You Don’t Need a Resume to Get a Job at This Bakery

Frank Alverio has been working at Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, N.Y., for more than a year. (Credit: Zach Jaworski)

When Frank Alverio was released from a New York state prison in 2022, he wasn’t sure where to go. But he knew he wanted to work.

Alverio, who said he has been to prison twice — once in the 1990s for a gun charge and more recently for assault — struggled to find stable employment, eventually settling into a dollar store job, which he said he held for two-and-a-half years.

While there, a friend told him to apply to Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, an industrial brownie producer with a no-questions-asked hiring policy, meaning applicants don’t need to submit resumes, undergo background checks or get interviewed.

Alverio just had to put his name on a list and wait for a slot to open. After a year, his name reached the top, and he got the call to come in.

“Being a felon, the most awkward question on the application is, ‘Have you ever been convicted of anything,’” Alverio said. “But this company, they take you no matter what.”

Alverio’s struggle to find work isn’t unique. Since 2008, more than 300,000 people have been released from New York state prisons. Approximately 27% of them are unemployed at any given time — more than six times the average rate, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, an independent prison watchdog organization.

Greyston General Manager Kevin McGahren said the bakery’s open-hiring process is designed to help people who can’t find other work. Most of his applicants “have criminal records, but many don’t,” he said. “We’re helping people that have less of a chance.”

Greyston is in Yonkers, sandwiched between the Hudson River and a Metro-North line. (Credit: Zach Jaworski)

Greyston was founded in 1982 by the late Jewish-turned-Buddhist philanthropist Bernie Glassman, with the aim to give second chances to workers with legal, personal or financial troubles.

While Greyston sells some products retail, more than 80% of its business comes from its partnership with Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, for which the bakery produces brownies.

However, the ice-cream giant may soon start switching to other local bakeries. McGahren said that could force Greyston to automate more of its baking process, in turn reducing its workforce.

McGahren said Greyston’s hiring list currently has more than 400 names on it, but it has gotten as high as 1,000 in the past. All of those people are competing for just 75 baker jobs, which encompass such roles as batter mixers and pourers. McGahren said he would “love to get more people out of here” to other jobs, so more people on the list can get in.

Rosanna Rosado, commissioner of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice, said that jobs like those at Greyston are more competitive because of a stagnant job market, especially for formerly incarcerated individuals.

Other employers that hire formerly incarcerated workers are experiencing backups in hiring too, Rosado said. A sluggish job market forces people to stay in such positions longer than they anticipated, which “disrupts the whole flow of people.”

The brownie line at Greyston Bakery. (Credit: Zach Jaworski)

On average, half of Greyston’s bakers leave after six months, higher than the 31% average, according to a survey of 1,000 workers conducted by Bamboo HR, a firm that works with small and midsize businesses. But, after that initial period, Greyston’s turnover rate drops to just 10%.

Susan Crowe, Greyston’s director of human resources, said more than half of turnovers in the initial period are terminations, usually based on problems with timeliness, performance and attendance.

“In the first six months, people are really kind of determining if the job is right for them,” Crowe said. “We don’t interview them, but they don’t get a chance to interview us either.”

Bakers start at $16.50 an hour, the Westchester County minimum wage, with a chance for raises as time goes on. Crowe said about two-thirds of the employees rely on food stamps or Medicare. Qualifying for those programs may become more difficult following Congress’s passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which cut funding to a litany of social programs — depending on how many hours an individual works.

Even with the uncertainty on the business side of Greyston, bakers like Alverio — who now lives in an apartment in the Bronx and owns a car — are happy to have stable employment, especially since he feels that the criminal-justice system hasn’t fully figured out what to do with folks on the other side of incarceration.

“You’ve got to make lemonade out of lemons. You just gotta go through life like that,” he said. “It starts with equal opportunity employment — giving people that. … That’s it right there.”