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By Charlene Dungan
Rodney Frazier believes that people with disabilities are angels and that he was put on this earth to help them. He first started seeing the disabled as the heart and eyes of God from the moment he started working with them and he truly understood what they go through on a daily basis.
Frazier is a 48-year-old black male who grew up with four brothers and two sisters. His father was a minister and they were very active in the church. Frazier said that his parents and his family were and still are his rock.
Frazier owns Rodney’s Café that is hidden in a little corner near highway 41 off Koeller Street. As customers walk into the café, the first thing they will notice is his family picture hanging on the wall, followed by a portrait of his father. When customers are being seated Frazier greets them with a friendly hello. He recognizes whether it’s the customers first time or if they have been there before. He has a great memory for remembering his customers.
He treats his customer’s like family and makes them feel very comfortable. When looking around, at first the customers will notice that the employees don’t really seem to fit in with the surroundings. That is because Frazier trains people with mental and physical disabilities in order to give them experience in the restaurant business so they can get a job on their own.
Frazier gives his employees a lot of positive attention, like a teacher with a student. He has a lot of respect for them and he enjoys every minute of it. He simply loves all people no matter who they are.
“I truly feel we are all in need of help and encouragement as we go through this life,” Frazier said.
Customers will notice that they will be treated like family and Frazier will start up a conversation like they are old friends. When he asks the customers what they were hungry for, he even offered to make things that weren’t on the menu. He tries to accommodate and please everyone.
Frazier has always worked with people with disabilities and he said that he has fallen in love with this population. He has had several businesses and he started out with group homes.
His first job was as a direct care staff at a group home 30 years ago and that’s when he found out that he loves helping people. When the group home lost its funding, Frazier wanted to help.
“I was heart-broken, so I went out and leased a bunch of houses and I put them in there and I continued on with the services that we would provide for them,” Frazier said. “That’s how I started my group home.”
Frazier had such a passion for cooking that it helped him open a room and board for disabled adults in California. The tenants loved his cooking so much that the word spread, and it wasn’t long before he was providing home cooked meals for disabled tenants at three separate homes.
Frazier also worked with severely disturbed children which he said was very challenging, but he loved it.
“This was 20 years ago and they still remember me because I was positive,” Frazier said. “I was that one positive person in their life, because their parents abused them and life abused them. It’s sick. I helped them. I started singing for them, just those little things that I provided for them.”
He grew up in California and was the fifth of seven children. Frazier’s mother taught him how to cook from an early age and he developed a style of his own. Before moving to Wisconsin, Frazier also owned a cleaning service which turned into cooking.
“I started cleaning the bingo halls, bingo is huge in northern California,” Frazier said. ‘The people that were running the concessions there, they didn’t want to do it anymore so they asked me if I would come on in and do it for them. I was curious, so I did it for them and I fell in love with it.
Frazier eventually had five bingo halls with a captive audience of 300 playing bingo every night. He said that was a win-win situation.
“I started doing that and took off from there, and again I was providing employment for people with disabilities,” Frazier said. “They would clean tables and help me cook and chop up vegetables and things like that. I did that for a good five years before I moved here.”
Frazier then opened his first café in California and after years of cooking, decided to move to Oshkosh where his wife’s parents reside. He started as a cook for Golden Corral Restaurant and after working several years as the manager, decided to open his own café called, Rodney’s Café.
Frazier had a second job as a job coach for Goodwill Industries and he learned that many people with disabilities had difficulties finding and maintaining a job. So he started to hire them to work at his café, in order to help and train them.
“I want to show them that no matter their disability, they can use that training to secure employment in the restaurant industry,” Frazier said.
Rodney’s Café is located at 1060 S Koeller Street, where he employees disabled people in order to train others.
“I have just begun,” Frazier said. “I started this restaurant and I’ve hired many people here that have disabilities and I’m teaching them and they are improving.”
One of his employees, Erica Lovell, said that she has only known Frazier for three weeks, but she loves working for him.
“I always thought I would never go back into the food business, but I met Rodney right after I moved here and I said OK I may give it a try,” Lovell said. “I enjoy coming into work. I haven’t had that in a long time. I’m going to stay in this area because of him.”
Frazier said that Lovell has improved from day one and she has even given him some new ideas.
“Even I learn new things every day,” Frazier said. “You never stop learning.”
Lovell was so proud of herself when she told me her story of how she made the perfect hash browns and Frazier said that they were better than his.
“I shocked him Saturday which made me feel really good, it made me blush,” Lovell said.
Joe Sosinski, another employee at Rodney’s Café, said that he has been volunteering his time for the past six months.
“The only thing that I take from him is the tips that I get,” Sosinski said. “I deliver, I waiter, I sometimes cook and do dishes.”
If someone messes up, Frazier will let his employees know right away and teach them the correct way. He is really serious about his food because Frazier said that in the restaurant business, sometimes you only get one shot at trying to please the customer.
“The only time he does anything is if something is not going the right way,” Sosinski said. “He will explain to us what’s wrong and we should fix it. He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t get angry, but he does explain things that need to get done and the right way to do it.”
Sosinski said that Frazier does everything with love and care and he tries to install that in them.
“That’s why I volunteer for him,” Sosinski said. “He is an excellent person, his food is great and I love his whole attitude to life in general.”
Ron Hoffmeyer, community leader for Walgreens and a regular at Rodney’s Cafe, said that he was very impressed with Frazier’s story, but was even more impressed by his food.
“I really like the whole, everything he cooks,” Hoffmeyer said. “He puts his own spin on a lot of things. As time went by and I tried some of the traditional favorites, he said, “Hey, what do you want?” He let me pick and choose things that I wanted and I really thought that was a cool factor.”
Hoffmeyer said that Frazier didn’t have a lot of salads on his menu, so he mentioned it.
“I like eating salads and then he started making salads and started a trend,” Hoffmeyer said.
Rodney’s Café was put on the reader board at Walgreens as the, “Community Business of the Month,” because Hoffmeyer thought Frazier deserved it.
“I just like the whole notion that he makes you feel important as a patron,” Hoffmeyer said. “I think that’s a huge huge thing that goes overlooked in a lot of businesses now days, so he totally respects.”
Frazier also works very closely with Clarity Care, which provides services for individuals with disabilities and limitations so they can lead independent and fulfilling lives within their community.
Nicole Greetan, an employment consultant for Clarity Care said that she has worked with Frazier on and off through the years.
“I previously worked with Rodney when I was a Coordinator in Residential, he frequently picked up shifts and worked in the group homes that I supervised,” Greetan said. “He did this while he was a supervisor at another agency.”
Greetan said that Rodney is an amazing caregiver and that he has set the bar high for other staff.
“Rodney treats everyone with such great respect and dignity,” Greetan said. “He is a true caregiver which can be rare these days.”
Rodney is also a philanthropist, an entrepreneur and is focused on serving his community.
“To put it plainly, he is the type of person that gives a shit, we need more people like him,” Greetan said. “If you ask my CEO, he always said that we need more “give a shit” people in this world, which makes me think of Rodney.”
Besides his restaurant, Rodney also takes care of a 96-year-old couple through Home Instead Senior Care.
“I’m there every day twice a day,” Frazier said. “At 7 o’clock in the morning and 9 o’clock every night, seven days a week. They need me.”
Frazier said that this couple had different people coming in their house all the time to help them with this and that, but they didn’t like seeing a different face every day. They wanted the same person to come all the time.
”They just fell in love with me,” Frazier said. “They hired me as their private care giver. I just love them to death and I would actually do it for free. It’s like the beginning and end of my day. Just the look on their faces when I walk in the door, that’s payment enough for me. You just can’t buy that.”
Frazier said that at 96, they have a lot of wisdom, so Frazier said that it’s also great for him.
“They depend on me and I depend on them, because they teach me a lot,” Frazier said, “They know I’m going to be there because they know every day that I’m going to be there. “It’s nothing like having the assurance that someone is always going to be there for them.”
Frazier eventually wants to form a foundation or a school in order to teach people social skills and activities of daily living. His mission is to branch out and teach kids and adults the things that are needed to survive.
“So many kids and adults graduate from college and don’t know how to change a tire on a car,” Frazier said. “Women don’t know how to sew a button on a regular shirt. Those basic skills that we need aren’t taught at schools, and they aren’t taught at homes, because the homes are broken.”
Frazier is scared of our future because the things that used to be taught to us are not being taught to this generation and he said they are lost.
“We have to get back to the basics,” Frazier said. “I’m all about today’s technology, but we have forgotten the basic skills.”
A lot of people come in asking for an application but Frazier said that when they go to fill it out, they are asking him for a pen.
“It’s not taught in schools and you should always be prepared,” Frazier said. “Those little things need to be taught all over again and that’s why I’m forming this to teach people those basic skills, life skills.”
There are a lot of younger parents out there now days and they don’t know the basic skills that people need. Frazier said that they don’t know how to cook so they are just wasting money going out to eat all the time.
“This generation is completely lost,” Frazier said. “There’s no gender, this is just a women’s job or a man’s job, this world isn’t easy any more. You have to know a lot just to survive. We all need to know those basic skills.”
Frazier said, just because you know how to read a book and know the answers to everything, it doesn’t mean that you know that job.
“We all need experience, we really do,” Frazier said. “I think it’s important but no one is willing to give us that. I know people who just graduated from college and can’t get a job because they have no experience.”
His goal is to provide jobs and training to anyone that wants to learn. Even though his focus is on disabled people, he welcomes anyone.
“You don’t have to be disabled to work here,” Frazier said. “Anyone that wants to learn any and everything about the restaurant business can come and work here.”
Frazier said that he wants to have a place that people can come to that he can train, and make them feel great about themselves.
“They need confidence,” Frazier said. “If you know how to do something, what does that do for your confidence? They need to be trained so they can go out on their own.”
He is also planting the seed for others. Frazier said that everything they learn from him is going to teach somebody else and then it will continue on.
“My vision is much bigger than what I am doing right now,” Frazier said. “This is just the center of what I want to do, and not only helping people with disabilities, but helping everybody.”
Rodney said that failure is not an option.
“My first goal is to be successful in everything that I do,” Frazier said. “Failure is not an option, but I have failed many many times in my life, it’s something that is very close to my heart.”
Frazier said that we all make mistakes, but you learn from your mistakes.
“I have made a lot of mistakes,” Frazier said. “Every day we learn. That’s what life is all about.”
Frazier has always been a hard worker and he has goals, but sometimes his family misses him.
“Do they like it? No they don’t like it,” Frazier said. “But I have goals and I think that I was put on this earth for a reason and that is to help people. I’m at home every day. They see me every day. But I do want to spend more time with my family.”
Frazier said that he has always been a hard worker in everything that he has done, and that his wife knew what she was stepping into when she married him.
“He’s always been a hard worker from day one,” Jane said. “The day that our daughter was born, he left the hospital and went back to work because that’s who he is, and I knew that a long time ago. He said failure wasn’t an option and I said OK.”
They have been married for 27 years and he warned her before they were married that he wasn’t going to work for someone else.
“I miss him terribly at home,” Frazier’s wife Jane said. “I wish he was home more, but I know that he loves what he does.”
His daughter, Jazmin Frazier, also wishes that her father was home more, but says that she gets to see him every day.
“I visit the café all the time and he comes home at night,” Jaz said. “I know that there are kids out there that don’t get to see their dad at all, so I’m really thankful that I get to see him.”
Frazier loves what he does, but he is hoping that one day his restaurant will run itself so that he can spend more time at home.
“Hopefully I can get this place to where it can run on its own and then I don’t have to be here,” Frazier said. “That’s why I’m using this place for training and I can have other people come in to help train people and then I won’t have to be here as much, but I still want to be here.”
Right now Rodney’s Cafe is open every day except Mondays, from 11am to 8pm. When you dine at Rodney’s Café, your patronage helps to support its mission, to not only serve good tasting food at a reasonable price, but to provide job skill training to those who are disabled.
“Helping people with disabilities has been the hallmark of my success since the beginning of my culinary career,” Frazier said. “I want to be successful, because if I’m successful I know it’s going to impact a lot of people’s lives.”
Rodney Frazier believes that people with disabilities are angels and that he was put on this earth to help them. He first started seeing the disabled as the heart and eyes of God from the moment he started working with them and he truly understood what they go through on a daily basis.
Frazier is a 48-year-old black male who grew up with four brothers and two sisters. His father was a minister and they were very active in the church. Frazier said that his parents and his family were and still are his rock.
Frazier owns Rodney’s Café that is hidden in a little corner near highway 41 off Koeller Street. As customers walk into the café, the first thing they will notice is his family picture hanging on the wall, followed by a portrait of his father. When customers are being seated Frazier greets them with a friendly hello. He recognizes whether it’s the customers first time or if they have been there before. He has a great memory for remembering his customers.
He treats his customer’s like family and makes them feel very comfortable. When looking around, at first the customers will notice that the employees don’t really seem to fit in with the surroundings. That is because Frazier trains people with mental and physical disabilities in order to give them experience in the restaurant business so they can get a job on their own.
Frazier gives his employees a lot of positive attention, like a teacher with a student. He has a lot of respect for them and he enjoys every minute of it. He simply loves all people no matter who they are.
“I truly feel we are all in need of help and encouragement as we go through this life,” Frazier said.
Customers will notice that they will be treated like family and Frazier will start up a conversation like they are old friends. When he asks the customers what they were hungry for, he even offered to make things that weren’t on the menu. He tries to accommodate and please everyone.
Frazier has always worked with people with disabilities and he said that he has fallen in love with this population. He has had several businesses and he started out with group homes.
His first job was as a direct care staff at a group home 30 years ago and that’s when he found out that he loves helping people. When the group home lost its funding, Frazier wanted to help.
“I was heart-broken, so I went out and leased a bunch of houses and I put them in there and I continued on with the services that we would provide for them,” Frazier said. “That’s how I started my group home.”
Frazier had such a passion for cooking that it helped him open a room and board for disabled adults in California. The tenants loved his cooking so much that the word spread, and it wasn’t long before he was providing home cooked meals for disabled tenants at three separate homes.
Frazier also worked with severely disturbed children which he said was very challenging, but he loved it.
“This was 20 years ago and they still remember me because I was positive,” Frazier said. “I was that one positive person in their life, because their parents abused them and life abused them. It’s sick. I helped them. I started singing for them, just those little things that I provided for them.”
He grew up in California and was the fifth of seven children. Frazier’s mother taught him how to cook from an early age and he developed a style of his own. Before moving to Wisconsin, Frazier also owned a cleaning service which turned into cooking.
“I started cleaning the bingo halls, bingo is huge in northern California,” Frazier said. ‘The people that were running the concessions there, they didn’t want to do it anymore so they asked me if I would come on in and do it for them. I was curious, so I did it for them and I fell in love with it.
Frazier eventually had five bingo halls with a captive audience of 300 playing bingo every night. He said that was a win-win situation.
“I started doing that and took off from there, and again I was providing employment for people with disabilities,” Frazier said. “They would clean tables and help me cook and chop up vegetables and things like that. I did that for a good five years before I moved here.”
Frazier then opened his first café in California and after years of cooking, decided to move to Oshkosh where his wife’s parents reside. He started as a cook for Golden Corral Restaurant and after working several years as the manager, decided to open his own café called, Rodney’s Café.
Frazier had a second job as a job coach for Goodwill Industries and he learned that many people with disabilities had difficulties finding and maintaining a job. So he started to hire them to work at his café, in order to help and train them.
“I want to show them that no matter their disability, they can use that training to secure employment in the restaurant industry,” Frazier said.
Rodney’s Café is located at 1060 S Koeller Street, where he employees disabled people in order to train others.
“I have just begun,” Frazier said. “I started this restaurant and I’ve hired many people here that have disabilities and I’m teaching them and they are improving.”
One of his employees, Erica Lovell, said that she has only known Frazier for three weeks, but she loves working for him.
“I always thought I would never go back into the food business, but I met Rodney right after I moved here and I said OK I may give it a try,” Lovell said. “I enjoy coming into work. I haven’t had that in a long time. I’m going to stay in this area because of him.”
Frazier said that Lovell has improved from day one and she has even given him some new ideas.
“Even I learn new things every day,” Frazier said. “You never stop learning.”
Lovell was so proud of herself when she told me her story of how she made the perfect hash browns and Frazier said that they were better than his.
“I shocked him Saturday which made me feel really good, it made me blush,” Lovell said.
Joe Sosinski, another employee at Rodney’s Café, said that he has been volunteering his time for the past six months.
“The only thing that I take from him is the tips that I get,” Sosinski said. “I deliver, I waiter, I sometimes cook and do dishes.”
If someone messes up, Frazier will let his employees know right away and teach them the correct way. He is really serious about his food because Frazier said that in the restaurant business, sometimes you only get one shot at trying to please the customer.
“The only time he does anything is if something is not going the right way,” Sosinski said. “He will explain to us what’s wrong and we should fix it. He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t get angry, but he does explain things that need to get done and the right way to do it.”
Sosinski said that Frazier does everything with love and care and he tries to install that in them.
“That’s why I volunteer for him,” Sosinski said. “He is an excellent person, his food is great and I love his whole attitude to life in general.”
Ron Hoffmeyer, community leader for Walgreens and a regular at Rodney’s Cafe, said that he was very impressed with Frazier’s story, but was even more impressed by his food.
“I really like the whole, everything he cooks,” Hoffmeyer said. “He puts his own spin on a lot of things. As time went by and I tried some of the traditional favorites, he said, “Hey, what do you want?” He let me pick and choose things that I wanted and I really thought that was a cool factor.”
Hoffmeyer said that Frazier didn’t have a lot of salads on his menu, so he mentioned it.
“I like eating salads and then he started making salads and started a trend,” Hoffmeyer said.
Rodney’s Café was put on the reader board at Walgreens as the, “Community Business of the Month,” because Hoffmeyer thought Frazier deserved it.
“I just like the whole notion that he makes you feel important as a patron,” Hoffmeyer said. “I think that’s a huge huge thing that goes overlooked in a lot of businesses now days, so he totally respects.”
Frazier also works very closely with Clarity Care, which provides services for individuals with disabilities and limitations so they can lead independent and fulfilling lives within their community.
Nicole Greetan, an employment consultant for Clarity Care said that she has worked with Frazier on and off through the years.
“I previously worked with Rodney when I was a Coordinator in Residential, he frequently picked up shifts and worked in the group homes that I supervised,” Greetan said. “He did this while he was a supervisor at another agency.”
Greetan said that Rodney is an amazing caregiver and that he has set the bar high for other staff.
“Rodney treats everyone with such great respect and dignity,” Greetan said. “He is a true caregiver which can be rare these days.”
Rodney is also a philanthropist, an entrepreneur and is focused on serving his community.
“To put it plainly, he is the type of person that gives a shit, we need more people like him,” Greetan said. “If you ask my CEO, he always said that we need more “give a shit” people in this world, which makes me think of Rodney.”
Besides his restaurant, Rodney also takes care of a 96-year-old couple through Home Instead Senior Care.
“I’m there every day twice a day,” Frazier said. “At 7 o’clock in the morning and 9 o’clock every night, seven days a week. They need me.”
Frazier said that this couple had different people coming in their house all the time to help them with this and that, but they didn’t like seeing a different face every day. They wanted the same person to come all the time.
”They just fell in love with me,” Frazier said. “They hired me as their private care giver. I just love them to death and I would actually do it for free. It’s like the beginning and end of my day. Just the look on their faces when I walk in the door, that’s payment enough for me. You just can’t buy that.”
Frazier said that at 96, they have a lot of wisdom, so Frazier said that it’s also great for him.
“They depend on me and I depend on them, because they teach me a lot,” Frazier said, “They know I’m going to be there because they know every day that I’m going to be there. “It’s nothing like having the assurance that someone is always going to be there for them.”
Frazier eventually wants to form a foundation or a school in order to teach people social skills and activities of daily living. His mission is to branch out and teach kids and adults the things that are needed to survive.
“So many kids and adults graduate from college and don’t know how to change a tire on a car,” Frazier said. “Women don’t know how to sew a button on a regular shirt. Those basic skills that we need aren’t taught at schools, and they aren’t taught at homes, because the homes are broken.”
Frazier is scared of our future because the things that used to be taught to us are not being taught to this generation and he said they are lost.
“We have to get back to the basics,” Frazier said. “I’m all about today’s technology, but we have forgotten the basic skills.”
A lot of people come in asking for an application but Frazier said that when they go to fill it out, they are asking him for a pen.
“It’s not taught in schools and you should always be prepared,” Frazier said. “Those little things need to be taught all over again and that’s why I’m forming this to teach people those basic skills, life skills.”
There are a lot of younger parents out there now days and they don’t know the basic skills that people need. Frazier said that they don’t know how to cook so they are just wasting money going out to eat all the time.
“This generation is completely lost,” Frazier said. “There’s no gender, this is just a women’s job or a man’s job, this world isn’t easy any more. You have to know a lot just to survive. We all need to know those basic skills.”
Frazier said, just because you know how to read a book and know the answers to everything, it doesn’t mean that you know that job.
“We all need experience, we really do,” Frazier said. “I think it’s important but no one is willing to give us that. I know people who just graduated from college and can’t get a job because they have no experience.”
His goal is to provide jobs and training to anyone that wants to learn. Even though his focus is on disabled people, he welcomes anyone.
“You don’t have to be disabled to work here,” Frazier said. “Anyone that wants to learn any and everything about the restaurant business can come and work here.”
Frazier said that he wants to have a place that people can come to that he can train, and make them feel great about themselves.
“They need confidence,” Frazier said. “If you know how to do something, what does that do for your confidence? They need to be trained so they can go out on their own.”
He is also planting the seed for others. Frazier said that everything they learn from him is going to teach somebody else and then it will continue on.
“My vision is much bigger than what I am doing right now,” Frazier said. “This is just the center of what I want to do, and not only helping people with disabilities, but helping everybody.”
Rodney said that failure is not an option.
“My first goal is to be successful in everything that I do,” Frazier said. “Failure is not an option, but I have failed many many times in my life, it’s something that is very close to my heart.”
Frazier said that we all make mistakes, but you learn from your mistakes.
“I have made a lot of mistakes,” Frazier said. “Every day we learn. That’s what life is all about.”
Frazier has always been a hard worker and he has goals, but sometimes his family misses him.
“Do they like it? No they don’t like it,” Frazier said. “But I have goals and I think that I was put on this earth for a reason and that is to help people. I’m at home every day. They see me every day. But I do want to spend more time with my family.”
Frazier said that he has always been a hard worker in everything that he has done, and that his wife knew what she was stepping into when she married him.
“He’s always been a hard worker from day one,” Jane said. “The day that our daughter was born, he left the hospital and went back to work because that’s who he is, and I knew that a long time ago. He said failure wasn’t an option and I said OK.”
They have been married for 27 years and he warned her before they were married that he wasn’t going to work for someone else.
“I miss him terribly at home,” Frazier’s wife Jane said. “I wish he was home more, but I know that he loves what he does.”
His daughter, Jazmin Frazier, also wishes that her father was home more, but says that she gets to see him every day.
“I visit the café all the time and he comes home at night,” Jaz said. “I know that there are kids out there that don’t get to see their dad at all, so I’m really thankful that I get to see him.”
Frazier loves what he does, but he is hoping that one day his restaurant will run itself so that he can spend more time at home.
“Hopefully I can get this place to where it can run on its own and then I don’t have to be here,” Frazier said. “That’s why I’m using this place for training and I can have other people come in to help train people and then I won’t have to be here as much, but I still want to be here.”
Right now Rodney’s Cafe is open every day except Mondays, from 11am to 8pm. When you dine at Rodney’s Café, your patronage helps to support its mission, to not only serve good tasting food at a reasonable price, but to provide job skill training to those who are disabled.
“Helping people with disabilities has been the hallmark of my success since the beginning of my culinary career,” Frazier said. “I want to be successful, because if I’m successful I know it’s going to impact a lot of people’s lives.”