Contento NYC: Serving Up Inclusive Design

Guests: Yannick Benjamin

(Music 1/ Show Intro)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

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INTRO:

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: Carolyn, we have such a wonderful show today! Our guest is Yannick Benjamin— a restauranteur and expert sommelier with a truly inspiring story!

Carolyn: Yes, and we are very happy to add this to our menu as the first episode for 2022!

Janet: Did I ever tell you that one of my very first words was ‘restaurant’? It just goes to show you what was important to me at a very young age.

Carolyn: And I’ll bet the word ‘design’ wasn’t far behind.

Janet: Exactly.

Carolyn: You also have a great story from maybe two days before we interviewed him…

Janet: I do. So what happened was I turned on the TV to PBS, and there was Lydia Bastianich profiling Yannick and his restaurant ‘Contento’ on her show called Lidia Celebrates America: Overcoming the Odds…

Carolyn: And you called me, like, ‘omg, turn on PBS’…

Janet: That’s right.

Carolyn: And I highly recommend our listeners give it a look… it was a very ‘tasteful’ segment.

Janet: Oh boy. Well, ignoring that pun, we should mention that Yannick is also in a wheelchair himself and designed his restaurant to reduce physical barriers and to be inclusive for everyone.

Carolyn: We should also note that there was some construction being done at the restaurant which you will hear in the background of our interview. The work on improving their space didn’t stop down for us as Contento continues to ‘serve up’ their best as an inclusive environment.

Janet: (chuckles) I think you’ve reached your pun quota for this intro… but we do think these ‘oh so familiar sounds’ that we know and we love only add to the charm of this interview.

Carolyn: You work with construction, you deal with contractors, you know these sounds.

Janet: Absolutely.

Carolyn: Just to give you a sample of Yannick’s story, not only is his restaurant ‘Contento’ designed to be accessible to patrons with disabilities, he also started two organizations: ‘Wheeling Forward’ to help those living with disabilities, and ‘Wine on Wheels’ that promotes expanding opportunities for the disabled within the hospitality industry.

Janet: But we’ll let him tell us about all of that and more in his own words.

Carolyn: And with that, here is our interview with Yannick Benjamin… Restauranteur, Sommelier, and Disability advocate…

(Music 2 – Interview)

Janet: Welcome Yannick. We’re so excited to have you today. Thank you so much for being here and being on our podcast, Inclusive Designers.

Yannick: Well, thank you very much for having me. It’s a real pleasure and an honor.

Janet: Thank you. Let’s just dive right on into it. (Yannick: sure). Tell us a little bit about you, your restaurant and the inspiration behind it.

Yannick: Yeah, thank you for your question. I’m born and raised in New York. Both of my parents are from France and they’re both in hospitality or they were. My mom worked cleaning houses. She worked for a lot of different families and my dad came to New York in 1963. He followed his two oldest brothers who came here already. My father came right after the French Algerian war. And he started working as a dishwasher for his brother who was a general manager at a very famous French restaurant which still exists called La Grenouille, which is pretty much directly across the street from the big famous Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. (Janet: huh).

And of course, being that my father was incredibly close with his two brothers, they only had Sundays off, they would come over and I would just hear them talk about the restaurant business as a kid. And I just thought it was such an exciting profession, seemed like there was so much happening. It just seemed kind of glamorous. (Janet: laughs).

And I grew up, you know, in a New York that was, I guess on one hand was exciting and glamorous, but then on the other side, wasn’t, depending on where you lived at. And I grew up in a working-class neighborhood called Hell’s Kitchen, which was on the west side of Manhattan, which was not so glamorous. So it was very much a blue collar, hardworking neighborhood. (Janet: right). And so hearing about all these exciting stories kind of took me away from that part of town and allowed me to dream and imagine. So pretty much at a very young age, I knew that I wanted to be in the hospitality industry and be like my uncles and be exactly like my dad.

Janet: That’s, that’s a great story. And by the way, yeah, Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t exactly inspire some sort of a white picket fence kind of, (Yannick: that’s true) right, exactly. So, tell us a little bit more about the restaurant itself and what was your inspiration? (Yannick: yeah). I mean, obviously, you have a whole bunch of like with the family background and, (Yannick: yeah) it’s in your blood, right, so (Yannick: yeah) but what was the inspiration for ‘Contento’?

Yannick: Well, I’m just going to, I’ll break it up into a couple of points to make it as easy as possible. Being that you guys are from up north as well, my favorite TV show growing up as a kid was ‘Cheers’. (Janet: laughs). And I just loved the dynamics of ‘Cheers’. And on top of the fact that I already wanted to be in hospitality, I knew that if I was ever going to open up a kind of like restaurant, bistro, whatever you want to call it, I wanted to have that same kind of feeling.

I wanted to be that guy, that centerpiece and have all his friends around him and just have a good time while at work. Right? Be happy when I was going to work and be happy when I was going to le