Portland restaurants rally for addiction recovery
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Gabriel Rucker, shown here at Le Pigeon, is participating in Restaurants for Recovery through his neighboring spot Canard. Photo: Courtesy of Le Piegon
For National Recovery Month, roughly three dozen Portland-area restaurants will donate a portion of their sales to support a local nonprofit providing low-barrier addiction treatment and support services.
Why it matters: The service industry's long-held "work hard, play hard" ethos is changing.
- "Ten years ago it was unheard of to finish your shift and choose a bottle of water. You'd be laughed at," Gabriel Rucker, chef-owner of Canard and Le Pigeon, told Axios. "These days it's like, 'Hell yeah.'"
The big picture: The Alano Club's Restaurants for Recovery initiative, now in its fourth year, aims to raise awareness for overdose prevention and recovery efforts in Oregon.
- Research shows that hospitality workers are the most at risk for illicit drug use compared with those in other industries.
How it works: Participating restaurants — including the Sports Bra, Yaowarat, Sousòl, JoJo and Estes — are featuring one menu item each throughout September, with a portion of the dish's sales going to the Alano Club.
- The nonprofit hosts 12-step meetings, sobriety-focused social events, fitness and meditation classes and financial workshops, and it provides treatment, mental health and peer support.
- It also is one of the largest suppliers of cost-free naloxone in the state.
- "Our work is always to identify where people are falling through the cracks and then build support around that," Kasey Anderson, the nonprofit's executive director, told Axios.
What they're saying: As a former service worker in recovery himself, Anderson saw the industry changing — through restaurant run clubs, late-night yoga and non-alcoholic drinks. He wanted to couple that shift with awareness for accessible support systems.
- "As much as this is about highlighting recovery, it's also about highlighting community," he said.
- Since launching Restaurants for Recovery in 2021, the number of participating restaurants has grown from four to 34.
The bottom line: "Things are shifting in a major, major way," said Rucker, who is approaching 12 years of sobriety next month. "Not good for my business, but good holistically for us as a culture."