Jake's Ice Cream Offers Value For People With Disabilities, Plans Second Business

LAKE BARCROFT, VA — At Jake's Ice Cream in the Barcroft Plaza shopping center, Adam works as a greeter welcoming guests and informing them about the ice cream offerings. He also runs social media for the business and will take on additional social media tasks for Jake's Gourmet Popcorn in Seven Corners.

Adam, like most employees of Jake's Ice Cream Shop, is a person with a disability. He is a spastic quadriplegic, which is a severe form of cerebral palsy. He does not have use of his arms and legs and has vision difficulties. To do social media posts for the ice cream parlor, he uses a voice-activated computer. That means he has to "talk the mouse across the screen so that he can get it in exactly the right spot."

When he has to learn new things, it can get frustrating. So he asked owner Robin Rinearson if he can give social media responsibilities for the upcoming popcorn shop to someone else.

But Rinearson didn't agree, encouraging Adam to keep instructions organized in an email folder and use them with text-to-voice translation. She has confidence in employees like Adam that they can and will get the job done.

That's why Rinearson doesn't believe the story of Jake's Ice Cream is about her, an optometrist who retired after she opened the ice cream shop. It's about the 25 employees, 21 of whom have disabilities.

"The reason for opening this ice cream parlor was to employ people with disabilities," Rinearson told Patch. "It's named Jake's after my nephew, Jake, who has cerebral palsy and who had a job for eight years before COVID hit. And when COVID came around, he and the 17 other people with disabilities that were working at his job were not accommodated."

That infuriated Rinearson, who has worked with the disability community as an optometrist.

When she decided to open a business to employ people like her nephew, Jake's Ice Cream was born in August 2021. Employees are trained to make the small batches of ice cream created on-site. The shop also runs occasional catering events, largely during the school year.

"The staff here all helps to make the ice cream," said Rinearson. "They scoop. They pack pints. They help make the ice cream cakes. They help decorate the ice cream cakes. They make the waffle cones. They make the cake pops, they make the decorated cookies, the dip pretzels, all of the confections that we do."

The ice cream parlor initially employed 11 people who were patients at Rinearson's practice before she retired in late 2021. Now the shop employs 25 people, and about half of the employees have individual job coaches to help them succeed in their work.

"For them, it's a job for life, unlike someone at a high school or college where they might be here for a summer or for a year," said Rinearson. "These are people that are looking for jobs, and when they get a job coach, they can't be hired for seasonal work. They only get a job coach if they're hired for year-round work."

Finding enough job coaching has been a pain point for Rinearson, who has expectations that employees can be trained to perform different tasks in the businesses. When a group coach serving nine employees was pulled in September, two employees who were too disabled to work without a group coach could no longer work there.

Another hurdle is the earning limits under the Social Security Disability Insurance benefits and Medicaid waiver. Before July 2021, Rinearson said there was a subminimum wage waiver that encouraged employers to hire people with disabilities. Employers could pay less than minimum wage and employ them for a certain amount of hours without going over the income that would make employees lose their benefits.

That changed in July 2021, and Virginia's wage increased to $9.50 per hour. It increased again to $11 per hour in 2022 and $12 per hour in 2023.

"For people that have income limits with disabilities, it's horrific because now they're working fewer hours," said Rinearson. "Their work is their social life. They have an identity around their job, and they have an identity with the social group that they work with. They have a sense of pride. They are able to live somewhat independently."

Rinearson has testified to the state legislature in support of increasing the income employees can make before losing their benefits.

Rinearson looks for ways to make the tasks easier for employees to understand and carry out. Nearly everything in the shop is color coded, so employees know which sizes to use rather than knowing the difference between 6 ounces and 12 ounces.

The business also works with Poolesville High School in Montgomery County, Maryland, where students create apps or devices to make it easier for employees with disabilities. The high school created a change-making app to help employees understand the number of coins and dollar bills to give a customer in change.

The Jake's Gourmet Popcorn opening in Seven Corners will have less complex work for employees who may not be able to perform the ice cream parlor duties, Rinearson says.

"There will be many more things that people can do that are not high functioning, putting labels on bags and labels on tins and filling popcorn bags," said Rinearson. "We still will have to be careful about food allergies and cross contamination, but it's a lot easier with a dry good than it is with stuff that's wet and frozen."

The new popcorn shop will be at Seven Corners Center next to Michaels. Rinearson was inspired by popular commercial popcorn makers in Chicago, where she went to graduate school.

Rinearson is aiming for the popcorn shop to open by the end of April. She is in the process of hiring employees, including two who she had let go from the ice cream shop. It will also include participants from Arlington Program for Employment Preparedness, which also bring in interns with job coaches to Jake's Ice Cream. Interns from that program have been hired as employees.

For both businesses, no job description is provided for prospective employees, as Rinearson tries to "meet people where they're at."

"This is a phenomenal group of employees," she said. "It's a long, slow, steep, slow learning curve to teach them how to do things. I think it's worth the price of training to put people to work."

When Rinearson sees discussions among ice cream parlor owners that they're having trouble finding employees, she has one piece of advice.

"Hire somebody with a disability," she said. "Train them in the wintertime before you get ready to open. Hire them. They will be model employees."