Tag Archives: Wilton Farmers’ Market

Last winter, on a ski trip to Stowe, Sonam Sethi Tejpal’s family took a side trip to the nearby Ben & Jerry’s factory.

A random fact on an interactive quiz caught her eye: The company gets its chocolate fudge brownies — used in her favorite flavor — from Greyston Bakery in Yonkers. The New York firm provides jobs for people who were previously incarcerated.

There are no background checks, resume requirements or questions about convictions. Instead there is stable employment, for men and women who have great difficulty finding it.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” Tejpal — who lived all over the world and ws a TV producer for the Discovery network, before settling in Westport 9 years ago with her children, now 10 and 7 — says.

She learned that the employment rate for people leaving incarceration is over 27% — nearly 5 times the national average.

It’s not for lack of will, Tejpal says. It’s a lack of open doors. Background checks, stigma and gaps in employment history shut people out before they even get a chance to prove themselves.

“I realized I wanted to do something like this. It became my north star.”

She’d already sponsored opportunities for girls in education, working with a teacher in her native India. She and her husband contributed to causes like the Red Cross and St. Jude’s.

“God has been very kind to us,” Tejpal says. “We always look for ways to give back.”

Now she wanted to do something closer to home.

Tejpal loves cooking. “Food is a love language,” she notes.

She enjoyed baking cakes and muffins for her children. After a friend made granola, she’d been inspired to make her own, and incorporate it into healthy snacks.

Sonam Sethi Tejpal’s granola.

Tejpal calls herself “a home baker.” But teaching previously incarcerated men and women how to bake — and working with them to sell it — seemed like something she could do.

It was not easy.

She found a shared commercial kitchen in Norwalk. She became a certified food handler by ServSafe, and can now certify others.

Tejpal contacted a staffing agency experienced with the post-prison population. She did not feel comfortable working with anyone who served time for murder with malicious intent, or a crime involving children or sex. But she would consider anyone else.

The agency offered a half dozen names. She interviewed 3.

Her first employee is a man in his late 40s, with a child and grandchild. A Fairfield County native, he “made bad choices,” she says. But he is “finding his way back to society.”

Tejpal’s Hope & Hearth Bakery has begun production. She’ll soon sell her products —  chocolate pecan granola, chocolate chip muffins and cookies, chocolate granola and pretzel toffee bark — at the Wilton Farmers’ Market. (Westport’s vendors’ list is closed for this season.)

Chocolate granola bark.

She’s “a little bit nervous,” she admits. But she is also “excited and thrilled.”

“I’ve learned I can do hard things,” she says.

“I’ve been very fortunate. My life has been fairly easy so far. Now I’m starting from scratch. I did everything — the planning, the applications, all the rest — on my own. I’ve built this from the ground up.”

Tejpal believes “the measure of a person is not their worst moment, but their willingness to move forward.” To do that, she provides training, fair pay, and support.

Her daughter “is nervous for me,” Tejpal says. “I hope she and her friends see this as a good thing. I hope they understand that kindness is number one.

Tejpal’s goal is to “employ a lot of people, and bake lots of good food.” She offers “not temporary placement, not charity.” This is “real careers, real wages, and a real path forward.”

She mentions Homeboy Industries. The re-entry program for formerly incarcerated and gang-involved men and women provides job training, employment, legal services, mental health counseling, anger management and parenting classes, substance abuse support — even tattoo removal.