Restaurants are known to be physically and emotionally taxing environments with staff under constant pressure to produce. This atmosphere is one of the reasons staffing is reported to be a continual struggle for operators. Dan Simons, co-owner of Farmers Restaurant Group, implemented policy-level mental health support, including free online therapy for all employees and their families to lower stress, reduce turnover, and improve safety. The group includes eight Founding Farmers restaurants in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, a distillery, Founding Spirits. and a catering arm for a total of more than 1,500 employees. In this conversation with Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine, he discusses why he believes prioritizing a human-centric culture is essential for restaurant success. How would you define the “hidden burnout” crisis in hospitality and how is it different from the everyday stress that is common in the industry? Servant leadership and all jobs in hospitality inherently require that we put the needs of others above our own. This is what those of us who work in this industry love doing. It creates warm, wonderful, intrinsic benefits. And, yet, it means that when we put ourselves last, day in and day out, we can lose sight of what we, the individual, need. For most workers, the “daily stress” of the job isn’t actually viewed as stressful. What is distressing (the negative version of stress, in my view) is when compounding negative factors batter workers, managers, and chefs relentlessly — margin erosion, societal strive rolling through the front doors and spilling onto the table and…
