Written by: Matthew Ward
What Felt Familiar
I’ve been working in this industry since I was 15 years old, so in many ways, I feel like I grew up in hospitality.
That is why the recent conversations around abuse, intimidation, and toxic workplace culture in our industry have hit me so personally. Not because one story can explain everything that is wrong with hospitality, but because these moments force many of us to confront something deeper: how much dysfunction this industry has asked people to normalize, and how many of us were conditioned to accept it long before we ever stepped into a kitchen.
For me, that truth is complicated.
Some of my earliest years were shaped by dysfunction at home, with a father who struggled with alcoholism. As a result, chaos and instability never felt entirely unfamiliar to me. Over the years, I’ve joked that maybe part of what drew me to hospitality was that same chaos – the pirate life, the misfit island, the strange sense of belonging among people who never quite fit anywhere else. This industry attracts a certain kind of person, and many of us find belonging in the intensity, the speed, the pressure, and the camaraderie that forms when everyone is trying to survive the same storm.
There is beauty in that. There is connection in that. There is also danger in that.
Because when chaos feels familiar, it can also feel normal. And when something feels normal, we stop questioning it.
What We Learned to Call Normal
Over the years, I’ve seen and experienced some of the abuse, intimidation, and toxic behavior that for too long was accepted as part of this industry. I’ve seen the kind of culture that can make people feel small, silent, and stuck. And even when those moments are not happening directly to you, they still stay with you.
I know for me, there are times when I reflect on how much of the anxiety I carry may be connected to having worked in and around those kinds of environments.
What makes this even harder to talk about is that I can’t pretend I’ve only stood on the outside of it and observed. I’ve also had to look honestly at myself. I’ve been known to be a hot head in stressful situations. Never physical, but verbally sharp in ways I am not proud of. That has forced me to sit with difficult questions: What did I learn about pressure? What did I learn about control? What did I learn about survival? Which parts of me were shaped before hospitality, and which parts were sharpened by it?
That is why I believe this conversation has to be more honest and more urgent than it often is.
Too often, we talk about toxic behavior in hospitality as though it begins and ends with a few bad actors. And yes, there are moments when harm is clear, direct, and inexcusable. Accountability matters. But if we only talk about the worst individual examples, we miss the larger truth: this is also a cultural cycle. It is built on hierarchy, fear, ego, burnout, silence, and the long-romanticized idea that suffering is somehow part of the price of excellence.
A young cook learns quickly what gets rewarded. Be tougher. Move faster. Don’t complain. Don’t take it personally. Don’t show weakness. Don’t slow down. Don’t need too much. If someone gets torn apart in front of you, the lesson is rarely just about that one moment. The lesson is that this is how things work here. This is how standards are enforced. This is what commitment looks like.
But survival is not the same thing as leadership. And endurance is not the same thing as health.
What Follows Us Home
This is where I think the conversation has to become more urgent.
These behaviors do not stay at work. They do not stay on the line, in the kitchen, in the walk-in, or in pre-service. They come home with people. They show up in relationships. They show up in anxiety. They show up in how people speak to themselves, how they handle conflict, and how they move through the world long after the workday is over.
Over time, the lines begin to blur. Work life bleeds into home life. Stress lingers. Reactivity lingers. The body may leave the workplace, but part of the mind often stays there, making it harder to be fully present with the people and moments waiting at home.
That is one of the most important truths I want this piece to hold: workplace culture is never just workplace culture. It shapes lives.
It shapes how people feel in their own bodies. It shapes how safe they feel using their voices. It shapes how they interpret criticism, anger, failure, and belonging. It can teach people to internalize harm, minimize their own needs, or repeat behaviors they once hated because repetition can start to look like normalcy.
That does not excuse harmful behavior. But it does help explain why it is so hard to unravel.
Because for many people, this is not just about one chef, one manager, one restaurant, or one bad moment. It is about patterns. It is about what gets normalized. It is about how people absorb environments over time until they no longer know where the workplace ends and the rest of life begins.
What Service Should Mean
We cannot claim to be in the business of service if that service stops with the guest. Real hospitality has to include the people doing the work and the way we care for ourselves while doing it.
That idea matters deeply to me because one of the reasons I have stayed in food service all these years is the service part of that phrase. At its best, this work is about caring for people. Yes, that means guests. But as leaders, it also has to mean caring for employees and, just as importantly, caring for ourselves.
I think that is where our industry has often fallen short. We have talked a lot about service as something we deliver outward, without always recognizing that leadership is also an act of service. The way we speak to people, support people, develop people, and regulate ourselves under pressure all become part of that responsibility.
If I say I believe in service, then I have to believe in it fully. I have to believe in service to the guest, service to the team, and service to self. Otherwise, we are only practicing one version of hospitality while ignoring the human cost behind it.
What Needs to Change
And that is why I believe we need better tools, better language, and better support systems now.
Not someday. Not when the next headline breaks. NOW.
We need to teach emotional regulation as seriously as we teach knife skills and execution. We need to talk more openly about stress, anxiety, and what unhealthy environments do to people over time. We need leadership development that is not rooted in fear. We need more spaces where hospitality professionals can be honest about what they’ve experienced and how it has shaped them. We need to stop glamorizing dysfunction just because it once felt like tradition. We need to stop confusing volatility with passion and intimidation with standards.
Most of all, I think we need to create room for people to say, “This affected me more than I realized,” without shame.
That is one of the reasons my involvement with CHOW means so much to me. It has reminded me that hospitality professionals deserve support, care, and community. It has reminded me that asking for help is not weakness. It has reminded me that people need spaces where they can say hard things out loud, maybe for the first time, and not be made to feel small for it.
For me, that matters because healing from these environments is not as simple as leaving them. The effects linger. The patterns linger. The instincts linger. Breaking the cycle requires more than outrage. It requires reflection. It requires accountability. It requires tools. It requires support. And it requires a willingness to question what many of us were taught to normalize in the first place.
I still love hospitality deeply. I love the creativity, the adrenaline, the generosity, the sense of purpose, and the belonging it can create. I have built my life in this industry. But loving it also means telling the truth about it.
And the truth is that there are behaviors in this industry that have been tolerated for far too long. The truth is that some of us were primed to accept them because dysfunction already felt familiar. The truth is that some of us have had to confront the ways that culture shaped not only what we endured, but who we became under pressure.
If hospitality is going to have a healthier future, we need more than private acknowledgment and public disappointment. We need urgency in how we talk about this. We need honesty about the layers. We need leaders willing to look inward. And we need to build workplaces where excellence does not come at the expense of people’s nervous systems, dignity, or humanity.
This will take years to unravel. I believe that. The cycle is complex, and the roots run deep.
But that is not a reason to speak about it softly.
It is a reason to start speaking about it more clearly, more personally, and more urgently than ever.
And if we truly believe in service, then we have to believe in it fully: service to our guests, service to our teams, and service to ourselves.
Matthew Ward is an executive chef and CHOW Ambassador whose work is grounded in the belief that hospitality should nourish people on every level. He focuses on culinary innovation, plant-forward dining, and building team cultures that are more thoughtful, sustainable, and human-centered. Through his writing and advocacy, Matthew explores what it means to lead with care and to imagine a hospitality industry that cares for its people as deeply as it cares for the guest experience.
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