Catch the Vibe: The Max Larcen Story

A restaurant owner’s life is like boot camp, but with blistering hot stoves -- every day.  Award-winning restaurant owners Max and Garth Larcen have survived busy nights and harsh foodies for over five years. This father-son duo operates Positive Vibe Café, a popular food service training program for people with disabilities.

In addition to serving as a training ground for budding chefs in the making, Positive Vibe doubles as a tasty restaurant, a real life setting to practice and implement newly acquired skills that have garnered national attention in recent years.

“We wanted to do our part to create an environment that was mutually beneficial to everybody,” explains Max, 31, while eyeballing a party of ten settling into a nearby table for dinner. Max handles the evening shift, with his father, Garth, picking up the day time duties.

While pointing out the nightly specials Max enthusiastically directs the café’s employees, made up of people with and without disabilities, while simultaneously shuffling through a mix of favorite tunes on his iPod that he plays throughout the restaurant.

He’s a pro. He looks at ease.

Music was his first love, he smiles, rattling off a list of favorite songs by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones between greeting customers. The restaurateur, also a Mass Communications major, explains that he once worked as a program director for WCVW radio station before opening up Positive Vibe and feeding the masses.

Among his many interests and talents, as well as awards and news coverage, another story emerges. Max explains that when he was eight years old when he was diagnosed with terminal form of muscular dystrophy. His father, Garth, sold his former business and began selling insurance to spend more time with him.

“The thing is,” smiles Max Larcen, “Everybody has a place, no matter your disability.”

Today, the two have found a way to both work together and tempt taste buds, all while passing along valuable job skills to people with disabilities wanting to explore the fast paced restaurant industry. With 20 percent of the US population having a disability, Max Larcen and his work at Positive Vibe flies in the face of staggering statistics that show 33% of people with disabilities are unemployed.

“These folks have a desire to learn, to work, and to be independent,” explains Bob DeCapri, one of the Larcens’ longtime chefs and cooking instructors.

Max says that DeCapri and other local celebrity chefs, along with people with disabilities, now routinely produce knockout menus at Positive Vibe, all featuring eclectic dishes. Though the eatery’s recipes, such as its famous seafood pot pie, have created a loyal fan base, it’s the behind the scenes training supplied to the students at Positive Vibe that have made the biggest impact.

Recalling one of the first students that he and his son helped graduate from the four-week training, Garth Larcen describes a talented gentleman in a wheelchair that was extremely proud of the position that he was able to acquire in the restaurant industry. A dedicated worker that never clocked in late in his life, this young man climbed out of the window of his car one morning when it caught on fire, dragged his wheelchair from the vehicle, and hand-rolled himself to work over two miles away.

This is the kind of dedication that Max and Garth Larcen have helped inspire, as well as the kind of results that inspire the duo to continue to log in long hours at Positive Vibe.

Max, proud of the accomplishment of both the students and his restaurant, encourages community participation and concludes, “We all need to look for solutions rather than reasons not to do things, we all need to create opportunities.”