The life of a restaurant worker can be stressful, physically demanding and all-consuming. It often leads to late nights, heavy drinking and addictive behavior. It is a workforce culture that permeates some establishments.

With the help of organizations like In the Weeds, restaurant workers are changing the culture of the industry by focusing on wellness and avoiding cyclical practices of the past that can lead to drug and alcohol abuse.

“Alcohol and substance abuse is one of the biggest struggles in the restaurant industry,” said In the Weeds co-founder Blaine Bailey. “Getting off at 10 p.m. and not going to the bar is difficult for some people.”

The focus of In the Weeds is providing a space where employees of the service and hospitality industries can focus on their mental, physical and financial wellness.

From group therapy, to yoga and other physical activities, In the Weeds’ goal is to make wellness accessible in an industry that has traditionally provided its workers with few resources.

“I think the motivation to be physically fit and healthy is very available in this town, which is great,” Bailey said. “The accessibility is where In the Weeds comes in. Snowboarding and skiing, for example, are expensive.”

In the Weeds is located at The Hive Durango, 1150 Main Ave., in downtown Durango.

Bailey said In the Weeds offers snowboards and skis, paddleboards and other recreational equipment that people in the industry can check out to make more healthy lifestyle choices.

“A lot of the folks who come to our activities have never done them before, but they want to learn and just don’t have access to the equipment they need,” he said.

There is a mental component associated with the physical activities offered by In the Weeds, he said.

“When you’re performing a task, it’s easier to open up and talk. Our groups can be a little more intimidating for some people,” he said. “We see people open up naturally during these activities because they’re busy.”

After working as a sous chef around Durango, and experiencing some eye-opening moments with his own drinking, Bailey took on a farm-to-table cooking program in Wisconsin to get his head straight a couple of summers ago.

He said the director of that program asked all of those involved the overarching question: “How can the food industry save the world?”

“I was looking at that and thinking about what we don’t have in the service industry, and that’s resources,” he said.

While Bailey was thinking about the limited resources available to restaurant workers through his summer program, a former co-worker, John Rowe, called him up to talk about a therapy program for chefs that the two had discussed years earlier while working at Carver Brewing Co. in Durango.

Rowe and Bailey formed In the Weeds in 2019. At that time, the two were just offering support groups to anyone in the industry who wanted them. As those support groups grew, Rowe and Bailey decided to apply to be a nonprofit organization.

In the Weeds received its nonprofit status in April 2020, just before the pandemic shut down restaurants across the country.

“It was bittersweet,” Bailey said. “Because of COVID-19, everybody needed help. It helped us find funding that shot us from our one-year goal to our five-year goal in the span of two years.”

A group of Durango chefs including Dustin Collins and Jeffrey Lewis Clark launched the podcast Chewed Up and Spit Out in an effort to share stories and cope with the stress of working in the restaurant business. Clark and Collins have worked at many restaurants across the U.S., but locally Clark works at Ska Brewing Co. and Collins used to work there.

“We love Blaine, he’s great, but I’d say he’s kind of a counter to us as far as coping goes,” Collins said. “He’s out there making a difference and helping people out.”

“As long as there’s humor involved, we think what we’re doing with the podcast is for the greater good,” Clark said.

Collins and Clark agreed that drugs and alcohol are a major problem in the industry.

“Alcohol and drug abuse is a coping mechanism for many restaurant workers,” Clark said. “Back in the day, it used to be like a badge on your chest, but nowadays the whole landscape has changed.”

Bailey said that a lot of people who get into the industry are initially looking for the party lifestyle that rock star chefs like Anthony Bourdain exemplified.

“For a lot of us, Bourdain was our idol because of that rock star lifestyle, and a lot of those folks that are doing that are starting to realize that’s not sustainable. It doesn’t matter how famous you get,” Bailey said. “After Bourdain completed suicide, there was a really big collective awareness happening of people who were saying we need to change our culture.”

A common practice in the industry that can lead to unhealthy habits is shift drinks. Often, restaurants and bars will give workers a free drink at the end of their shift.

“What I’ve found in the past with those is that one drink leads to another drink, and another, and they just start going down,” Bailey said. “In my own experience, if you can just hold off on that shift drink and give it 10 or 20 minutes, you can calm down and decompress without needing that drink.”

Collins said more dangerous than shift drinks are when restaurant bars will run a tab for workers. He said during his time in the industry, he’s seen people pour a good amount of their upcoming paycheck back into the bar because the owners allow tabs.

“A shift drink when combined with a shift meal can be positive. But if it’s just a barrage of shift drinks, that can be a different story,” he said.

Bailey said In the Weeds is working to help promote healthier business practices for workers regarding shift drinks.

“At Steamworks and El Moro, they have on their menu ‘Buy the kitchen a round,’ and it used to be that they did that,” Bailey said. “They’ve changed it so now it’s a bonus where you get the equivalent of the cost of a drink onto your paycheck.”

Kris Oyler, co-founder of Peak Food and Beverages that owns restaurants around Durango such as Steamworks and El Moro, said the company makes shift meals available for employees alongside a shift drink.

He said the company has a number of resources for its employees, including a new employee assistance plan that provides employees with things such as legal advice and counseling.

“Part of the EAP includes some training seminars, and one we’ll be looking at here shortly is alcohol and substance abuse,” he said.

Chewed Up and Spit Out is an explicit podcast that allows Collins and Clark and other chefs they host to talk openly about the long hours, clashing of egos in the kitchen and difficulty of keeping relationships with people in the industry.

“The best analogy of the restaurant industry that I’ve heard, and every time it gets me, is that almost every restaurant is like a pirate ship,” Collins said. “You’ve got people you’d die for next to you and other people that you wouldn’t blink an eye if they got thrown overboard.”

Clark said maintaining personal and family relationships with people outside the restaurant industry can be difficult.

“It’s damn near impossible to date anyone that’s not in the industry,” he said. “They just don’t know. They always ask you, ‘What time are you getting off work,’ and I don’t know.”

Since the pandemic, Bailey said restaurant workers have been standing up to owners about working 40-hour weeks for both their mental and physical health.

“I’ve had to leave the industry because of an injury that was sustained from overworking myself, and not paying enough attention to the body,” Collins said. “You find that short-term gratification and you forgo that long-term gratification that is actually taking care of yourself and your body.”

njohnson@durangoherald.com