What is Healthy Hospo?

Oct 27, 2022

We had the privilege of meeting with Lorietta Bahr, Sustainability Advisor for Lion NZ. We learned a little bit about Lori’s story, what Healthy Hospo is, what they do, and how we can support!

Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into the hospitality industry.
I got into hospitality about 15 years ago – it was my first job. I was living in a single income family, so I wanted to get part-time work as soon as I could, while still studying in high school. I ended up stumbling into a waitressing job at an Indian restaurant and discovered that I found  a lot of joy chatting to customers, and the work helped me build personal confidence.
I didn’t start to take hospitality seriously as a career until I scored a job at a high-end Mediterranean restaurant in Wellington. My manager was a trained sommelier and he exposed me to the fascinating world of wine tasting, pairings, and events. After a few years working on the floor, I decided I wanted to start learning how to work behind the bar and when I realised how much I loved my job and the experiences it gave me, I made a career decision to pursue hospitality full time.

Lorietta Bahr, Sustainability Advisor for Lion NZ.

When and why did Healthy Hospo begin?
Healthy Hospo was started by a man named Tim Etherington-Judge, five years ago in the UK. Tim was working a global brand job: traveling the world, hosting events, throwing parties – essentially, living the dream. However, there is an unspoken darker side with this lifestyle – which can lead to mental and physical burn out. After experiencing breakdown, Tim reached out to find support, and discovered that he wasn’t the only person struggling with the same challenges. It was a lightbulb moment – if this was such a big issue, why was no one doing anything about it?
A small team of us at Lion had a connection to Tim through our time in hospitality, and we loved the change he was trying to create. We felt the Healthy Hospo mission was equally important here in New Zealand and decided that we should pave the way and bring the initiative to support our own local industry. Since then, with support of the business and our amazing leadership teams, we’ve been adapting and refining what Healthy Hospo looks like for New Zealand.

How did you find yourself in this role at Healthy Hospo?
I started working for Lion almost 6 years ago. Initially, my job was to train and educate our customers on wine. The career shift from hospo to corporate was incredibly eye-opening, and I started to realise I had incredible support to live a healthier lifestyle (great role models, work culture promoting fitness, free counselling etc.) All of these tools were crucial lifelines when I went through my own extreme loss several years back – and part of the reason looking after well-being means so much to me. Finding ways to support an industry I care about have access to the same support – it was a no brainer, really. 
One of Lion’s Sustainability pillars is looking after Mental Health in our community, and everything we do within Healthy Hospo is trying to understand how we can proactively support better mental health. After two years of bringing this initiative to life, I was given the opportunity to step into the world of sustainability and lead the project as a key element of Lion’s ESG Sustainability Strategy – which is essentially a job beyond my wildest dreams!

Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
I love working in Sustainability and think it’s an area I could dedicate my whole life to. Our planet is going to face a lot of challenges over the next fifty years (and beyond), both socially and environmentally. We’re going to need a lot of different people in different fields with different skills willing to solve these challenges. If I can do anything to help my little corner, whether it be supporting the well-being of people I care about, or continuing to drive environmentally conscious behaviour change, then I want to make sure I play a part in that.

What or who inspires you?
I am so inspired by people who step out of their comfort zone and drive positive change within their areas of influence. For example, David Attenborough is a personal hero of mine - for his lifetime commitment sharing his love and fascination of our natural world, connecting all humans emotionally to some of the big issues, like climate change and plastics pollution. I also love to learn about the human mind and body, and really enjoy the work of writers like Matthew Walker (sleep expert) and James Clear (habit expert).

How does Healthy Hospo support the hospitality industry?
We educate and bring people together with events. We run workshops around six pillars of what we believe is the core of a well-rounded, healthy, resilient person: sleep, exercise, nutrition, mental fitness, connection, and leadership. We also introduced a seventh topic this year: financial health. At each workshop, we team up with experts to provide the industry with tailored advice specific to hospitality. These workshops are open to anyone who works within or alongside hospitality.
We also know that to shift culture you need a community. So we run events that bring people together in ways that promote mental and physical well-being. To date, we’ve run events like run clubs, beach clean ups, lunches, cooking classes, yoga, mindfulness workshops and so on. It’s been incredibly rewarding to watch this community grow   for example, I love going to my local gym and seeing friends I’ve made through Healthy Hospo training one year after a bootcamp activation we did with 42 Below and Knoxfit Grey Lynn. 

Healthy Hospo Workshop

How can people support Healthy Hospo?
Ultimately, the success of Healthy Hospo is the result of the amazing support from industry leaders across New Zealand. We’re always on the lookout for people who want to help us create and drive local events. And of course, the biggest thing you can do to support us, is to let us know the work we’re doing means something to you by coming along to an event!

What is Healthy Hospo’s vision?
Next year, we’d like to partner hospitality groups and industry bodies more closely, to reach more people and increase our impact. I’d also love to partner and support more leaders around New Zealand, to see more health & well-being events pop up around the country. This is one of the reasons our Speight’s Run Club always takes off – we have these amazing local leaders owning and driving weekly meet ups, and we wouldn’t have any hope of success without all their passion and commitment.

Healthy Hospo's Speight’s Run Club

How would you describe the hospitality scene in New Zealand then and now?
There have been so many changes over the last few years. Right now, hospitality is in a place of hurt, trying to rebuild through labour and skills shortages, rising costs, and Covid. This is inevitably leading to burn out. There’s also a larger conversation around the perception of hospitality as a career – and perhaps we need to do a better job at messaging all the rich and rewarding parts of hospitality. It sets you up in your career by teaching you things like: how to handle pressure, interacting with people from of all walks of life, event management, and general work ethic. You can also go deep into studying wine, food, spirits, sake… Whatever you are passionate about. I have my career in hospitality to thank for where I am today.

What do we need more of in hospo to support both workers and customers?
To be honest, there’s not one simple answer to this question. Many corporate businesses put a lot of focus in creating strong culture and promoting well-being in staff because they know that healthy staff equals healthy business. All of us could do more to support the industry. Government, distributors, industry bodies, owners and staff could all start to think about ways to support our workers to be healthier. What do we feed our staff for staff meal? How are we as distributors interacting and rewarding businesses? What kind of events are we throwing? What kind of behaviours are we modelling?
And for customers – that’s a really easy one! Kindness goes a long way. 

Any funny/interesting stories or experiences from your time in Hospo?
I loved my time in hospo because there were so many moments in my career where I thought “how am I getting paid for this?” Some of the big highlights were getting out of my comfort zone to do cocktail competitions. 
One of the best examples of this was around 6 years ago. I was lucky enough to be part of a New Zealand team during the 42 Below Australasian World Cup.
To give you some context, I absolutely hate heights. And somehow, we ended up being given a timed mystery box challenge – with a caveat that the timer would only go off after we bungy jumped off Kawarau Bridge.  I’m pretty sure the only reason I was able to do it, was because I was strapped up to my workmate Phil – I knew he was going down, so I’d be going down with him whether I wanted to or not. I’ll probably never forget that moment – thanks 42 below.

Anything to add?
We’d love to hear from you! Get in touch at @healthyhosponz or at team@healthyhospo.co.nz