In 2011, two women who worked at CATCH Court (a special docket in Columbus, Ohio’s Franklin County Municipal Court for women who had been victims of human trafficking) recognized that the court system could offer women a two-year probationary program but couldn’t offer them a pathway to economic independence. Hannah and Mandi founded Freedom a la Cart to fill that gap.
The tool they chose was a food cart. The logic: practical culinary job skills, a trauma-sensitive work environment, and a commercial operation that could sustain itself without dependency on grant cycles.
What Freedom a la Cart Actually Does
Freedom a la Cart is a catering social enterprise: box lunches, drop-off catering, and a fast-casual cafe at 123 E. Spring Street in downtown Columbus. The commercial food businesses generate the revenue that funds the employment and support programs, which is the structural choice that makes the whole operation durable.
Survivors gain practical culinary and food service skills in a trauma-informed environment: meaning the physical setting, management practices, and interpersonal norms are designed to avoid re-traumatization rather than requiring participants to adapt to a conventional workplace culture. For women exiting trafficking situations, this distinction is significant: most workplaces weren’t designed with their specific histories in mind.
Since founding, Freedom a la Cart has provided 59 survivors with paid workforce development, with 24 of those moving into full-time employment. The wraparound services alongside the job include trauma counseling, financial literacy training, savings-match incentives, housing assistance, case management, and mentorship.
The CATCH Court Partnership
Freedom a la Cart works closely with CATCH Court (established by Franklin County Municipal Judge Paul Herbert), which offers women victims of trafficking a two-year probationary program requiring drug screenings, counseling, residential programming, and mentorship. The court program addresses legal and recovery needs; Freedom a la Cart addresses economic needs.
This partnership between a court system and a social enterprise is unusual and worth noting. The court identifies women at the moment of justice system contact, when their need for intervention is acute and documented. Freedom a la Cart provides an economic pathway that the court alone can’t offer.
Mentors in the program commit to at least two hours per week of direct relationship, background check required. The unconditional nature of the mentorship relationship (showing up regardless of setbacks, not just during progress) is explicitly designed into the program structure.
Human trafficking survivors need job skills, yes. But the research is consistent: what determines long-term recovery outcomes is whether someone has a consistent, stable relationship with another person who believes they can succeed. Freedom a la Cart builds that into the program design.
The Freedom Loft as Expansion
Freedom a la Cart’s new physical location at 123 E. Spring Street houses both the cafe (ground floor) and “The Freedom Loft”: a survivor resource center on the upper floor. Moving from a food cart to a permanent physical location with a dedicated resource center represents a scaling of the organization’s footprint while keeping its community embeddedness intact.
The commercial cafe serves the broader Columbus public. The catering operation serves corporate and event clients. Both channels generate revenue for the social mission and simultaneously create visibility for the organization’s work in communities that have the resources to support it.
For social entrepreneurs considering adjacent models: the cafe/catering structure works because it creates multiple price points (catering for institutional clients at higher margins, cafe for walk-in community) without requiring the social enterprise to be the only financial support for the program.
To find out more about Freedom a la Cart, visit their:
P.S. If you’re planning an event in Columbus, contracting Freedom a la Cart’s catering services is one of the more direct ways to connect your purchasing decision to their mission: the food is genuinely good and the client list includes Columbus’s largest employers.