Recently, the NYC Department of Small Business Services awarded nearly $300,000 in training funds through our Customized Training program to help six NYC businesses train a total of 167 employees.
Facing competition from the growing Brooklyn restaurant scene, fast casual burger restaurant 67 Burger will train 25 staff across two locations in order to provide a customer experience unique to their refreshed brand. In addition to this brand-centered management and customer service training, back of house staff, including five cooks and 10 counter people, will participate in training to receive their food safety certificates.
After being devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Architectural Grille, a veteran-owned manufacturer of metal grilles based in Gowanus, Brooklyn, received a Customized Training grant in 2014 to train a portion of its staff in JobBoss, AutoCad, Lean Mastery, and other machine-specific software to increase productivity, sales, and customer retention. As a result of training, they were able to increase labor productivity by 7%, have reapplied to train a different cohort of 19 employees to receive these skills, and expanded the training plan to include TimeSaver software, customer service, and marketing.
Ena’s Driving School, a veteran-owned, certified M/WBE driving school with two locations in in Queens, offers driving lessons for individuals and businesses on cars, buses, vans, tractor trailers, and motorcycles. With plans to expand to a third location in Brooklyn, the business will train nine office staff on Ena’s proprietary scheduling software, web-development, cybersecurity, customer service and Microsoft Office Suite. Five drivers will also receive additional driving training in different categories.
Bronx-based Fancy Foods, a wholesale protein distributor of meat and poultry products (and previous Customized Training awardee), will be training 19 employees in supervisory, project management, customer service, and sales skills to improve customer retention and acquisition rates as they expand into the organic and Latino markets.
NYC-based online retail group Gogotech II has multiple websites connecting consumers to more than 60 brands. Over the course of this project, they will train 70 employees from their Manhattan office on digital marketing, user experience design, data analysis, and Microsoft Excel.
Salon 718, is a woman-owned provider of high-quality haircut and color services with three locations in Brooklyn. The business is looking to train and subsequently promote employees to generate additional revenue and expand to a total of five locations by 2017. Twenty employees will receive training in customer services, coloring, make-up and haircuts, styling and hair extensions.
Customized Training provides funding to help NYC businesses invest in talent. You pick the training and we cover up to 70% of the costs! Applications are accepted year round. The next application deadline is March 25, 2016.