Kris from the Burnt Chef Project on drinking and hospitality
The hospitality industry can be a tough place to work. Hours are often long, breaks between shifts often short, and pay is often less than it should be. These are also high pressure environments, the pressure to deliver a great experience for your customers on a busy shift can cause a great deal of stress. When you work in this industry, you are usually in close proximity to alcohol, and it is often offered at a discounted price or for free, as a perk of the job. But what happens when you lose your balance with that? When stress and other mental health issues come into play, it can be all to easy to lean on alcohol and other substances to bring you down, help you sleep, or to put an intense shift behind you. In this weeks podcast, we speak to Kris Hall, founder of The Burnt Chef Project, who is doing some fantastic work to tackle poor mental health in the hospitality industry. Kris is the founder of nonprofit social enterprise The Burnt Chef Project, which is a clothing and merchandise brand challenging the stigma around mental health within hospitality worldwide. The funds that are raised from the sales of Burnt Chef Projects clothing, coffee cups, and journals, go toward training and support for hospitality workers. It started in May 2019 through Kris' own personal experience of mental illness and seeking Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for the personal identity crisis he was experiencing at the time.