PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ALEX WALK
Ultimately, people go to restaurants for nourishment. Whether ordering from a car at a two-way speaker or selecting an entrée off the seasonal menu of a James Beard-nominated chef, you’re choosing a place where you can be served, taken care of, fed.
However, for those in the industry, the work can be mentally and physically draining. Oftentimes culinary professionals don’t have access to the time or resources they need to take care of themselves after taking care of others.
Enter Chef & Coffee, a non-profit organization founded by Chef Jeff Harris of Nolia Kitchen and organized by president Ali Crowdus of The People’s Kitchen. Chef & Coffee seeks to “uplift and empower each other to face challenges head-on because…we believe that we are always better together.”
Harris says the idea for Chef & Coffee came from a selfie he saw of New York chefs on the subway. While typically competitors, on this day, in this photo, they all came together as a community.
“Seeing the chefs together in one space, all that [competitive] stuff was put to the side, for the sake of New York or out of respect for each other,” he says. “I saw the camaraderie and I didn’t think Cincinnati had that and I thought what if we did a chef and coffee meetup once a month and spend two hours of our time just talking so chefs who have never met can meet one another and collab and share purveyors, farmers, or whatever they want to do.”
Harris held the first meetup at Nolia Kitchen in 2024, advertising the event on social media. Even though he was nervous about the turnout, he says nearly 50 people showed up. After that, the meetings occurred monthly at various venues throughout the city. Some of them would be big and others small, but all required organization and effort beyond that of one person.
At Crowdus’s first meeting that year, she says she made a point to grab a few minutes with Harris.
“I told him how much I appreciated the work he is doing for the community and asked if he could use help,” she says. “He graciously accepted and the rest is history.”
Crowdus implemented the structure and organization of Chef & Coffee, including creating a website, confirming a refreshment sponsor, starting social media channels, and homing in on the mission and values.
While Chef & Coffee provides an outlet for starting conversations, venting frustrations, and finding solutions, it also offers a therapy program accessible to everyone in the local culinary industry. Those seeking talk therapy can submit a support request via a form on their website, where they’ll be connected to a partner therapist.
One of the biggest issues Crowdus witnesses in the culinary community is burnout.
“At its core, the restaurant business, or food industry in general, is a stressful one,” she notes. “The hours are long, the work is hard, and it’s often physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing. With the current political and social climate, industry professionals are being faced with challenges they have never been met with before. Additional responsibilities to compensate for staffing shortages mean employees are doing more with less.
When the outside world is also stressful due to current events, people lose their opportunity to decompress and reset between shifts as they normally would. This means the stress from the outside world [compounds] with work stress, leaving people overstimulated, under-rested, and reaching stress levels beyond their capacity. Consequently, many reach their ‘breaking point’ and lack the skills to manage this level of stress and stimulation healthily.”
Crowdus says she and Harris share many similarities in their values, creativity, work ethic, and general outlook. “We both have a great passion for pouring into our community, supporting those around us, mentoring, and leaving a space better than we found it. We want to facilitate a space where solutions are developed communally and people know they can seek support,” she says.
Harris and Crowdus plan to continue the monthly meetups while extending the concept to other cities. The most important message they want to instill is that the Chef & Coffee community isn’t only for chefs. “We want to support everyone in our culinary industry, and we want to see everyone at our meetups,” Crowdus says. “From farmers to executive chefs and beyond, if they’re part of the process, they belong at Chef & Coffee.”
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