Pune Restaurant employs specially-abled persons to serve customers

The menu card here has a special sign for every food they wish to order and to place the order, the sign is communicated to the employees.

Pune: A restaurant in Pune is the first-of-its-kind which employs specially-abled persons to cater to its customers. The employees take orders from customers using sign language.

The menu card here has a special sign for every food they wish to order and to place the order, the sign is communicated to the employees.

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Sonam Kapse, owner of the restaurant said, “This is a socially conscious dining initiative, We have 20 hearing and speech impaired candidates working here. This initiative gives a platform for them to earn for themselves and aims to take hearing and visually impaired people to the fore and make them feel equal because usually they are always offered a job where they work to the back end and never offered a front line job. Usually, such people are employed for kitchen work,” she further said.

“We have a sign language menu where customers can place an order with employees by showing them a sign for food they wish to order. Communication is very easy, just like we are talking to kids using signs ” she added.

Dileep, a customer said,” The ambience and concept are very good. It is a new experience to communicate in such a manner and it was lovely. This concept is already there in Mumbai, in Pune, I think this restaurant is the first for such an initiative. The taste of the food is also very good. The initiative is very good and should be encouraged.”