Mental health in pub kitchens: Has the culture changed?

In this feature, The Morning Advertiser (MA) looks at the particular pressures facing pub kitchens and what operators can do to create healthier working environments without compromising standards.

Joby Mortimer, director of charity operations at the LTC, said the organisation was seeing workplace pressure, performance concerns and absence among the main issues raised by people seeking support. It received around 6,000 calls to its helpline in 2025, a like for like increase of 55%.

Awareness of the charity also increased over the period and LTC stressed that this would have contributed to the rise. Calls are anonymous, meaning the organisation cannot identify how many came specifically from pub chefs or kitchen workers.

However, its Wellbeing at Work Report found one in three pub and bar employees had experienced challenges during the previous 12 months, while the charity supported 45,000 people with wellbeing, financial and practical guidance during 2025, up from 40,000 the year before.

LTC’s August helpline data showed work related pressure, performance and absence were among the main concerns, alongside personal issues around health, family and relationships. Anxiety, disrupted sleep and sudden weeping were among the effects reported.

The figures come as operators and industry organisations warn that, despite significant progress in how hospitality talks about mental health, many of the underlying pressures associated with kitchen work remain.

Hospitality Action’s latest Taking the Temperature research found 74% of respondents had experienced mental health challenges, with more than half of those surveyed, 51%, indicating their work in hospitality had triggered them.

Among managers who had experienced a mental health issue, 65% said it had been triggered by work, while 47% of respondents identified management training as an area where greater support was needed.

Burnout, under resourcing and excessive workloads were also the three leading reasons given for poor work life balance.

Why pub kitchens are different

For Kris Hall, founder and global president of The Burnt Chef Project, some of the pressures facing pub kitchens are distinct from those experienced elsewhere in hospitality.

Small brigades can leave little capacity to absorb illness or absence, while all day trading can remove the natural break between services found in many restaurants. Rural locations, live in accommodation and the relative isolation of some pub chefs can create further pressures.

He added that unpredictability could be particularly damaging, with chefs unsure when they will finish work or sometimes receiving rotas too late to plan their lives outside it.

Pub operators echoed that assessment. Dom Jacobs, managing director of Ardent Pub Group, said one of the key differences between a pub and a restaurant was the length and unpredictability of its trading day.

“A restaurant may have relatively consistent service patterns, but pubs are used in many different ways: lunch, drinks, dinner, sport, private events and everything in between,” he said.

“Kitchen teams are therefore constantly adapting to different volumes, occasions and customer expectations. That combination of long trading hours and variable demand can create significant pressure if staffing, communication and planning are not right.”

However, Jacobs stressed that these characteristics were also part of pubs’ appeal and, when labour was managed effectively, longer trading periods could offer greater flexibility around shifts and hours.

Joe Walker, executive chef at Herts Pubs Company and ambassador for The Burnt Chef Project, similarly pointed to unpredictable covers, tight margins, rising ingredient costs and relatively small brigades.

He said: “Good operations protect people. If your chefs have to work ridiculous hours every week just to get the menu ready, that isn’t commitment. There’s probably something wrong with your menu, staffing, prep or systems.”

For Walker, seemingly mundane operational disciplines such as prep levels, ordering, rotas, menu engineering and communication can therefore become mental health interventions in their own right.

“There will always be Saturdays where everyone has to dig deep. It just can’t be everyday,” he added.

Awareness vs. action

While awareness has improved significantly, evidence suggests employees can still be reluctant to disclose when they are struggling.

Research shared by The Burnt Chef Project found four in five hospitality professionals reported experiencing poor mental health during their careers, yet just 17% felt comfortable discussing mental health with their employer. Some 42% said they would give another reason for an absence rather than disclose a mental health challenge.

Hall said the traditional culture associated with professional kitchens had changed, but argued progress in awareness had moved faster than changes to the underlying structure of the job.

He warned operators against relying on visible wellbeing initiatives while leaving issues around staffing, management and hours untouched.

He added that operators were themselves facing significant financial pressure and said businesses should initially concentrate on interventions requiring time and attention rather than significant expenditure, including predictable rotas, genuine breaks, clear policies, trained managers and asking employees how they are.

Mark Lewis, chief executive of Hospitality Action, made a similar distinction.

“We shouldn’t pretend that a mental health workshop can fix an unsustainable working environment,” he told the MA. “If someone is consistently working excessive hours, dealing with staff shortages or carrying an unmanageable workload, the answer has to address those pressures too.”

Hospitality Action found signs of progress. Some 66% of respondents agreed their workplace had created an environment where they felt able to talk openly about mental health at work, compared with 62% in 2024.

Work life balance also improved, with 67% agreeing they had a good balance compared with 59% in 2025. However, among the third who did not agree, 44% said burnout being considered part of the job was a contributing factor.

Leaving the ‘survival of the fittest’ behind

Oliver Wadham, executive sous chef at London pub the Wigmore, has experienced burnout himself and said kitchen culture had changed substantially since he entered the industry in 2013.

“When I started as a chef in 2013, particularly in fine dining, the culture could be very much about survival of the fittest,” he said. “Speed and accuracy were essential, but there was often little space for breaks or looking after yourself. There was an expectation that you kept going and pushed yourself as hard as possible to progress.”

Wadham said the Wigmore benefits from being part of luxury hotel The Langham, with its wider team able to share preparation, space and expertise when required. Developing transferable skills across the team also means employees can support different areas during illness, annual leave or busy periods.

Having experienced burnout, Wadham said his involvement with The Burnt Chef Project was partly about ensuring others did not reach a point where they felt unable to cope. His advice to head chefs was to begin simply by creating opportunities for conversation outside the pressure of service.

Matthew Lockwood, managing director and COO of Jeopardy Hospitality and The Tommy Banks Group, recalled a similarly different culture when he began as a kitchen porter in 1994.

“Kitchens could be incredibly macho,” he said. “There wasn’t much sense of people supporting one another and felt very much survival of the fittest.”

Lockwood said kitchens would always involve pressure and intensity but this did not have to be generated through fear of the person leading the team.

He also rejected suggestions that younger employees were unwilling to work hard, arguing instead that they were less prepared to accept that becoming a chef automatically required sacrificing the rest of their lives.

“If we want talented young people to see hospitality as a long-term career, we have to make it a career they can actually sustain,” he said.

Managers matter

One recurring issue across the responses was the role of kitchen managers.

Rachel Kerr-Lapsley, managing director of Kelly’s Cause, said overworking and an inability to rest were still too often treated as a normal part of kitchen life, sometimes even becoming a “badge of honour”.

At the same time, she said there remained a significant education gap among managers, who could lack the training or time needed to support somebody experiencing poor mental health.

Rather than automatically treating declining performance as a disciplinary problem, Kerr-Lapsley suggested managers consider whether it could indicate that somebody is struggling.

She advocated creating time for private conversations, while maintaining clear boundaries around the role of managers and directing employees towards professional help when necessary.

“If you have a great policy but you haven’t invested in training your managers in mental health first aid or the basics of a wellness action plan then it’s truly just paper in a drawer,” she said.

Kelly’s Cause also called for rotas to be published at least a month ahead, greater respect for employees’ ability to disconnect from work communications and clear information about the mental health support available to teams.

Joe Walker also argued being technically excellent did not automatically prepare somebody to manage others.

“We spend years teaching chefs how to cook, organise a section and run a pass. We need to put the same effort into teaching them how to lead people,” he said.

Herts Pubs Company recently used the flexibility of operating multiple sites when a young chef was struggling with the intensity of one of its busier kitchens. Following a conversation with the employee, responsibilities were adjusted and the chef moved into a less intense environment better suited to that stage of their development.

Walker said the approach allowed the chef to continue progressing rather than simply being written off.

High standards without poor treatment

For Dom Jacobs, employers’ primary responsibility is to ensure the workplace itself is not contributing to poor mental health, while recognising managers are not substitutes for trained mental health professionals.

At Ardent, he said the focus included appropriate staffing, planning, training, clear communication and creating an environment where problems could be raised early.

Jacobs has also spoken openly within his business about his own experience of PTSD.

He believes the pub sector had made meaningful progress since Covid but cautioned that talking about mental health remained easier than addressing the conditions that could contribute to problems.

“Operators must examine leadership, staffing, working hours, communication and the everyday behaviour that they tolerate, not simply publish wellbeing statements,” he said.

That does not mean removing the pressure, ambition or standards that attract many people to kitchens in the first place.

As Walker put it: “I’m massively driven by standards, discipline and accountability, and I don’t think we should soften those. You can be uncompromising about the food without being uncompromising about how you treat people.”