only want to start successful cafés that offer delicious food, but they want to do it in a humane and sustainable way.

Get CoFed

If your mouth is already watering, then keep reading. So far CoFed has raised about $10,000 and has teams at 6 campuses across the West coast: Cal Poly SLO, City College San Francisco, Humboldt State, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, and University of Washington. Each of the teams gets access to CoFed’s training programs and research, so that they can start with a good chance at success. I’ve seen plenty of campus-run dining establishments forced to close, so I know that starting an on-campus cooperative with a shoestring budget will not be easy. Still, I think CoFed is doing a neat thing in a unique way—and how can you not support an organization that improved the quality of food on campus? If reading about CoFed is making you hungry to learn more, then you should check out their Jobs and Internships page. Right now they’re a bit light on funding, so they don’t quite have the budget for full-time jobs. They’re essentially recruiting interns with the potential for full-time jobs as the interns help grow the organization. If you’re looking for an experience over security, then you should check out their opportunities in Development (this one is the most likely to turn into a job), Social Media, Admin, and Event Production. At the very least, you won’t go hungry.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• CoFed.org
• Internship at CoFed
• About CoFed
• CoFed’s Blog
• CoFed’s Teams
• CoFed in the News

Would you eat at a CoFed café?

We've identified CoFed as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• administrative
• all employers
• California
• development
• events
• food
• non-profit
• organic
• restaurants
• social media
• sustainability

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Jobs Near You

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