Saving Lives and Thriving in the Food/Beverage/Hospitality Industry

Anyone who’s dined in a restaurant has experienced hospitality. From servers and bartenders to dishwashers and chefs, each person working in a restaurant gives their all to make guests feel welcome, cared for and nourished.

Our mission is to return the favor. To care for the people who take such good care of us. To provide a place for restaurant staff to feel supported, heard and appreciated. To facilitate gatherings where we can build meaningful connections with folks who “get it.” To lift each other up so we don’t lose anyone else to suicide, addiction or struggles surrounding mental health.

CHOW was created by individuals in the food and beverage industry to bridge the gap between personal and clinical care. Everyone in the food/beverage/hospitality industry needs community and wellness resources. For those in recovery, CHOW recognizes that long term recovery needs connection and CHOW provides opportunities for that connection.

Goals: Get 100 people to attend the Spanish language meeting in the first year of its operation

Meet and outreach to 10,000+ food/beverage/hospitality workers each year

Distribute harm reduction tools to 5000 food/beverage/ hospitality workers. Especially targeting communities with less resources as well as businesses that are also music venues and high risk fast casual businesses.

Provide harm reduction tool training and resources for management teams.

Challenges: mental health, substance use, and addiction. Our industry has the highest rate of illicit drug use and ranks among the lowest in mental health. Through our peer support and brokering services, we connect individuals to the support they need. We provide culturally and vocationally specific peer support, education, prosocial events, and resources to create a thriving community in the food, beverage, and hospitality industry.

Impact: CHOW’s plans to reach 20,000 food/beverage/hospitality industry community members by the end of 2025. We will use our platform to provide harm reduction tools and education. And we will offer social opportunities to create a healthier community.
We know what we’re doing works. Our meetings have a 90% return rate and our education has gotten great feedback.

We will increase the number of peer support hours to offer more peer support time, outreach and advocacy, sharing harm reduction tools, and increase the number of our peer support meetings. This will help us build a community that will allow folks to have a place that they fit in during their recovery.

We will ensure that our peers support specialists have continued education to offer the best peer support possible.

We will update our website. We need funding to do a website overhaul and a Spanish page. Currently we have our website automatically translated by google, but we know that the literal translation doesn’t convey what we’re doing. We will work with a web designer and our Spanish speaking peer to ensure that it has culturally appropriate translations.