F BITES: Where Food is the Syllabus
It’s 1:37 p.m. on a Friday in July. At Niagara Falls’ Kalfas Magnet School, the kitchen, usually shut down for the summer, is bustling. Middle schoolers pipe cream onto shortcakes and then pass them down the line for their peers to spoon berries on top. Despite the presence of a couple dozen kids, the kitchen is quiet—and notably without the drama and chaos often characteristic of adolescence. They’re so focused, considerate and professional that when it comes time to eat, their instructor, Leo Zanca, doesn’t even have to raise his voice to make the announcement.
“This group is so calm, it almost feels like cheating,” Zanca tells me with a smile. But this transformation, this positivity, is the trademark of the F BITES program, a local nonprofit that does culinary vocational training for youth and adults in Erie, Niagara and Monroe counties.
Since 2010, F BITES (Food Based Interventions with Technology, Energy and Science) has endeavored to empower its participants “with the mind-set to be contributing members of society, inspiring them with the foundation to plan a successful future through the execution and development of workforce skills, soft skills and exposure to culinary art training.”
The organization partners with the Niagara Falls School District to run in-school and afterschool programs, collaborates with organizations including the Matt Urban Center, Buffalo Police Athletic League, Community Action Organization of WNY and Say Yes Buffalo to run afterschool and Saturday Academy programs in Erie County for students and families, and offers workforce development training at sites including the Niagara County Jail, a partnership they have with the Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and the Erie County Detention Center. In addition, they work with Pat Whalen and Roscoe Naguit at the Niagara Global Tourism Institute to run a workforce development program that helps to employ their graduates in the restaurant business.
Last year, F BITES piloted a program at LaSalle Preparatory School for seventh- and eighth-graders in Niagara Falls. “We were given the kids having the toughest time, the ones who spend a lot of their days in detention and suspension,” says Jamie Evan, F BITES board president. “And over the weeks, we got to see the students blossom.” In-school suspensions decreased significantly—and the kids’ shift in self-worth and optimism were palpable. For a few hours a week, they got a break from the stress and trauma of their usual lives, the labels and expectations they’d come to live with.
“We like to say that the food is the syllabus,” says Chef Bobby Anderson, founder of F BITES. “We’re cooking but we’re teaching people so much more: time management, respect, patience, how to communicate.”
Anderson founded F BITES after two decades in the culinary industry, a career that included training at the Culinary Institute of America, being a chef at four-star restaurants, cooking and managing kitchens in the U.S. and abroad, and appearing on "Hell’s Kitchen" with Gordon Ramsay, where he finished fourth out of 17 contestants.
A decade ago, ready for something new, Anderson volunteered to teach cooking classes at the Matt Urban Center. The experience changed his trajectory, bringing together his two worlds: the poverty he’d grown up in and the experience of being a trained professional chef. “I had an epiphany right there: I didn’t want to make cakes rise, I wanted to make souls rise,” Anderson says.
And since then, that’s what he’s been doing. “Growing up, I always knew I was different,” Anderson tells me. He didn’t feel understood, and violence and drugs, ways of coping with the generational poverty of his community, were rampant, causing many of his friends to get in trouble with the law. “When I stepped into the kitchen in 1985, at age 15, I was running from the streets. I wanted to escape because I didn’t want to feel.” Even as he built a successful career as a chef, the streets were never far for Anderson, who struggled with drug and alcohol abuse.
“Every challenge, every devastation catapulted me to a different level,” says Anderson, who got sober in 2006. For him, pain and darkness are ever-present—but he carries his past with him with purpose. His gratitude grounds him, and the lessons of his struggles empower him, helping him relate to the people he works with and propelling him to keep working toward his vision. “Abuse and addiction, darkness, are cousins of success. I remember that feeling—and that’s what keeps F BITES’ mission fresh and alive.”
This fall, F BITES will partner with Niagara University to open Cavers Café, a restaurant that will serve as an extension of their workforce development training program. They’ve also purchased a former Starbucks kiosk to run a barista training program for at-risk high schoolers, modeled after a program by FareStart in Seattle. F BITES is a member of Catalyst Kitchens, an alliance of 65 organizations across the country working to end joblessness, poverty and hunger, using the FareStart model. Anderson is always looking for ways to grow the program’s impact. “It’s hard work being a visionary, but I don’t know any other way of being,” he says.
“I remember the first time I heard French,” Anderson reminisces, his gaze in the distance to a time and place long ago. “It was at my first job, as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant in Niagara Falls. I couldn’t believe it—I ran home and said, ‘Mom! I’m going to take you to France someday.’” For him, it was a much-needed sign that the world was bigger than where he was right then.
Each time an F BITES program participant steps into the kitchen, this is what Anderson and F BITES try to provide: a way of seeing beyond their past and current circumstances, and of viewing the world, and themselves, as they could be.
