It’s 7:15 on a Friday night at Chartier, and according to restaurant owner Darren Cheverie, the whole restaurant is like a “ticking time bomb.” Virtually every corner of the popular 80-seat French eatery hums with guests.
Back in the narrow, crowded kitchen, lobster crackers for the $65 lobster poutine for two have disappeared, but that’s OK. The lobster has proven so popular, they’re now out. Cracker crisis averted! Meanwhile, in a kitchen pass-through, Cheverie confides to head chef Steve Brochu that a certain table is “difficult.”
“More bread? More poutine?” suggests the chef, who will be on his feet 12 hours today.
While this classic weekend night at Chartier may sound stressful, it’s routine in the restaurant business. The back-of-the-house staff — six cooks and a couple of dishwashers — thrive on the bustle.
While chef Gordon Ramsay’s tirades on television and chef Anthony Bourdain’s exposé on the corrosive culture of the professional kitchen are entertainment, to be sure, they also undeniably reflect the culinary underbelly. Talk to cooks and chefs, in Edmonton and elsewhere, and you will hear stories of hurled plates, unreasonable demands and abusive taunts experienced at some point in their kitchen careers.
And that’s just part of the sometimes-toxic mix that awaits the wannabe chef. Low wages and high expectations, unpaid overtime in a fast-paced and stressful environment, physical symptoms from carpel tunnel syndrome to back strain, lack of benefits including paid sick time, and non-stop shift work are the decidedly less shiny facets of the restaurant, bar and catering industry, which generated receipts in Alberta totalling $748 million in June 2016 alone, according to ATB Financial.
Spending time in the pressure cooker of the commercial kitchen can, and does, lead to mental health problems for chefs and cooks, including depression and addiction to drugs and alcohol, according to participants at a recent fundraiser called Food for Thoughts. At least three veterans of Edmonton commercial kitchens — Stuart Whyte, Dan Letourneau and Cory Rakowski — are determined to raise awareness of poor mental health in the commercial kitchen, and to do something about it.
One thing about a gathering of chefs — the food’s always good. That’s the first thing a casual observer might have noted at the kick-off fundraiser for Food for Thoughts. Held in November at the Whyte Avenue bar and restaurant, Nightjar, the meeting was full of familiar faces who raised a glass or three while enjoying a range of trendy finger foods.
At first, the room burbled with upbeat chatter. But the mood dampened as a panel of chefs and mental health advocates rose to speak about something that rarely occurs to customers enjoying a night out at their favourite eatery.
Long hours in a hot, physically demanding and pressure-filled environment working at low wages with few, if any, benefits, leads to pain — physical, mental and financial. Also at play is easy access to alcohol, and late-night and weekend shifts that not only keep workers away from their friends and families, but set up potential conflicts at home.
Illicit drug use is not uncommon, in part fuelled by the infamous party culture of an industry dominated by youth. Forty-five per cent of the 120,000 restaurant employees in Alberta are under the age of 25, contributing to a workplace that can prove unhealthy, if not outright dangerous.
And if the body or mind becomes ill, there are few supports in place. Paid sick time is a rarity, prescription drugs or counselling are generally not covered by a workplace plan, and the culture of the kitchen is macho. Cooks who aren’t there to help when literally hundreds of plates must go out during a busy two-hour dinner rush don’t get much sympathy from their workmates, who grumble as they pick up the slack.
“We struggle as an industry with a lack of oversight and accountability,” chef Cory Rakowski told the roughly 50 folks assembled at the fundraiser. “We accept that not being paid overtime is the norm. We accept (that) abuse, emotional, mental, is the norm. These are things we are OK with, in the name of passion…
“We are taught how to fix a broken Hollandaise, but we’re not taught how to cope with the pressure, the lack of self-worth.”
Starbucks created headlines in October when it announced it was making generous counselling benefits available to its workforce, largely made up of young people with an average age of 24. Starbucks employees have to work 20 hours a week to get the benefit, but the company says this includes about three-quarters of their 19,000 Canadian employees.
But restaurant employers outside of chains and hotels offer little in the way of benefits. It’s the norm for restaurant staff at an independent eatery to not be paid for sick days. A 2016 labour market survey by government and industry in British Columbia noted that while cooks and chefs are driven by passion, they feel overworked and undervalued. The majority of the 450 surveyed would not recommend the career to friends or family.
David Grauwiler, executive director of the Alberta division of the Canadian Mental Health Association, says people working in the restaurant industry face stresses similar to other shift workers, including sleep issues and disruption to family life.
“When you work unusual hours, it places pressure on core relationships,” says Grauwiler.
He notes the “intensive pressure” of meeting service needs in a limited amount of time, and the rigours of teamwork add to the stress of restaurant life. One of his big concerns is that there is little help available for kitchen workers.
“For people who don’t have (supplemental insurance) benefits, Alberta continues to be a very difficult place to navigate their mental health,” he says. “When people have nothing in the toolbox, they are at greater jeopardy of serious difficulty.”
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When the Cheveries opened Beaumont’s Chartier last year, the couple was determined to create something different, and healthy. Darren had been in the service industry since the age of 14, and, as an adult, held general manager of food and beverage positions in a variety of large Canadian restaurants.
Darren also had his own struggles with drug use and alcohol in his 20s, exacerbated by workplace pressure. Though he is in a secure and loving relationship and blessed with a young daughter, he knows he will always struggle to avoid the quick and easy solution to the anxiety and depression that have plagued him his whole life.
Darren loves the hospitality business, the excitement, the passion, the personalities, and pleasures. But he knows it’s a rough business.
“There are not too many careers that are this stressful and demanding,” he says. “You are constantly onstage and constantly being judged. We want to make people happy and when you don’t make them happy, it’s a knife in the chest.”
He says the industry, infamous for chronic labour shortages, also suffers from a lack of leadership. Chain restaurants with bigger margins may offer training, support and mentorship to employees, and also set a higher standard for behaviour in the kitchen. But some people in charge of cooks on the line, in big and small establishments alike, may be in the same topsy-turvy boat as their staff.
This was driven home to Darren in 2014, when three chefs under his supervision — two of them rising stars who had achieved the level of sous chef — took drugs at home after wrapping up an intense quarterly meeting at the large restaurant at which they all worked. One died, another was in a coma for several days. The third called Darren when he was the only one to wake up the morning after the drug use.
It was 8 a.m. Darren was already at the restaurant when his cellphone rang. That Darren was the first call the distraught chef made came as no surprise; kitchen staff become like family to each other. He told the chef to hang up and call the police, and then prepared himself for the storm ahead.
“When you have two people in leadership roles, the waves that go through the restaurant and the company are pretty big,” says Darren.
The restaurant flew in replacement kitchen staff so nobody would have to work the line while colleagues processed the loss. They also provided significant human resources support.
Upon reflection, one of the things that disturbed Darren about the whole incident was its genesis. It wasn’t as if the quarterly meeting had gone badly, or that the chefs were coping with negative stress. No, it was the casual nature of the drug use, a hallmark of some sectors of this fast-paced industry.
He doesn’t know if those colleagues suffered from mental health problems or other issues that drove their drug use; nobody talked about that in the kitchen. In Darren’s experience, turning a blind eye to addictive behaviour is what people do in most professional kitchens.
“It’s bullsh** if (colleagues) say they don’t notice the guy who is the cocaine addict in the back, or the bartender who is abusing drugs and alcohol on a nightly basis,” he says. “We have to support those people and not just let them go.”
It was kitchen culture that contributed to the psychological breakdown that drove NAIT graduate Danielle Job from her position as executive chef for the cafe in a Canadian department store chain. Her mental illness had its roots in a physical problem, an intestinal bacteria that was difficult to diagnose and kept her out of the kitchen because she was ill and doctors worried she would pass it on to others through food preparation.
She was off work for a couple of months, and when she returned, she was given the cold shoulder by fellow employees and her boss.
“It was like, ‘thanks for being gone so long and leaving everything to us’,” she recalls. “People said it was in my head because they didn’t have a name for what was wrong with me.”
It all wore away at her self-confidence.
“I thought, ‘I can’t be a chef, I’m not a good chef.’ My anxiety started to go up because every time I had to be off, there was a stigma. I felt I wasn’t good enough anymore. With being a chef, there is no coming in at eight and leaving at four. So that was really hard.”
At the time she became ill, Job was one of a small minority of chefs in the industry who did enjoy company benefits, including short- and long-term disability. (A 2003 report by Statistics Canada noted that only 13 per cent of workers in the accommodation and food industry have supplemental health insurance.) But Job struggled to access the benefits she was entitled to and was twice denied long-term coverage by the insurance company. She tried to kill herself in May 2016.
“I was 31, and I was in the psych ward for a suicide attempt. So many things had beaten me down. I had no fight left in me.”
She quit her job in August, and is still in a dispute with the insurance company. In quitting, she lost not only income, but benefits that covered her prescription drugs to help with the depression and anxiety.
Job knows that the stigma surrounding mental illness is not restricted to the restaurant industry. But she believes conditions in the industry make the stigma worse, and make workers vulnerable to the illness in the first place.
“The work is undervalued, now with so many people doing YouTube (cooking) videos, people think it’s so easy…it’s very hard for people to see that what you do is worth them paying you for it.”
The atmosphere in kitchens is “very much a boys’ club,” she adds.
“When it comes to running a restaurant or an event, being a woman, you are very much the minority. I do feel that I have to do something over and above, out of this world, just to compete with a male chef.”
It’s still unusual to see a woman in an executive chef’s position in an independent restaurant, or at the helm in a restaurant chain. But women in many male-dominated walks of life struggle with discrimination based on gender. And many people who aren’t chefs also work in high-stress environments — doctors, lawyers, oil rig workers, air traffic controllers, just to name a few.
But it’s not just the tough, physically stressful jobs, or easy access to alcohol that are the source of mental-health problems in commercial kitchens. It’s those factors in combination with poor wages, and lack of benefits.
In Alberta, according to 2015 provincial statistics, cooks and chefs made an average of $16 to $21 an hour, before tips (servers generally share a small portion of their tips with kitchen staff). Generally speaking, workers in hotels or chain restaurants make more money than those in smaller shops.
There are other ways in which restaurant workers are different from others in the labour force, says Bobbie Beeson, owner of the Alberta-based Cheesecake Cafe franchise and one of those attending the Food for Thoughts fundraiser.
“One of the things that might make us unique is that people who are lost tend to find themselves when they join a restaurant team,” says Beeson. “Maybe there are some people who come with pre-existing conditions, and … if you’re a business who nurtures partying and camaraderie through alcohol, that’s what you’ll get. But if you don’t have that culture, then they might find themselves another way.”
Indeed, Rakowski, 36, who has worked as a chef at Edmonton kitchens from 12 Acres to North 53, credits the restaurant industry for providing a place of refuge when he was young. A homeless teenager who was involved in drugs, he found the structure he yearned for in the kitchen.
Sure, there’s heat on every level, but there can also be teamwork, plus an openness, and a lack of judgment.
“It was a place I felt accepted,” recalls Rakowski, who began his career as a dishwasher at the age of 13. “I credit the industry with saving my life. I had an opportunity every day to reinvent myself.”
In the last few years, Rakowski found himself in the spotlight, competing at the prestigious Gold Medal Plates and lauded for his culinary talent. It became overwhelming, and this past summer, he found himself reverting to former bad habits. Back on track now, Rakowski sees the need for attention to be paid to the people in the industry who struggle with mental health issues.
That’s why he, along with Letourneau and Whyte, launched Food for Thoughts. At November’s fundraiser, the three organizers collected about $3,000, money that is currently sitting with Edmonton’s Momentum Counselling, a non-profit, walk-in counselling service. Food for Thoughts plans to work with Momentum to create a support group for food service professionals.
But they want to do more than just address the problems of kitchen staff here in Edmonton. Since the trio launched Food for Thoughts, they have been contacted by numerous interested parties, including at least one hotel chain, who want to get on board.
Though its early days yet, Food for Thoughts wants to work with knowledgeable sources, such as the Canadian Mental Health Association, to create materials and resources that could provide triage for affected kitchen employees. Perhaps, like an eyewash station, or a first aid kit, a mental health safety package could be made available for staff and employers alike.
“We want to build resources with people in the mental health field,” says Letourneau, 31, noting a second fundraiser is in the works for February. “But for now, it’s baby steps.”
Rakowski says he worries about the future for younger folks coming into the business. “We need to look at the kids coming into the industry and figure out how to help them out.”
This is critical not just to protect young people, but also to maintain the health and growth of the industry, which plays a major role in the economy coast to coast, generating nearly $53 billion in receipts a year, according to Statistics Canada.
Kitchen work is a young person’s game, at least in part because of its rigour. According to a B.C. study, 52 per cent of cooks are under 35 and 63 per cent of chefs are under 45. Fewer than 15 per cent of cooks or chefs are over 55. If older staff could be retained, it could help stabilize the industry, and alleviate chronic labour shortages.
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Barriers to change are significant. The industry has tiny margins: if an independent restaurant makes a profit of three to five per cent, that’s a triumph. Customers are sensitive to changes in prices on the menu, so upping prices to better compensate staff is risky. Some restaurant owners do their best.
“There are employers who do provide benefits and a listening ear. But this is the exception,” says Rakowski.
Asked if he can think of a good employer, Rakowski names the Sicilian Pasta Kitchen on the city’s south side, where he once worked. There, co-owners Steve and Jamie Maguire, and co-owner and chef Don Orchuk, have been running the show for 20 years. They have 73 workers, 20 in the kitchen. Steve Maguire acknowledges the restaurant industry is tough.
“Most of the business is condensed into short hours. Friday and Saturday nights you’re busy from 6:30 to 9, in huge pressure situations and you’re getting hit right, left and centre, within small cramped spaces. It’s very warm back there, and most places don’t pay very well, to be honest,” says Maguire.
“So you have the financial stresses, outside of the normal work stresses. This business traditionally does attract a type of person who is susceptible to drinking and other things.”
Maguire says his outfit pays “a little bit better than the industry,” plus offers a health plan with $500 for professional services such as counselling. The cooks who are on salary have access to paid sick days, but the hourly workers in the restaurant don’t.
“We are good to our people,” he says. “We close for three days at Christmas. We try to give bonuses to the kitchen staff, and they get a free meal at work.”
The owners at Sicilian Pasta Kitchen do something else to support their staff. At the end of a late-night shift, cooks and servers are encouraged to hang around the restaurant to wind down, and to enjoy an alcoholic beverage if they choose at a reduced price.
“We don’t allow drinking and driving — it’s a fireable offence,” notes Maguire. “Most of the staff are usually getting a ride with someone else.”
But staying behind to quaff a drink at a reasonable price means staff aren’t busting out at 1 a.m. to hit the nearest bar and to down as many drinks as possible before last call at 2 a.m.
“It’s easier for us to look after them if they are here. A lot of places are the opposite. They don’t want the staff to stay behind,” says Maguire.
At Chartier, staff are also free to stay behind for one discounted glass of house wine or beer, or a bite to eat at 50 per cent off, and to discuss the events of the day. Chartier’s executive chef, Steve Brochu, 30, says he’s never been happier since joining this crew, and credits the business model carefully crafted by the Cheveries.
The Chartier wage system is different. Tips are shared among all staff (except owners). This means that, in combination with their wages, staff make between $19 and $21 an hour. There are team building activities, such as canoe trips. It’s been hard to attract servers, the Cheveries admit, because they can make better money elsewhere by keeping most of their own tips. But the people who stay are committed to the concept.
The Cheveries also offer their salaried employees $150 a month to put toward mental health — for yoga classes, gym membership, or family counselling, whatever makes sense. But in the year the restaurant has been open, only one person has accessed the mental health account, and that was to buy a $35 ticket to the Food for Thoughts fundraiser. Darren is puzzled by the lack of uptake.
“I think it’s a little bit of damage from previous restaurant cultures,” he speculates. “If you say you need it, it’s a sign of weakness. We’ve had to book a massage for the executive chef and sous chef because they won’t take the time off.”
He says the industry runs lean teams, and there is a “culture of guilt” when it comes to taking care of yourself.
“And you wonder why it leads to drug and alcohol abuse. It’s such a high pressure, guilt-ridden industry.”
http://edmontonjournal.com/news/insight/kitchen-confidential-high-stress-jobs-puts-chefs-mental-health-at-risk
My week:
Apr. 11, 2017 Dealership interview: I did a job interview in the morning.
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