Upstairs at Pine Needle Mountaineering, the topic of conversation turns to bears.
There is also chatter about preventing blisters and where to go on an overnight camping trip. The group settles on heading up the Vallecito Creek Trail, about 30 miles northeast of downtown Durango.
Finally, the discussion moves to food, which makes sense because the five people talking all work at restaurants. One person shares a recipe for blueberry oatmeal and another for green chili cheddar grits.
The camping trip and the pre-hike planning session are the work of In The Weeds, a nonprofit group that aims to build healthier lifestyles, reduce substance abuse and improve mental health among restaurant employees in Archuleta, La Plata and Montezuma counties in southwestern Colorado.
Truett “Blaine” Bailey concocted the idea for the organization in 2018 after being arrested in Arkansas.
At the time, Bailey was carrying 0.002 grams of hallucinogenic substances at the scene of a bicycle accident. He was elevating his cousin’s bloody head and taking first aid instructions from the 911 operator while he waited for the ambulance.
But it didn’t matter to the police who responded to the 911 call—Bailey faced up to 20 years in prison if he was convicted of the Schedule 1 Class D felony.
He posted bail. While waiting for his case to move to trial, the longtime chef and restaurant worker returned to work at a renowned, year-round farm-to-table restaurant called Riverview Terrace Café at Taliesin Preservation: Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center in Wisconsin. The head of the café at the time was Odessa Piper, known nationally for her passion for using local produce and ingredients to serve her customers.
“She wanted to get us thinking about local farms and local food,” said Bailey. “The assignment was to figure out how food can save the world.” She wanted to encourage her staff to think more big-picture, he added.
Bailey has worked in restaurants across the western part of the country. Drinking and partying, he said, were part of the routine. The Arkansas arrest, however, caused him to reconsider his lifestyle choices. So, he took Piper’s assignment seriously.
“How does food save the world?”
“I was up there in Spring Green, Wisconsin—a super small town of 60 people,” Bailey said. “I was in this little studio apartment. No internet, no TV, barely any cell service. I was kind of clearing out my mind and sober. I wasn’t partying or anything. I was like, ‘How does food save the world?’”
Bailey tried to break the problem down, he said. What about saving a region? Or a community? A community starts with individuals, he thought.
And then, said Bailey, “it struck me.” He realized that the restaurant industry affects the entire community.
“You know, we serve people, provide drinks, provide atmosphere for real estate agents, contractors, nurses and teachers—and they all come to restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Bailey explained. “If we can change their day and make their day with food, service atmosphere and drink, then we can affect all that they do.”
The idea, Bailey added, “shifted my mindset on life.”
Bailey recalled a conversation with a coworker three years earlier at the Durango restaurant Carver’s, one of the oldest brewpubs in the state. After losing a prep chef to a heroin overdose, the two discussed starting a program called “Therapy For Chefs.” Nothing ever came of it.
Out of the blue, as Bailey stared at an apartment wall in Wisconsin filled with ideas for supporting the mental well-being of restaurant industry workers, that coworker called again to discuss the therapy idea.
In 2018, after prosecutors reduced the charges to a misdemeanor and Bailey agreed to pay an $850 fine, Bailey moved back to Durango and started the first support group for restaurant workers.
The concept has blossomed. Today, with Bailey serving as executive director, In The Weeds is well-known in Durango’s busy restaurant scene. The program’s name comes from a phrase most restaurant workers learn the first time they are overwhelmed with orders: “In the weeds” is a longstanding description of a waiter or cook who is hopelessly behind.
Issues of alcoholism, drug use and challenges with mental health are well documented in the restaurant industry. The most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health that looked at alcohol and drug use by industry was completed in 2012. While the average rate of “heavy alcohol use” among all sectors was 8.7% of the workforce, the rate within the accommodations and food services industry reached 11.8%, behind only construction and mining.
In the use of illicit drugs, however, the accommodations and food services industry led the field (19.1%), and workers had the highest overall substance use disorder rates (16.9%).
A 2017 Mental Health America report, gathered from 17,000 survey respondents, identified the food and beverage industry as one of the three “unhealthiest” workplaces based on overall psychological well-being.
Drinking “went from being an after-work thing and weekend thing to a kind of all-the-time thing,” said Dillon Lindborg, who owns three food trucks in Durango. “It was just accessible. It’s always around … and the industry kind of allows it and encourages it a little bit. It’s a very common thing in the industry to get off work and drink.”
Lindborg said drinking “took over” his life, and he hit “super rock bottom” before his brother and friends checked him into rehab in 2021.
Two of Lindborg’s food trucks, Backcountry Gourmet and Avalanche Bowl Company, are in an outdoor food court in downtown Durango. Patrons order drinks from a central bar, so Lindborg’s staff does not have direct access to alcohol. The third truck, another Backcountry Gourmet, sits outside a bar called The Nugget 25 miles north of Durango. Again, there’s no direct access to booze. Lindborg does not provide free shift drinks—amenities long familiar to kitchen workers and wait staff.
Stress of the job “catches up to you”
“It’s a very stressful job,” said Lindborg, who manages up to 25 employees during peak season. “A lot of folks who come into a restaurant don’t quite realize just how stressful it is. I was caught off guard personally when I got into it. The thought of a food truck is kind of fun and exciting, and then once you get in there, it’s very high stress. And when you get off work, you want to get your drink. And one drink turns into more, and you go to the bars, and it’s a whole night. It kind of catches up to you.”
In The Weeds offers programs such as “Self-Care Sunday Yoga” in Pagosa Springs, weekly gatherings to go climbing at a Durango gym called Gravity Lab, regular “Grill and Chill” non-alcoholic cookouts and paddle boarding at nearby reservoirs. It also holds monthly sessions for a cooking and food prep class at Manna, a well-known Durango soup kitchen (and Colorado Trust grantee).
In The Weeds offers a popular punch-card program called Top S(h)elf. Here’s how it works: One punch card costs a restaurant $10. A participating employee gets the card punched each time they take a yoga class, go climbing, attend an In The Weeds group session or complete another positive lifestyle activity. Ten punches fill the card, and then the employee receives a $25 gift card for gasoline or groceries.
The group organizes outings such as the overnight camping trip, which prompted the gathering at the sporting goods store to discuss menus, check backpack fittings and assess the best way to keep bears from getting into your cache of food. In The Weeds, which supports its $300,000 annual budget through grants and donations, also offers job training and placement services.
Upon getting out of rehab, friends directed Lindborg to In The Weeds, and he soon “fell in love” with yoga and other healthier lifestyle choices. The key to In The Weeds’ effectiveness, said Lindborg, is that the activities are free and accessible to restaurant employees and “it’s not your typical meeting or something—it’s more ‘go do something else.’ I’m learning how to go climbing—and that’s huge.”
Soma Smith, the outreach coordinator for In The Weeds, said her previous job at “the cutest, sweetest little coffee shop” in Washington State featured a culture of young people. Many of her colleagues were frequently high. Another job she worked at a well-known restaurant in downtown Durango had a head chef who yelled continuously at the staff.
“I just felt always on edge,” Smith said. “Every time I went to work, hours before my shift, I’d be so anxious and mentally gearing up all day long. It got pretty draining.”
Having studied psychology at Western Washington University, Smith said she always wanted to work in the mental health field to help others. Smith previously worked at the Durango-based Open Sky Wilderness Therapy and today travels across the three counties, which In The Weeds serves, to promote the organization’s activities and opportunities. In The Weeds also distributes free boxes of naloxone, a nasal spray that can quickly reverse the effects of a drug overdose.
When Smith visits restaurants, she said she usually receives a positive reception. “Everyone kind of lights up,” she said. “They’re just very excited, and it’s really cool to see and build those connections with people.”
In The Weeds recently completed a needs assessment and listened to what ideas restaurant employees requested in terms of support, Smith said. Organized rafting trips scored high. So did climbing. Both sports are expensive to get into, she said, but also readily accessible for those who live in this low-population corner of the state surrounded by the San Juan mountains and lots of wilderness.
Most In The Weeds activities, such as rafting or a cookout at a reservoir, aren’t designed to include a formal time to share experiences. Still, both Smith and Bailey said that, inevitably, there is group sharing. Some yoga classes wrap up with a time in a circle to unload and discuss issues, but even those opportunities are low-pressure and not mandatory.
From her Durango base, Smith travels two or three times a month to Pagosa Springs, 60 miles east; four or five times a month to Cortez, 50 miles west; and other nearby towns such as Mancos and Dolores. But even the restaurants in Durango keep Smith busy.
A 2021 analysis by Visit Durango confirmed that the city has more restaurants (187 that year) per capita than San Francisco. Smith said she knows of 150 Durango-area restaurants, not including all the food trucks.
Staying positive when problems arise
Bailey noted that COVID-19 wreaked havoc on restaurant owners and workers. In May 2021, 14 months after the pandemic reached the state, the Colorado Restaurant Association reported that restaurant revenue remained down 40% and that 1 in 3 restaurant employees (77,000 workers statewide) remained out of work.
Coming out of the pandemic, employee attitudes shifted about pay, benefits, work environment and work-life balance. As a result, Bailey and Lindborg said, many restaurant owners have incurred higher labor costs to try to retain staff. The additional squeeze of inflation has increased the cost of wholesale food and, as a necessity, menu prices.
“Everybody was on edge, especially during COVID, and we had servers and hosts getting spit on, you know, all kinds of stuff like that over burger prices or whatever,” said Bailey.
All these factors prompted In The Weeds to start a “Restaurant Neighbors” program, providing public-service messages encouraging customers, restaurant staff and employers to communicate, stay positive, be flexible and demonstrate empathy when complaints surface.
Ed Cheesman, the head chef at Steamworks Brewing Company in Durango, said he would “walk through fire” for Bailey “because of what he’s done for me and my team personally.” Cheesman recounted a challenging stretch in 2021 when three staff members died by suicide and two more from drug overdoses. In The Weeds immediately connected the restaurant staff with a mental health counselor, provided for free.
More recently, another Steamworks employee died by suicide and In The Weeds helped support the employee’s mother with housework and related needs so she could move back to Colorado Springs to be with family. That kind of responsiveness, said Cheesman, “solidified everything for me with In The Weeds.”
Cheesman said Steamworks’ culture is changing. Every year, the company organizes a staff appreciation week, including an all-staff dinner at a barbecue restaurant, a private concert, and $5,000 worth of prize giveaways. The waitstaff shares tips with the kitchen crew, improving teamwork between the “front” and “back” of the business.
In a similar fashion, said Cheesman, In The Weeds is working to entice restaurant workers to take advantage of Colorado’s varied outdoor activities. “It’s not like they are trying to help everybody with their problems,” he said. “It’s more like, ‘Hey, let’s get together and talk about what we do… it’s coming together as a community and helping each other out.”
In 2023, In The Weeds served more than 500 restaurant industry workers. The key to the organization’s success, Bailey said, is the effort put into outreach. At the same time, he noted, many restaurant employees “have begun to recognize on their own that the traditional culture of our industry has been detrimental to their health.” As a result, he said, the vast majority are open to the support—one individual worker at a time.
Lindborg, who today sits on the organization’s board of directors, says the effectiveness of the group’s many tactics is apparent to anyone who sees them in action.
“I just wanted to keep helping,” Lindborg said about his decision to volunteer, “and show this approach to other people in the business.”
Freelance reporter Mark Stevens wrote this story for The Colorado Trust, a philanthropic foundation that works on health equity issues statewide and also funds a reporting position at The Colorado Sun. It appeared at coloradotrust.org on Aug. 7. 2024, and can be read in Spanish at collective.coloradotrust.org/es.