San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Restaurants give workers lifeline through mental health struggles
Patrick Mulvaney picked up the phone to learn one of his longtime friends, 41yearold chef Noah Zonca, was dead.
It was May 2018, and Mulvaney, the chefowner of Sacramento restaurant Mulvaney’s B&L, was devastated. Zonca’s family told Mulvaney that he had battled depression and addiction before drowning in a river. A month later, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain died by suicide. Four more people connected to the Sacramento restaurant scene, including a server at Mulvaney’s B&L, died later that year.
“I started talking with friends about mental health,” Mulvaney said. “How do we respond to this? Because this is not acceptable.”
The string of losses drove him to action. In late 2018, he
and his wife, Bobbin Mulvaney, partnered with the Innovation Learning Network, a health organization in San Francisco, to create a peer counseling program in his own restaurant. Now, he’s emerged as a leader in the national conversation about mental health in the restaurant industry, and his program is being piloted in 22 restaurants in Sacramento. He hopes it spreads to the Bay Area and the rest of California before potentially going nationwide.
The death of Bourdain sent a rallying cry throughout the global restaurant industry, with chefs finally speaking out on how kitchen culture — with its brutally long hours, grueling pace and rampant alcohol and drug use — has created a mental health crisis for workers.
A survey of 2,000 restaurant workers conducted by online support group Chefs with Issues and food industry advocacy nonprofit Heirloom Foundation found that 94% of respondents have dealt with mental health issues, including depression, anxiety and substance abuse. Only 2% reported feeling they could speak openly about these issues at work.
In 2017, the nonprofit Mental Health America released a twoyear study that found the food and beverage industry was one of the three unhealthiest industries for workers. By contrast, the most supportive were health care, finance and nonprofits.
Destigmatizing mental health issues has become a priority across the restaurant industry. Accomplishing that goal is a trickier proposition, though.
For Mulvaney, he focused on workplace peer counseling with the knowledge that counseling can’t come from the boss. As part of his program, I Got Your Back, some of his employees were trained in counseling. Every day, one of them wears a purple hand on their lapel — a signal to other workers that they’re available to talk. An online component gives employees additional resources around the clock. A few times a month, Mulvaney also sets out a mood box. When workers punch in at the start of the day, they also anonymously drop in a piece of colored construction paper that corresponds to their mood: green for happy, yellow for neutral, red for angry or blue for depressed.
During a brief meeting before service begins, he takes out the construction paper. Maybe there are eight greens and two yellows, but also two blues.
“That creates the space to say, ‘If you know someone here is feeling rough, please think about giving that person a break. If you’re blue, think about how you want to be treated today,’ ” Mulvaney said.
Over the past several months, Mulvaney said he’s seen a big difference: workers know it’s OK to not feel OK.
“Two years ago, if someone came in here and were f—ed up, the reaction was, ‘You can’t be here,’ ” he said. “Opening the conversation has changed the nature of the restaurant. Now it’s ‘Hey, you don’t seem too good. What can we do for you?’ ”
Gabriel Barba, director of learning and development at Daniel Patterson’s Alta Group, piloted his own program in April to managers at restaurants such as San Francisco’s Coi and Oakland’s Dyafa. During a threehour workshop, Barba led an explicit discussion about the stresses of their jobs.
“It was hard to get people to talk about their feelings,” Barba said. “We expected that.”
He opened by telling everyone that they’re going to feel uncomfortable during the workshop, and that feeling uncomfortable signals progress. The group discussed how to examine emotions, how emotions affect the ability to rest and how to set boundaries so muchneeded rest is really possible.
Toward the end, he shared breathing exercises to help workers alleviate stress without blowing off steam at a bar. Barba suggested managers practice breathing exercises for at least 10 minutes a day, ideally on their way to work, and then share the exercises with employees.
It was already a logistical challenge and financial burden to bring together so many managers at once, but Barba hopes to one day extend the workshop to all Alta Group employees.
“I think it’s something you have to continue to drive home and work at,” he said. “It’s not a onetime thing.”
While the programs at Alta Group and Mulvaney’s B&L feel novel for the industry, some business owners have long offered mental health services to their workers. Kim Malek, the CEO of ice cream company Salt & Straw, said her employee assistance program — added through an insurance broker — has been a huge asset in creating a strong work environment.
“If folks have a clear mind and feel supported, it’s easier to show up and feel like your whole self,” she said.
Malek remembers leaving home for college and learning her father was an alcoholic and had gone bankrupt.
“It was like the floor fell out from under me. I didn’t feel like I had a safety net. With this company, we wanted to offer more stability,” she said. “The day is really here where we have to change what it means to have a career in the hospitality industry.”
More efforts are popping up across the country. Chefs with Issues has an active Facebook group where more than 3,000 members can connect with others. In Colorado, two chefs started Chow, a support group for restaurant and hospitality staff that began with a series of inperson discussions surrounding mental health and kitchen culture. The organization with the largest physical footprint, though, is Ben’s Friends, which supports industry workers struggling with alcoholism and substance abuse. Weekly meetings currently take place in five states.
Mulvaney said he’s already gotten a lot of national interest in I Got Your Back. In Sacramento, the 22restaurant pilot program will end in October, and he’ll learn more how it works, especially in restaurants as different as a casual chain like Old Spaghetti Factory and a higherend restaurant like the Michelinstarred Kitchen.
Then, the California Restaurant Association will push it out across the state.
“We want to make sure it’s good and solid and right, but we also want to get it out as quickly as we can,” Mulvaney said. “Every day we’re not having this out there means there’s another day people aren’t getting help.”