ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A Central Florida man is not letting setbacks stand in the way of his future. Jack Pinnock is a blind baker and Dreamie Cookies CEO in Orlando. He hires and trains the visually impaired in commercial baking.
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“Vision has been a struggle my whole life,” Pinnock said.
A childhood injury in one eye and a cornea disease in the other has left him without being able to see for more than 40 years.
“I can’t drive,” Pinnock said. “I can’t really see your eyes right now. Outside, a person could be a tree for me.”
His vision loss forced him to sell a company he once owned and leave his job as a math professor at Valencia College.
He hasn’t let that stop his love for business, teaching, or baking.
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“We make cheesecakes, brownies, Ghirardelli brownies, cakes, fruit and cheese,” Pinnock said.
“We’re just bakers and we absolutely love it.”
Pinnock keeps Dreamie Cookie’s orders filled with a select staff. “We train, for 90 days, the visually impaired to be bakers,” Pinnock said.
With the help of coaches and technological advances, like a talking scale, Pinnock empowers his visually impaired staff to pump out thousands of desserts. He said he learned these skills through Lighthouse Central Florida.
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“We work with the individual to get them to rehabilitate and get them to live independently as much as possible,” Kerri Marczuk, the Director of Program Services for Lighthouse Central Florida, said.
It doesn’t come without challenges. Marczuk said the visually impaired struggle daily with transportation and accessibility. This, in turn, impacts how they attain a job.
“In order to get somewhere they have to rely on someone else, their schedules and their needs to get somewhere, they just can’t get in a car and drive themselves,” Marczuk said.
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Last year, within Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties, Lighthouse served nearly 600 clients.
While Pinnock said mistakes do happen, like adding too much or too little of an ingredient, he said the team is patient with each other, encouraging, and always understanding.
“The word for them is respect,” Pinnock said. “They try hard, they work hard, and they’re doing it you know.”
Dreamie Cookies works in partnership with the Division of Blind Services, which is what all of the trainees go through to participate in the baking program.
You can purchase Dreamie Cookies here: Dreamie Cookies | Like A Mini Taste of Heaven
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