Recovery Center of Medina County's Board of Directors seeks funds to reopen Sérénité Restaurant and Culinary Institute

MEDINA — After a monthslong closure for restructuring, the Recovery Center of Medina County's board of directors is seeking funds through a GoFundMe to reopen Sérénité Restaurant and Culinary Institute. Recovery Center of Medina County Board President Tony Bianco said the raised funds would go toward reopening the restaurant, purchasing the necessary kitchen equipment and supplies, and restarting the Culinary Institute. In late February, the Recovery Center of Medina County's Board of Directors decided to temporarily close the dining room at Sérénité for several months to refresh its culinary program. While the restaurant closed, the Recovery Center of Medina County remained open for community members. Bianco said that he, along with board Vice President Evangelene Brown, took the opportunity to look at the operation as a whole to better understand how the organization can offer its best services to those in the community. According to Bianco, the restaurant itself supports its operations, but the recovery and culinary training portions are supported through donations and grants. Bianco said the organization had to close down simply because it ran out of money. "Technically, we could have continued to keep the doors open. But the way to program was structured, it didn't make sense to do that," he said. "We needed to do a hard stop and really reevaluate what we were doing, how we were doing it and then go to the community and say, 'How can we make it better?'" For the past few months, the board of directors has partnered with other recovery resources in Medina County to bring something together that makes sense for everyone involved. Bianco said they've looked further at the culinary training program, finding ways to make it a more robust program than before. Before starting the culinary training program back up, Bianco said the board first has to get the restaurant back up and running with a professional restaurant staff. Bianco said there are several costs they need to address before reopening Sérénité, like building payments, equipment repairs and general cleaning. The launched GoFundMe would help the organization with its immediate financial needs, he said. Bianco said the Recovery Center of Medina County is hoping to raise about $45,000. The plan is to reopen Sérénité in either late July or early August, Bianco said, noting that several moving parts need to come together before then. "The program is absolutely coming back and we want the community to know that," Bianco said. "There's been a lot of questions. Before we could really announce a lot, we wanted to make sure we had all of our collaborations in order and all of our partnerships in order. We can successfully say today that we've been successful in producing those collaborations and we're going to restart." To donate to the GoFundMe, visit tinyurl.com/yn2rbkk4. Contact reporter Sara Crawford at (330) 721-4063 or scrawford@medina-gazette.com.