KANDU to Expand Services in Janesville for Clients with Disabilities, Shift Focus Away from Event Catering

By Neil Johnson njohnson@gazettextra.com February 23, 2022

JANESVILLE

Janesville’s KANDU Industries plans to launch a new space for clients with disabilities within the next few months.

The 20,000-square-foot spot at 2030 Center Ave. for years has been dominated by Best Events—the nonprofit agency’s event catering division.
 
Now, amid seismic shifts that COVID-19 has wrought on the management of public events and how the food catering world operates, KANDU’s Best Events catering division will take something of a sidecar seat to some new plans.

KANDU’s clients who now receive adult day care services can look forward to a room full of birds to interact with, saltwater aquariums and other amenities and new, sensory-friendly features KANDU hasn’t before offered its adult clients with disabilities or dementia.

That’s the first phase of a shift the company said is aimed at shrinking a dwindling catering business and doubling down on services aimed more squarely at its core mission: helping people with disabilities live a balanced work and social life.

On Tuesday, KANDU’s executive director, Kathy Hansen, told The Gazette that KANDU is launching a new, three-year corporate expansion plan that’s initially intended to offer more robust dayside services to its clients—people with physical and cognitive disabilities who receive respite day care and those with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

KANDU for years has offered in-house employment and job skills training for people with disabilities alongside a dayside adult day care and memory care programs at its manufacturing site and corporate headquarters at Barberry Drive and Adel Street.

But alongside that, KANDU has operated Best Events, a catering division that runs a local meals-on-wheels program but is better known for operating a catering business for public and private events. Under new plans, Hansen said, KANDU will continue to operate some Best Events programs, including meals on wheels.

A major renovation to the space formerly used for catering work will add double the room KANDU now has for adult day care—along with new amenities the company said will help shape what it’s calling its “Best of Life” program.
 
At a time when KANDU’s catering work is down and hiring for catering workers is as sluggish as the rest of the labor market, Hansen said the demand for day care for clients—in part also a vehicle for respite to the clients’ full-time caretakers—is booming. People with dementia disorders are the biggest growing demographic, Hansen said.

“There’s the need, but there’s a horrible gap (in services). That is what’s driving this decision,” Hansen said. “We need to double our day services, because if you look at census numbers, you continue to see the aging population is going to increase 50%. We need to be ready for it. We’re already seeing an increase in people asking and inquiring and wondering what are the options that are out there.”

Hansen said the shift at the Center Avenue location will allow adult day care to grow from about 40 clients to 80. KANDU intends to launch a rehab to the building starting this fall.

The move also will shuffle KANDU’s corporate headquarters from real estate on Adel Street to the refitted Center Avenue location, which will free up space for growth in its manufacturing and job training programs.

Down the road in its three-year plan, Hansen said, KANDU plans to move its client manufacturing out of leased space at Barberry Drive and launch a 43,000-square-foot expansion to its Adel Street facility. That would double manufacturing space at Adel Street while adding new manufacturing processes and “efficiencies” to the new spaces.

The move comes as KANDU has worked to unload The Armory and the Pontiac Convention Center, two event halls that for years it has used to operate events and catering. The Amory, a downtown Janesville event hall, recently sold to a new owner who intends to launch a wedding hall there.

The Pontiac, on the city’s northeast side, is in the midst of changing hands, pending further negotiations of a sale.

That, she said, will allow some of its manufacturing programs to double the number of clients KANDU can employ in its manufacturing and job skills training programs.

All that growth will cost money on the front end. KANDU hasn’t given a range of costs for all the work, the nonprofit plan to launch a capital campaign in early 2023 to tackle the work.

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