CEDARBURG — A new teaching kitchen in Cedarburg is helping adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities learn essential cooking skills to live more independent lives.
Happy Place Cooking Space opened in June 2025, offering classes for people of all ages and abilities. The kitchen focuses specifically on teaching individuals with disabilities the basics of cooking, from chopping and measuring to understanding cooking times.
"What we do is very educational, and so since it's a life skill, we think everybody deserves to learn it no matter how they can or how much they can participate," Lauren O'Brien said.
O'Brien is the co-executive director of Happy Place Cooking Space. She started by teaching pop-up cooking lessons for children before being asked to teach a class for adults with disabilities. The classes grew in popularity, leading to the opening of the permanent location.
"Make it a really safe environment a really happy environment and a place where we can welcome anybody into the space and there's a lot of wonderful teaching kitchens in the community but none of them are focused specifically on adults and kids with disabilities," O'Brien said.
The kitchen has partnered with Balance Inc., which offers daily programming for kids and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Balance hosted a fundraiser in which its participants would cook soup for community members that made pre-orders. The money raised will be used to pay for more classes at Happy Place Cooking Space.
Balance members and students at Happy Place like Jeff and Joslin are learning to make chicken tortilla soup and wild rice soup as part of the fundraiser.
"I like it," Jeff said while helping with cutting and can-opening duties.
Joslin expressed her enthusiasm for both Balance and the cooking classes.
"Cause I like Balance. I like having a family," Joslin said.
Balance has a variety of programs like adult day activities, assisted living, group homes, children's social skills, and kid's summer recreation.
"Our goal is to create more opportunities to become more and more independent, and cooking is a huge part for independence, where you can't really go out and live by yourself if you can't cook yourself breakfast," Lillian Short, the director of development and marketing at Balance, said.
The collaboration between Balance and Happy Place aims to empower students to live their best lives possible through practical cooking skills.
Looking ahead, Happy Place wants to expand its programming by growing a garden and having students make food for cafes.
"Whether we're a part of a cafe or production of food in some capacity where we can have some of the adults that are in our classes or kids learn to make some of their own products and sell them to the community," O'Brien said.
Watch the video to see what it looks like inside Happy Place Cooking Space...
This story was reported on-air by James Groh and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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