Is substance abuse or abusive relationships required for food industry work?

It's not a prerequisite, but it does help you get the job.

Shitty tattoos too.

I wasn't in fine dining, but I worked at Cane's through HS and college. You definitely don't develop good habits, and the career food industry folks are interesting to say the least

It’s a plus, but not necessarily mandatory. If you’re looking to make a foray into the industry and seeking to pad your résumé, can’t go wrong with coke, but heroin gets you up the food chain quick.

A lot of it is the hours and its stressful. Working a job at night and the weekends sucks.

Pretty much most of the 'lifers' in the industry get there by bad choices outside of the cooks on their way to be head chefs. But even tons of head chefs work long shitty hours and have shite lives outside of work because of that.

I couldn’t imagine trying to do it in the French Quarter and not being a druggie or total drunk

Get a group of Latina females for your Back of House

tGOAT Kitchen

I worked in restaurants for 7 years and I can tell you once you get in that life cycle of partying all night and sleeping most of the day it’s not easy to break for some

For the most part, yes. I worked as a line cook in college, and me and this one other guy were the only ones that didn’t do anything harder than the devil’s lettuce. Cocaine, snorting zannies and klonopin, etc. It’s a pretty unhealthy line of work. Pretty fun work, though.