Cooks Who Care is Putting Mental Health on the Menu

COOKS WHO CARE is an organization that focuses on meeting the mental health needs of people in the restaurant, bar, and hospitality business. Its founder, Maria Campbell, launched the nonprofit officially in 2017, but the spark for the project goes back at least a decade, to her time as a chef-instructor at The Art Institute in Philadelphia.

“The students arrived with stars in their eyes,” she recalls. At the time, many were enamored of the celebrity chefs they saw on the Food Network and Bravo. The glamorous images that inspired them to pursue a career in the industry gave them a false impression of what it meant to work in restaurants. As these students left school and transitioned to the industry, the stars in their eyes gave way to a dark cloud hovering over their heads.

“The Food Network misrepresents the industry,” says Campbell. “There’s a stark disconnect between reality TV and reality.”

Campbell watched firsthand as an alarming number of her hospitality industry colleagues struggled with depression, broken marriages, substance abuse, and even suicide. “It seemed like everyone felt alone with their problems, but the truth was they were common problems,” she says.

This inspired her to begin recording intimate conversations with chefs and others in the industry so they could share their stories. She published the videos on You-Tube. In time, she collected more than 100 video interviews of people telling the story of their mental health struggles.

“These personal narratives are so important,” she says. “It shows people that they are not alone.”

Creating a community became a goal for Cooks Who Care. “The earliest vision was either a series of events, a membership, or classes and education,” says Campbell. “But then, Covid changed everything.” Not only did it put in-person gatherings on hold for a very long time, it upended the lives and livelihoods of the restaurant industry and everyone in it.

“The Food Network misrepresents the industry,” says Campbell. “There’s a stark disconnect between reality TV and reality.”

The pandemic multiplied all the problems Campbell wanted to fix: mental health problems, substance use disorder, loneliness, and isolation. “We had to completely shift gears. At that time, I started to talk to other women about how to raise more money to help and benefit this community,” Campbell says. She wanted to be able to offer financial support to anyone in the industry who wanted to pursue wellness. That meant people who needed physical therapy to heal an injury, those who needed talk therapy, and everything in between.

One way Cooks Who Care has been able to make this happen is through a community cookbook project launched in 2022. Sales of the book have raised about $5,000 to help hospitality workers get care. Through the cookbook, sponsorship, grants, and other fundraising efforts, Campbell hopes Cooks Who Care will be able to fund wellness activities for approximately 100 people in the industry.

Currently, she’s hard at work on another video series called Keep on Walking. “It’s a very emotionally driven series with people sharing stories about how they keep on walking through their challenges,” says Campbell. It will be released weekly on YouTube. Campbell hopes it will attract more sponsors to the cause. Currently, Cooks Who Care counts the Nava Center and the Southern Smoke Foundation as partners.

Campbell’s vision for Cooks Who Care is bigger than Philadelphia. “I want to engage a more nationwide community so we can make more of an impact,” she says. For 2024, she plans to get more involved on the political side to make sure that the hospitality industry is represented in any local or national conversations that relate to mental health reform and the cost of health care. “I’m most excited about normalizing the conversation around mental health.”

That said, she’s proud that Philadelphia is Cooks Who Care’s home base. The local hospitality community is always on Camp-bell’s mind. “More events and meetups are coming,” she says. ”People are craving togetherness and connection more than ever.”

To learn more, and get links to the videos mentioned, visit @cookswhocare on Instagram.