The Greyston Bakery, a for-profit business, incorporates the positive societal agenda into its core business practice via hiring individuals “chronically unemployed” due to lack of skills and education, as well as histories of homelessness, drug addiction and incarceration. Furthermore, the bakery sustains the work of its non-profit affiliate, Greyston Mandela. With an overriding mission to reduce human suffering, both organizations are focused on sustainability, community development and empowerment.
Innovation
In 1982, Roshi Bernard Tetsugen Glassman, the leader of a Zen Buddhist meditation group and one-time aerospace engineer, founded the Greyston Bakery, a gourmet wholesale-retail bakery which has become a model of "social enterprise" famous for its mission to lead in community and human development and to be a role model for other socially conscious businesses. The Greyston Bakery‘s central purpose, achieved through acclaimed quality and operating efficiencies, is to consistently achieve operating profits to sustain the work of the "Greyston Mandela," an innovative and highly-integrated group of non-profit and for-profit organizations involved in community development through initiations in housing development, child care, HIV-related health care, jobs and enterprise creation and related social services. Central to the mission of the Greyston Bakery is the employment and training of a workforce comprised of those chronically unemployed due to lack of skills and education, as well as histories of homelessness, drug addiction and incarceration.
Impact
The Greyston Bakery has thrived, and continues to get ample recognition for both its positive societal impacts as well as its first-rate products. Currently, the company produces cakes, tarts, and cookies, as well as certain of the key ingredients that go into Ben & Jerry‘s ice creams. Its products have been served at, and distributed as gifts by, the White House. Specialty stores nationwide carry Greyston products. It seems that Greyston‘s notoriety for its social mission has only helped it achieve its business objectives. Beyond the immediate community, Greyston has received widespread recognition, including from the national media. The result has been that Greyston has served as a model of social enterprise, a model being emulated both here in the United States and abroad.
Inspiration
Bernie Glassman, following Zen Buddhist principles, was inspired to do work that would "reduce human suffering." Embracing a call to action, he decided to bring the unemployed, those seen as "rubbish" by the fortunate and wealthy, into the bakery for employment. Glassman‘s strongly-held views as to matters of social justice, economic development and personal empowerment drive The Greyston Bakery. Its structure is designed to reduce human suffering and each element is honed to achieve that result.
The World Inquiry editorial team edited this profile from the original submission of the interviewer or other source. The views expressed do not necessarily represent Case Western Reserve University, the Weatherhead School of Management or the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. More >>
