At our 2018 Roots conference, we’d announced that we’d take a year off to work on our book, The Chef's Garden: A Modern Guide to Common and Unusual Vegetables—with Recipes, never imagining that a pandemic lay right around the corner that would keep us apart for a much longer time. In 2020, COVID basically shut down our industry as we lost restaurants, businesses, colleagues, friends, and family. 
 

After each of us came out of this brutal time in our own ways, we could come together again on September 11-12, 2023 for our Roots conference—and it feels right and proper that, with the theme of regeneration, we openedthe conference with a session on how to regeneratively support one another’s mental health. 
 

Even before COVID, people working in the world of hospitality were all too familiar with anxiety, depression, addiction, burnout, and a myriad of other health issues. This is, after all, an industry known for the need for hard work and long hours with many professionals demonstrating an outer toughness that often masks the underlying challenges they face. 
 

How, then, do we offer our culinary community hope, fellowship, and a path forward towards better mental well-being?
 

Panelists in Conversation

On the morning of September 11, a group of influential panelists came together to engage in a thoughtful discussion on mental health in the foodservice industry. The panelists’ insights offered a glimpse into the evolving landscape of mental health in the foodservice industry. It’s a call to action, a call for compassion, and a call to dismantle the stigma that has plagued this vibrant community for far too long.

Jason Wange

Jason Wange moderated the conversation. The founder of the Foodservice Powerplant Network, his mission is to provide colleagues with the tools they need to create meaningful lives—and he fulfills his mission by connecting people in inspiring ways. 
 

In his opening remarks in “A Balanced Kitchen,” he shared how people in the food industry have a superpower: to take good care of others. Their Achilles heel? They aren’t so good at knowing how to care for themselves as they sacrifice family time and more to serve their guests. Jason then praised the panel for being willing to authentically share their own experiences to empower others. He also shared his own.
 

Jason noted how everyone struggles, including those who don’t show their weaknesses. A few months after COVID started, he’d revealed his own history of depression at a gathering, including how he’d been in a psychiatric hospital after coming close to taking his own life. He admitted to being terrified of sharing how emotionally low he’d been and expected to be written off by others as someone who couldn’t be trusted.
 

Relationships, though, are found through risk—and, when Jason shares his own story, he’s sharing part of who he is with others, removing walls as he continues to find and re-find good mental health.

Jen Hidinger-Kendrick

The founder of Giving Kitchen—an organization that provides emergency assistance for food service workers through financial support and a network of community resources—Jen passionately believes in the power of vulnerability and the importance of leading with compassion and care. It’s okay, she said, to be in pain and to lean on others. 

She noted that the restaurant industry leads in suicide ideation and substance abuse and addiction. Factors why, she believes, include how many in the industry are underpaid and how workers are expected to check their feelings at the door as they work long hours away from their families. COVID was a watershed moment, too, with more people than ever asking Giving Kitchen for help. 
 

Fortunately, she noted, this is an industry where dedicated people can creatively support one another and ensure that every food worker has the opportunity to have dignity and stability. In a massive shift, managers and leaders are becoming more like coaches who show up for the human beings involved and help to bring the community together. The best leaders show up, listen well, and follow up. They share resources and otherwise provide opportunities for long-term stability as they nurture the next generation. 
 

Mickey Bakst

Co-founder of Ben’s Friends—an organization that offers community, hope, and a path forward for food and beverage professionals who struggle with addiction and substance abuse—said that he spent forty out of his forty-eight years in restaurant life sober. With his first nightclub-restaurants, he’d drink so much that he’d pass out on the rubber mat behind the bar with the morning shift finding him there at 7 a.m. Nobody thought twice about this—and he’d do it again the next night. In 1982, he lost his restaurant and, after lying on the ER table, he knew he’d need to get sober or die. He chose sobriety, and his eyes were opened to the epidemic plaguing the industry.
 

In 1998, when he was the centerfold story for a magazine article on this epidemic, nobody called him—and the conversation died. More recently, he gave a presentation to one hundred people, and eighty of them were HR directors looking to give employees a different experience by providing them with tools they needed for mental health. This, Mickey said, is a tsunami of change. 
 

Mickey believes that employees should be treated with the same level of care that’s given to guests, and he expressed gratitude to Roots attendees who listened to this panel, encouraging them to spread the news about resources available. 
 

Zane Holmquist

Vice President of Food and Beverage at Stein Eriksen Lodge and Corporate Chef, Zane Holmquist, has witnessed friends and family members struggle with substance abuse, addiction, and depression. He personally finds the kitchen to be a very healing place as he balances work and family—a peaceful place when life outside of it is chaotic. 
 

He believes that we’re currently in an in-between place: between where we once were when foodservice workers didn’t receive support for mental health issues and where we ought to be.
 

Chefs, he said, now need to spend plenty of time supporting their teams through life’s challenges. It’s much easier, after all, to work long days when healthy and fit, allowing chefs to be better chefs, better bosses, and better people. 
 

Zane has overridden HR personnel at times, standing up for restaurant employees that were about to be let go from their jobs. He believes in creating a balance of communication and support, finding solace together through life’s challenges. This could mean changing schedules to allow people to have more time for family and otherwise sharing the burden to solve problems—and, he believes, chefs and managers must set the example. 
 

COVID allowed us to see that there are bigger things than work while presenting unique challenges as workers had to transition from a time of isolation to one of chaotic overwork because of staffing shortages. The solution for this and other challenges is to be there for one another, recognizing that maintaining mental health is an ongoing process.  

Aaron Bludorn

Chef Aaron Bludorn of Navy Blue notes that mental health wasn’t even a conversation when he first got into the business, but he believes it’s a crucial topic to address to inspire the next generation of restaurant professionals. He believes that, the more resources chefs can offer their teams, the better—and, together, they can work together to help the struggling workers to become whole again. It’s disheartening, he admitted, when this process doesn’t work; but, by not acknowledging the responsibility of chefs to help their teams, he believes that we’re missing the main point: to help change people’s lives in the kitchen so they can start their own and perpetuate the goodness the industry has to offer.
 

Chefs can and should create cultural shifts in their kitchens to foster an environment where workers have pathways to move up in their careers, learning from missteps as they reach their goals. This is true for staff in the front and back of restaurants. 
 

Aaron brings us full circle, too, with a message of optimism and hope as solutions are devised and role models offer guidance. As an example, he points out someone who runs a marathon. You know what they used to be? Someone who was just learning to walk and falls—but gets back up again. Let it be so in the culinary industry!

Balancing the Kitchen

The collective determination to make mental health discussions an integral part of the culinary world is inspiring. Together, we can offer hope to those who need it, foster fellowship among our peers, and provide a path forward towards healthier and more balanced kitchens—ones that nourish patrons along with the well-being of the remarkable individuals who make it all possible. 

Watch for more summaries of conference conversations taking place at Roots 2023: Regenerate!