Medford Nonprofit Turns Teen Pasta Program Into Student-Run Drive-Through Restaurant

Kids Unlimited, the Medford, Oregon nonprofit anchored to its Riverside Street campus, announced it is converting a former car-auction lot next door into Pastabilities Unlimited, a student-operated drive-through restaurant slated to open this summer, with buildout already underway.

The concept grew out of what started as a classroom and pandemic-era cooking activity. What began as a hands-on culinary exercise now produces roughly 75 pounds of freshly made artisan pasta each week inside the organization's own facilities. Under the supervision of executive chef Nathan Herbold, students turn out classic spaghetti, fettuccine, and lasagna sheets alongside specialty vegan and spinach noodles, and they have been testing fusion dishes that draw on local ingredient partners and the region's wine and cheese industries.

The drive-through menu will anchor itself to staples like meatballs, pasta, and salads, but the student-driven development process has already produced more adventurous items, including a mustard-based macaroni and cheese. That experimental streak is intentional. Teenagers involved in the program are responsible not just for production but for menu development, accounting, marketing, and the full arc of real restaurant operations.

Tom Cole, CEO of Kids Unlimited, has been explicit about where the money goes: proceeds from Pastabilities Unlimited feed directly back into the nonprofit's existing food distribution infrastructure, which currently puts out 40,000 made-from-scratch meals a month alongside family nutrition classes. The drive-through format was chosen specifically to move food quickly and affordably into a neighborhood the organization describes as a food desert.

The program also has a workforce development mandate. Cole has described the positions as "real competitive wage jobs," framing the restaurant not just as a revenue mechanism but as a pipeline for teenagers entering the food industry with technical production skills and business literacy already in hand.

Forty thousand meals a month is a substantial baseline to sustain. If Pastabilities Unlimited hits its summer opening on schedule, Kids Unlimited will have built something rare: a culinary training program that makes enough fresh pasta to actually feed a city, staffed entirely by the students it is trying to launch.