MilkCrate Listens to support mental health in hospitality

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Last summer, Steven Brochu used his catering company MilkCrate to launch a mental health initiative for hospitality workers called MilkCrate Listens.

The local chef and business owner is re-upping on his commitment to the initiative by announcing an additional free program teaching participants about wellness strategies, as well as awarding mental health first aid certificates from the Canadian Mental Health Association. It’s a small program, with only 12 spots available, but Brochu thinks it’s a necessary step in battling an oft ignored issue in his field.

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“All we’re trying to do is give people in kitchens the tools to help keep their culture safe,” Brochu explains. “There’s this toxic, macho mentality about getting things done, ‘manning up’ and just doing the job no matter what. It’s incredibly unhealthy, but it’s also thankfully changing. The goal is to make that mentality unpopular, to be smarter about how we’re approaching things.”

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The program, which takes place Sept. 13, 14, 20 and 21 at a conference room in the Epcor Tower, will be hosted by certified instructor Andrea Taylor. Applicants are being asked to email [email protected] with a statement about why they would benefit from attending. It’s coming up fast, though; the cut off for applications is this Friday, though Brochu says they’ll keep it open for as long as it takes to fill the dozen slots.

“The consequences of not addressing mental health in the kitchen can be severe,” he says. “Look at it this way; you take as much time as needed to make sure that a dish is correct, but you can’t take 10 minutes to talk to a kitchen worker? Someone comes to you with tears in their eyes saying that they’ve had a bad day, but you say, ‘Oh, you need to tough it out, get back on the fryer.’ That’s how you end up with a burnt-out cook, or even worse, maybe suicide.”

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As Brochu points out, his industry is one of the more highly populated among the trades, but people aren’t sticking around. That’s partially due to the fact that many are working at it while taking school courses on their way to another occupation, but it’s also because of the intense fatigue factor. Even those making their way through culinary schools in the hopes of a career in the industry are reevaluating due to the pressure-cooker atmosphere. Brochu estimates that out of his NAIT graduating class, only five are still in the profession.

“We need to evaluate things, and with the pandemic we have an opportunity to look closely at what we’re doing,” he says. “Maybe our menu can be smaller, or maybe we don’t need as many people. Maybe we should start rearranging our hours in the day, or maybe we should be looking at the culture of drinking we have after the shift is over. There are a lot of things we need to look at.”

Brochu is passionate about MilkCrate Listens and his new program, seeing it as a long overdue corrective to the idea that restaurant workers are interchangeable units that can turn off their emotions during a shift. 

“I’ve definitely come across people crying in the walk-in cooler more than I’ve seen people choking on a grape in the kitchen,” he says. “So why is CPR a necessary skill to have in the kitchen but mental health first aid is not? We need to understand how to use empathy in our kitchens, because if we care about our guests and our ingredients so much, why are we not caring about the people that are doing these jobs for us?”

[email protected] 

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