Will 2025 be the year restaurants take addiction seriously?

Probably not, but I'll keep trying.

Two days after my three year anniversary of sobriety, I ordered an NA bloody mary at Duluth Coffee Kitchen like this, “I’m an alcoholic and I want to order an NA bloody mary.” The restaurant was loud, with kids yelling, and the sound of a coffee grinder. I wasn’t carded. I wasn’t asked to clarify. I was just delivered a bloody mary I assumed was NA.

I started telling restaurants I was an alcoholic when saying, “I don’t drink,” or, “I won’t be ordering alcoholic drinks,” didn’t work. I say it out loud to try to avoid being served alcohol.

I do everything I can short of making my own drink to ask restaurants not to serve me alcohol. Still, somehow, this is the second time in 2025 that alcohol has crossed the bar.

I’ve written already (and at length) about how you can prevent this.

I will say, Duluth Coffee Company’s response to me was stellar, and I want to include it here. Though it doesn’t change the outcome, it is welcome to hear.

Thank you for reaching out and sharing this with us, and most importantly, congratulations on your three years of sobriety. That is a huge milestone, and we’re truly sorry that your experience here could have threatened that in any way.

This is absolutely not acceptable, and we take it very seriously. Our intention is always to create a space that is safe, welcoming, and respectful of all people, especially those in recovery. We’ve already initiated a conversation with our team to review our process around non-alcoholic orders and will be implementing updated training immediately to ensure this never happens again.

Thank you again for your honesty and grace in the way you brought this to our attention. You’ve helped us be better, and we’re grateful for that.

With sincere apologies,
Duluth Coffee Company

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In 2024 and early 2025, I spent most of the year handling the three times I was served alcohol quietly. I reached out to owners, talked to them over the phone, told them I wouldn’t post what happened to me. I came to them genuinely hoping to change things.

They all told me they’d make changes ranging from training to NA drink menu changes, so that drinks sounded different than the alcoholic versions, even in a rush. Two of those restaurants told me they’d make changes and didn’t. I was just placated, brushed off, when I was really trying to do the thing that chefs were asking me to do: not make it a thing on the internet.

The one restaurant that did take it seriously implemented immediate and sweeping changes ranging from asking people if they drank before getting drink orders, changing the names of drinks, and confirming drinks were NA upon arrival. That restaurant also knew where the problem was. The server rang the drink in right. The bartender made an NA and alcoholic version of that drink. The wrong ones got run out to tables.

One of the restaurants that didn’t make changes said if I’ve been served alcohol so often, it must be a “me” problem, like I’m not ordering right, when maybe it’s a volume problem—I go to over 400 restaurants a year and restaurants don’t have the protocols in place to handle it, even when they have NA drinks on the menu. I am normally served alcohol in fancy or hip restaurants, never in dive bars, always in restaurants with an NA section on their menu.

Earlier this year, a sober influencer was served a beer at a restaurant when she ordered an NA one and publicly addressed her relapse after that. The comments section went wild defending the restaurant. Somehow, when addicts get alcohol at restaurants, it’s always our fault.

I’ve only ever been served shellfish once in a restaurant. It was also an accident. I handled it quietly, knowing that the chefs at that restaurant would take it seriously. They did.

I found myself, on the other side of these two very different experiences, feeling helpless. How do I get this industry I care about so much to give a damn about people like me?

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I don’t know the answer, but maybe being vulnerable and emotional is the right away? Maybe not seeing me as a girl calling you out on the internet, but a girl telling you how hard this shit is, might change your mind. Or one person’s mind.

When I realized Duluth Coffee Kitchen served me alcohol, I felt my stomach drop. I was woozy. My first thought was, “I’m two days out from three years sober.” And then I pulled up my relapse prevention note on my phone. This is a document that guides me on what to do when I feel like drinking or was served alcohol unintentionally.

I was supposed to go to two more restaurants that morning and then on a walk, but instead I went through the following list:

1. Write a list of all the things you love about being sober.

2. Write down how the alcohol feels in your body.

3. Read the promises.

4. Call your best friend and tell them you were served alcohol.

5. Tell your boyfriend.

6. Call two sober people.

7. Go to an AA meeting, the soonest one.

8. Call your therapist.

When you serve me alcohol, I won’t relapse, but you do impact my day. Because alcoholism lives in the shadows, I do my best to bring it to light.

After Duluth Coffee Kitchen served me alcohol, I cried in my car. I cried in my car because I don’t understand why the industry sees this as such a flippant thing. I cried in my car because I knew that another addict wouldn’t have walked away unscathed—and all addicts are my siblings. I pulled out the three year coin I keep in my wallet and I started the process of working through my relapse prevention list. The first thing I wrote down about what I love about being sober is: I am alive.

People act like my anger when I’m served alcohol is unjustified, but I don’t know how to tell you that this matters. I’m tired of asking restaurants to care about my sobriety. When you talk about it being a “mistake,” a “service error,” an organic “part of restaurants and the risk you take,” you aren’t taking sobriety seriously.

There are restaurants where shellfish never winds up in the hands of people allergic to it. And there are restaurants where alcohol never crosses the bar.

For lots of people, they will relapse. Addiction is a beast. Especially early on, lots of people don’t have the skills to handle it. And maybe your response to that is, “Okay, well don’t order the NA bloody mary then,” except this is who your restaurant is catering to when you have one. You have made a choice to include us. You don’t have to. Diet Coke is fine. But if you make a menu for us, you have to consider us.

In 2025, it’s time to admit that if alcohol crosses your bar, you have included addicts in your menu design with the idea of profiting off them without really caring about us. And that’s not just for your guests, it’s your cooks, too.

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The restaurant industry has the highest rate of illicit drug use (19%) and the highest rate of substance abuse disorder (17%) of any industry. Any. All of them. Every other one.

Acting like lack of care for alcohol crossing the bar is a “guest” problem ignores that the lack of care about alcohol is an industry problem. The “guest” problem is a symptom of a bigger problem, where the industry eats its own.

Here’s some stories from the trenches.

An ex-boyfriend of mine drove himself to rehab after a shift where he tried to turn down cocaine and was taunted the entire shift for saying no. This is at a restaurant of a lot of acclaim in the Twin Cities.

At a Michelin-starred restaurant, someone shouted, “Is there a doctor in here?” I said no but that I had Narcan. A young cook had received laced drugs. While he was being taken away to the hospital, I found myself saying something I say to restaurants all the time, "You should have Narcan.*” He wasn’t given the resources he needed to get sober. He was fired by the person who gave him his first bump.

*Hey, chef/owners! You should have Narcan!

In the small city of Kingston, a cook wasn’t so lucky. He ODed during service. There was no Narcan. The EMTs were too late. He died.

A chef in a highly awarded restaurant in NYC messaged me after he relapsed with coke he found in the kitchen to tell me that his chef/owner said, “You’re more creative high.” He wanted to know what he should do. He felt the coke was planted. He opened the restaurant. It was his baby. It’s fighting for a star. “Will this eventually kill you,” I asked him. He said, “Yes.” I said, “You have two options then. Leave or die.” He left. He hasn’t returned to the industry. He’s one of its most promising stars.

There’s a chef/owner with a lot of local acclaim who has vodka in his quart container of “water.” When someone brought it to his business partner’s attention, that person said, “Eh, that’s just [insert name here].” When a cook dumped it out, sick of being yelled at by his drunk boss, all hell broke loose.

On a more everyday, more mundane level, cooks reach out to me all the time because they got sober and are having a hard time returning to the industry. The constant alcohol in kitchens gets to them. The being offered coke gets to them. The higher up in fine dining you are, the harder it is. Many sober cooks become pizza guys or work at country clubs or work a brunch spot that crushes their soul. Or they leave the industry entirely. These are cooks who have a ton of talent and the sobriety to execute clear visions. The industry purges its brightest by being inaccessible to them when they’re going to be at their best.

Lots of chef/owners will say, “Not in my kitchen,” not realizing that vape pens and coke baggies are passed around when they’re doing something else in the back. More than one chef who has told me, “Not in my kitchen,” I haven’t wanted to be a narc, but I wanted to scream, “Yes, in your kitchen. I know, in your kitchen. A chef is newly in AA from your kitchen.”

But I can’t so I smile and say, “Lots of chefs say that when it isn’t true.”

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Then there’s moments like these.

In a small town restaurant in Minnesota, when a cook got sober, he returned from rehab to a new NA section on the menu.

Somewhere in New York City, a sous chef got sober and the chef/owner implemented a sober kitchen upon his return.

A head chef somewhere in this country got sober, quietly, and now fine dining cooks straight out of rehab stage in his kitchen to get back into the industry with a toe in before diving back into the monster of a kitchen with a lot of booze.

I firmly believe that these are the kitchens restaurant industry workers deserve—and I think it starts by caring about alcohol crossing the bar.

Or, at Smyth, early on, someone acknowledged my sobriety to make sure I knew that I was safe there.

At HAGS, there’s fent test strips in the bathroom, which was enough to make me cry.

At Lakes Tavern, when I said I was an alcoholic, my server appeared to have never taken a task as seriously as making sure that my drinks were NA. It was incredibly, especially, touching.

At Khaluna, the first thing they ask you at the bar is if you drink alcohol or not. If you don’t, your welcome drink is NA.

Once, on a kitchen tour, I saw not just Narcan in a prominent place but a how-to sign. I pointed to it and said, “I really love that.” From across the kitchen, the chef said, “We take it really seriously here. We’re a dry kitchen.”

These moments were ones that will stay with me forever. They also normally happen at restaurants where sober addicts in recovery have a say. They should happen everywhere, not just when one of your own gets sober.

When you make the choice to take sobriety seriously in your bar program, cooks struggling with alcoholism are more likely to tell you when they need help or support.

They’re more likely to feel like they can turn down shift drinks. And then those sober cooks and servers find you, so that when sober guests come in, they have friends at the bar. Nothing feels as much like home as when a chef or bartender comes out to talk to me, with a quiet and well placed, “We have a mutual friend. Bill W.”

As giant after giant in the industry dies from substance abuse, it’s up to chef/owners to lead the charge to turn the tide. I just don’t know how to ask you to care about us any other way than I already am.

Will this be the year that restaurants stop serving me alcohol? Probably not, but I won’t stop trying, because as more and more restaurants are adding NA programs and more cooks struggle to stay sober, it’s more important than ever.