Pop-up Event Provides Free Medical Care For Food Service Workers
On Tuesday, The Giving Kitchen offered food service workers free health services that included physicals, dental screenings, contraception and STI resources and more.
Emma Peaslee / WABE
Ieuan Cale sits next to a woman getting her teeth looked at by a dentist on Tuesday. Across the room someone is getting a massage.
Cale is not in a doctor’s office but rather at the Decatur Recreation Center waiting for a physical. But before he does that he needs to get his vitals checked. A nurse takes his blood pressure.
“120 over 70,” the nurse says.
Cale looks at her expectantly.
“That’s good,” she tells him.
“Wow, okay,” Cale says. “That’s a nice surprise.”
It’s a surprise because Cale has not been to the doctor in almost 10 years. But on this day, he was taking advantage of a Pop-Up Doc event put on by Giving Kitchen. It was the birthday of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain — who died in 2018 — and the nonprofit was giving back to restaurant workers by providing free health services and medical screenings.
Cale is the bar manager at SOS Tiki Bar which is right around the corner from the rec center. The pop-up doc provided a great opportunity for affordable care. Cale says he doesn’t go to the doctor mostly out of fear of the cost.
“I used to live in England. That’s where I’m from,” he says. “So in the states, healthcare is such scary, expensive thing.”
This stigma kept Cale away. And while he says he has insurance, he describes it as “catastrophe insurance” — useful in the event he were hit by a car or some other catastrophic event. For smaller things, he says, it can feel like a waste to go to the doctor, especially when you’re making a week-to-week paycheck like many in the food service industry.
Cale isn’t the only one there that has been avoiding the doctor. Vincent Gentile is the manager at Staplehouse Restaurant.
“You know, you just look around the room and you see a lot of people that probably wouldn’t go to a doctor otherwise,” Gentile says.
A friend of Gentile’s gestures to him. He laughs.
“Myself included,” he adds, “But I think they already said they sent one person to the emergency room because they avoided going to the doctor for something that was actually serious.”
Executive director of Giving Kitchen Bryan Schroeder says it was scary, but he’s glad that person got the care they needed.
And, he says, part of the reason Giving Kitchen is hosting this event is to get people in the restaurant world to focus on self-care in a more intentional way.
“The food service industry has just not done a good job of taking care of ourselves. You know the food service is based on service, said Schroeder. “Every single day you show up to work to take care of someone else.”
Schroeder says things like staying up late, partying, and doing drugs have, unfortunately, become synonymous with the restaurant industry. But Schroeder is hopeful.
“One of the great things about Giving Kitchen is that we have a platform, and food service workers listen to the Given Kitchen where they might not listen to anyone else, said Schroeder. “We have to use our voice to call people to a better world, to take care of ourselves.”
In addition to physical health, the pop-up event also included suicide prevention training, mental health screenings, and yoga classes. Giving Kitchen hopes to host events like this more often in Atlanta and across the state.
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