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Recovery in the News
Restaurant gives recovering addicts a chance at success
Nancy Livingston
Press Publications
July 6, 2010
ST. PAUL — Greg Ekbom’s dream of starting a restaurant that would give recovering drug and alcohol addicts a chance at success began more than 35 years ago when he was a student at the former Northeast Metro Technical College, which is now Century College.
A recovering addict and 1968 graduate of White Bear High School, Ekbom founded the popular Day by Day Café on West Seventh Street in St. Paul after studying how to prepare food at Northeast Metro. The café has a funky, art-and-plant-filled atmosphere and is a popular destination for people who want hearty breakfasts and lunches. It does not serve alcohol and is not open for dinner.
“I was newly sober and excited about nearly everything,” said Ekbom, who went through treatment in the early 1970s. “Life was not as bad as I had imagined it, and I was ready to do something productive.”
After working at various restaurant jobs between 1965 and 1973, including a stint at the lunch counter in the old Snyder’s Drug Store on Bellaire Avenue in White Bear Lake, Ekbom studied food preparation at Northeast Metro in 1974.
Then a treatment center asked him to go into a partnership and open the first Day by Day Cafe in an old railroad car on West Seventh Street, offering people in recovery a chance to work in an alcohol-free environment. They named it Day by Day because it reflects the recovery community’s philosophy of recovering from addiction one day at a time.
Ekbom worked in the first Day by Day for about four years, and then in 1980 bought the old brick building where the restaurant is now located. The 1882-vintage building had been condemned and Ekbom purchased it at an auction.
The kitchen was upgraded in 1990 and Ekbom built an addition featuring books and booths in 1996. A funky back deck with a fountain was added in 1997. Ekbom and a friend did most of the work. Ekbom’s daughter, Gena, now manages the café and his son, John, works there, too.
Currently, about a third of the employees at the café are in recovery. Ekbom said it used to be that 50 to 70 percent were recovering addicts. Things changed, he said, partly because some treatment centers prefer their clients to spend additional time at the center rather than working in the community.
Over the years, Ekbom said a lot of “wonderful, creative people” have gotten back on their feet while working at the Day by Day. “It is good for them to work in a restaurant that doesn’t sell alcohol,” said Ekbom.
Ekbom keeps in touch with a number of former employees, some of whom lived in the six apartments located above the café.Ekbom still attends recovery meetings and recovery groups still hold sessions at the Day by Day.
“I like hiring people in recovery,” he said. “Once they get sober, they make world-class employees.”