COVER STORY

The hospitality industry is notorious for long hours and work demands taking a toll on the mental health of chefs and kitchen hands, but more and more people within the industry are reaching out to those at risk of buckling under the stress

Chefs line up to lift the lid on the pressures and stresses of working in the restaurant industry and the huge toll it takes on people’s lives

Paul Foreman has just got off the phone with a close chef friend. The former head chef of Hobart’s Marque IV – who stepped out of fine dining to be food operations manager for the Kalis Group charged with transforming Hobart’s old Myer site – has become an ear for chefs in need of “purging”. He thinks of himself as “a GP chef”, a role that puts caring for staff on the same level as procuring produce.

The caller, Foreman says, is a very professional, high-profile older chef with an old-school background. “He’s used to doing things right, not cutting corners,” Foreman says.

“Now he has someone over him who’s 15 years younger and not trained, and he’s frustrated. He needed to get it out of his system and I encourage that. You’ve got to let it out.”

It is well known that the hospitality industry is rife with stress-related issues. Alcohol and drug abuse are endemic, depression and divorce widespread and, in extreme circumstances, there is suicide.

Most of the time, stress is regarded as a sign of weakness with an attitude of “suck it up” being the fix. Finally, proving the old adage that change can only happen from within, the industry is recognising the urgent need to address the issues – which are multiple. “Ego, insecurity, bullying, machismo, inequality, apathy,” Foreman says. “The list is long.”

Owner/chef of Lean-To Kitchen Shayne Lewis, 49, has been married and divorced twice, and has three children. He says he missed out on much of his children growing up, “but that’s just the career, it’s just the industry I’m in”.

He knows he’s one of the fortunate ones. So far he’s been able to deal with it. Some of his close friends have not been so lucky, resorting to suicide because of the pressure. He sees his industry – the only one he knows – as being in crisis, especially with recent cuts to weekend wages.

“Most people go out to enjoy themselves in a restaurant, but they have to remember someone is on the other side providing that,” Lewis says.

“When you have public servants pulling in up to twice as much as some chefs, working nine to five, not on weekends, with no split shifts, no working on concrete floors, or risking burning or cutting themselves … It’s not what you see on television shows like MasterChef or My Kitchen Rules, which might be a great thing for the industry – getting people talking

about food – but you don’t see the reality of what’s happening in the kitchen, all the pressures and time frames.”

Lewis says he is happy to speak to TasWeekend, having “been there, done that”. He adds that some goings on in the industry have gone “beyond the joke”.

“I see staff who aren’t trained, their attitude is bad because they don’t have senior staff to guide them,” Lewis says.

“Twenty-two-year-olds are getting head chefs jobs. They can’t cook properly and they’re too young. I’d been in the industry for 10 years before I became a head chef.”

In Australia, the hospitality industry represents 7 per cent of the workforce but accounts for the highest number of disputes (17 per cent) heard by the Fair Work Ombudsman. It also has the highest number of anonymous reports received (36 per cent), the highest number of infringement notices issued (39 per cent) and the highest number of court actions commenced (27 per cent) last year. Foreman, who is 48, identifies a millennial issue. “Apprentices are coming into the industry who don’t want to be told and don’t understand that hard work does actually pay off,” he says. “Speaking as an old-school chef, we need to be patient, empathetic and supportive, but they need to meet us halfway.”

There is also the issue of the job itself. When Luke Burgess closed Garagistes (voted one of the world’s 50 best restaurants) two years ago and moved back to Sydney, he blamed it on the intensity of the business.

“There’s no day when you can wake up and say, ‘oh, today I’ll just be giving 50 per cent’,” he told TasWeekend at the time.

“In a year, we would work easily double the yearly hours of any other industry. Effectively, it’s probably been 10 years [worth of work], not five.”

The rise of social media has added to the pressure of the chef’s role, Foreman says.

“People say things [online] and sometimes you think, ‘did we just slap you in the face with a steak or something?’ If you have a bad experience as a customer, can we deal with it onsite? How about talking to us directly? Why does it have to go out there to get ‘likes’ on your page? We don’t set out to make a bad day happen for you. And it’s too easy to absolutely ruin and kill somebody on an emotional level.”

Picky eating and dietary habits – once a running joke in the industry – have in five years become the norm. Lewis says people’s demands and expectations are sometimes “ridiculous”.

“We’re running a kitchen, not a supermarket. When you pump out a meal every three minutes for 270 people, as you do at some functions, when someone asks for a vegetarian meal you didn’t know about, that is pressure,” Lewis says.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though. And it’s shining on Hobart. With its vibrant and expanding restaurant scene, on a well-plated slick of Tasmania’s warm and friendly reputation, the island state has an opportunity to lead the way in best-practice hospitality.

In setting some of the national benchmarks for top regional produce, sustainable farming practices and farmers’ markets, could Tassie also take the lead in showing equal care for the quality of life of the person who puts the food in front of us?

Ruben Koopman, 43, is head chef at Frogmore Creek, winner of the Regional Restaurant of the Year last year in the AHA Awards for Excellence. He says if the industry keeps going the way it’s going, chefs will become “extinct”. “It’s got too hard, too tough, too unhealthy,” he says.

Clearly the next revolution in food has to be a revolution in the chef’s profession.

“My truth is that people are treating hospitality like it’s 1995, before the internet,” says Koopman, who has nearly two decades of experience in European restaurants and is heading up Frogmore’s new, high-end Atmosphere restaurant at MAC01.

“They forget it’s 2017. We’re in the business of selling happiness – it’s not just about food or wine. To do that, you need happy people [as staff]. If they’re not happy, we have to develop understanding that the end result is not positive.”

Foreman says, in recent years, the hospitality industry has been flooded with the previously long-term unemployed.

“Cheffing was an easy in, but it’s diluted the industry,” he says. “I started in kitchens when I was 13, and when I went for my apprenticeship I really wanted it. I know I’ve put people on because I’ve needed hands and it was a market need, but that was a mistake. I think we’re getting out of that now. The job has to have importance and gravitas.”

Remuneration seems to need reviewing, too. Foreman says there is no point avoiding the fact the industry wage is generally not in line with what a chef/cook/kitchen hand delivers, although there will be exceptions to the rule.

“Unfortunately we are an industry that is based on revenue, profit and remuneration,” Foreman says. “Generally, low profit – approximately 4 per cent to 6 per cent. At the end of the day, you can only pay what you can afford to stay afloat.”

He says it is a universal problem that does not seem to have an easy answer.

This month, former Brisbane chef Christine Matheson-Green, now based in Hobart, is launching an initiative called Off the Hotplate – a series of online, live, mentor-driven modules specifically written for the hospitality industry. She has designed the program with business coach Rachael Downie, “to give back to the people who keep the wheels turning” who she says are “in dire need”.

Matheson-Green, who left the industry after 25 years, says she’d hate to work in it now. She says many staff are hanging by a thread – at work and at home – and the ripple effect of untreated stress and distress out in the community is massive.

“Originally, the kitchen brigade and hospitality hierarchy were modelled on the army, with the culture of ‘break the boy and make the man’,” Matheson-Green says. “That culture still permeates the industry today.”

She adds that many chefs see the difficulties they experience as making them and the industry “special”, which reinforces the status quo. She also says the perennial divide between front-of-house and back-of-house has never been addressed throughout the industry.

Koopman earned his Michelin reputation the hard way, aged 22, working for Marco Pierre White, “the original Gordon Ramsay”, in London.

“He told me that to work with him I had to start at 7.30am, finish at 1am,” Koopman says. “I’d work six days a week and have one meal a day. And I’d do it free.

“Everyone at the time said ‘you’re crazy stupid’. Now they’re saying, ‘you were so lucky’. A lot of what I learnt was through a tough-love background.”

Lewis started a four-year apprenticeship in the 1980s when good apprenticeships were aplenty, the executive chef/owner demanded blood, and you had to work your way up through the ranks. He has worked in small cafes and large hotel restaurants, from Wrest Point Hotel Casino to Government House. While running his own business, he is back working as a sous chef at Blundstone Arena to survive.

“I’ve seen everything from nouvelle cuisine to modern-era foams and gels,” he says. “I’ve done this for so long, it’s water off a duck’s back now.”

He added that the industry is figure-driven, and it is still the case that a lot of establishments “want blood”.

“Food and wages have to be a certain percentage. They want you to work a 70 to 75-hour week and don’t care if it’s seven days a week, especially if you’re on a salary,” Lewis says.

“Not only does their health go down the gurgler, the whole system crumbles too. For the Tasmanian Hospitality Association to come out and say that hospitality workers don’t deserve extra pay for working Sunday, that’s just a crazy slap in the face.”

THA general manager Steve Old says while it represents its members who are employers in the hospitality industry, it does not in any way “condone or encourage employers to underpay or make employees work unlawful hours”. He says the rate for weekend work “needs to be at a level that allows the business to be viable so that more people can be employed and the venue remains open to service customers”.

Lewis says a particular annoyance is the $10 pub meal he sees as “a race to the bottom”.

“Few people are valuing the people factor,” Lewis says. “Someone has to prepare that and then serve it and clean up afterwards. You’re not going to get the best service, they have to smash ‘em through. And if those guys are flat-chat all the time, that’s not a healthy environment to be in.”

Female chefs can experience an extra layer of pressure. Former chef and mother of three Angharad Jones says she has a love-hate relationship with the industry, which her husband (Carl Wise, chef at The Homestead pub in North Hobart) still works in.

“The hours are crap, the work is physically and mentally hard, the pay is never great. Kitchen staff are rarely prepared or trained for promotion – there doesn’t seem to be a pathway to management like there is for front-of-house, and even fewer opportunities if you’ve taken time out of work to have a family – so a lot of us are staring down the barrel of this anti-social, poorly paid, backbreaking work into our 60s,” Jones says.

She is now making a range of toddlers’ clothes called Little Fierce that she sells at Richmond market.

Matheson-Green says the cost of unhappy workplaces with an abusive culture, staff illness, injuries, sick days, high pressure and low self-esteem is massive – and unsustainable.

After starting as a barmaid while completing a teaching degree, she worked out “the only way for me to work in that industry and get a little respect was as a boss”.

After graduating, she worked for 25 years as owner/chef of 10 restaurants (the most famous being Possum’s, the first native Australian food restaurant). She also ran the Tiger Garden in the Singapore pavilion at Brisbane’s World Expo 1988. “We were taking $20,000 a day, but we were open from 11am to 1am seven days a week. The pressure was crazy,” she says.

Matheson-Green says that over her career, she has had staff rob her blind, lost her driver’s licence twice for speeding, and was twice married and divorced.

“I worked 100 hours a week and got paid the least, often as little as $4 an hour – for 20 years. It’s a terrible cost you have to pay for being a successful chef,” she says.

When she opened what became her last restaurant, the Crazy Coyote at Noosa on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, she didn’t realise how burnt out she was.

“It catches up with you. You can sail above the cracks so long and one day you’ll fall down into them and disappear,” she says. “You just hit a brick wall. The slightest little thing sets you off like a firecracker, then you know you’re teetering on the edge. When I made a male member of staff cry because I was screaming at him I thought, ‘what am I doing, this is insane’.”

Matheson-Green headed to Japan and went back to teaching for two years. After her experience, she never wanted to live in Queensland again and moved to Tasmania in 2004. She worked at Fresh Country Markets for 18 months, but her heart was no longer in it.

“I lost my mojo, I couldn’t do cooking any more,” she says. “It felt like climbing Mt Everest every day. When chefs are in that burnt-out state, that is honestly what it’s like.”

She says while we might be learning how to ask RUOK?, we still don’t know what to do if someone says ‘No’. This is the reason Matheson-Green is launching Off the Hotplate.

“I want our industry to learn what to do when someone is not OK,” she says.

Foreman remembers standing in Marque IV, which from 2005 to 2010 was one of only a handful of high-end restaurants in the state, feeling an uncontrollable twitch that had developed in his eye, “probably the result of high blood pressure”.

“Let’s just say I don’t have it now,” he laughs. “I toughed it out because I loved what I did. Marque IV was my baby, I put my blood, soul, heart, sweat and tears into it.

“Some days were ethereal. Chefs are born from creativity and the love of cooking. That’s where it should start and end. Even talking to you now, the hairs are standing up on my neck. When you have a great service, it’s like conducting an orchestra and you’re playing beautiful music. If you don’t have that, you’re pushing shit uphill because it gets you through the tough hours and hard life of cheffing.”

But, after four years at that level, he needed to step back. Foreman says you don’t have to do 16 hours a day hard labour at the minimum wage. He took up computer work to train himself in different skills. Now, at Kalis Group, he oversees eight kitchens, encouraging his teams to communicate.

“Don’t be afraid to speak up if you’re finding it tough,” he says. “And know when to step off and take a breather.”

When the Intercontinental Hotel Group’s Crowne Plaza opens in 2019 at the Icon Complex on the old Myer site – with 235 rooms, 20 stores, and a rooftop bar and restaurant with 360-degree views over Hobart – Foreman says he will make sure the chefs are looked after. He’s joined the Tassie chapter of the Australian Culinary Federation, an industry link aimed at providing support and social events every three months.

At Frogmore, Koopman is implementing measures to achieve his goal of building a happy, sustainable business. At Atmosphere, a four-day-a-week chef’s schedule (based on a standard of 38 to 40 hours) is being trialled, and it may expand to the whole workforce. Front-of-house is regarded as highly as back-of-house. Regular personal training sessions will be offered to staff, and staff food will be “what we do – super-good tasty food”. Next year, Frogmore intends to introduce the concept of Frog Fit with a “whole of health” philosophy based on business principles.

Koopman says hospitality doesn’t have to be “a shitty job”. “Why not look at what opportunities there are to make hospitality more fun and sustainable, instead of having tunnel vision and only seeing it as having a negative stigma when it is a beautiful industry,” he says. “In Europe, front-of-house people are proud to be front-of-house – it’s a cool profession. We need to make that happen here.”

Lewis recalls how he couldn’t get off the couch for a week after losing money doing Mona’s Winter Feast.

“Our food truck was positioned outside in the rain,” he says. “Over the seven days I didn’t even take my site fee of $3500 … One big event that should have been fantastic knocked me for six. [But] I’ve always thought tomorrow’s another day. As long as I can wake up in the morning and take that first deep breath, I know I’m good to go. When you lose close friends, I say, ‘I’m not going to let that happen to me’.”

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