This article has been updated since it first appeared in print.
Drinking and the service industry have long been tightly linked — a reward after a double shift, a ritual woven into late nights and a balm that cements relationships. For many, consuming alcohol isn’t so much a choice as it is part of the culture, where the end of the day is marked by the first shot poured. For some, that consumption can swell into something that touches everyone around them.
Though the journey toward sobriety rarely follows a straight line, in Richmond, a subtle shift is underway as more food and beverage workers question habits that once felt immovable. Together, these accounts from local service industry employees offer a glimpse into a world where people are redefining their relationships with alcohol, and a community learning that stepping away doesn’t mean standing alone.
Bridget Paquette, 33
The Broadberry, Bar Solita
Before her shifts, Bridget Paquette used to slip a small dropper bottle of whiskey into her purse — a secret talisman she hoped no one would notice. “I was pretty good at keeping a lid on things,” she says. “And I’m super-duper lucky that ‘Blackout Bridget’ is very quiet.”
When the bubbly, curly-haired bartender moved to Richmond 14 years ago, alcohol became the glue of her social life. “It was basically 10 years of pretending I remembered conversations,” Paquette says. “I was constantly blacking out. I wanted to be around people so desperately, to feel that service-rush love. I thought alcohol was the only way to keep the party going.”
The pandemic intensified it. “People with chemical dependencies probably did what I did,” she says, “went in as hard as they could, then couldn’t find a way out.”
While celebrating her 31st birthday at Patrick Henry’s Pub & Grille, and fresh off a monthlong bender, Paquette saw a version of herself in the mirror — pale, hollow, exhausted — that she could no longer ignore. She’d been through recovery at 15, but this time she was dependent. The stakes felt impossibly real.
I was constantly blacking out. I wanted to be around people so desperately, to feel that service-rush love. I thought alcohol was the only way to keep the party going.
Paquette recalls carrying a tray of dishes to a table, the ceramic bowls clattering as her hands trembled from withdrawal. “I couldn’t stand upright anymore. I hadn’t eaten correctly in years,” she says. “My hands shook so badly. I’d look at my co-workers — other young women just like me — and think, ‘They’re going to know.’”
But no one did. “People would say, ‘Oh, I had no idea you were doing all that.’ And I’d think, ‘Of course you didn’t.’ I wasn’t calling anyone when I threw up in my sink every morning. And, honestly, I just assumed everyone else was doing that, too.”
During stints at Weezie’s Kitchen, Heritage, En Su Boca and The Broadberry, Paquette was coming apart. At her lowest, she called her employer and admitted she was in a bad place. Her boss mentioned Ben’s Friends Richmond, the local chapter of the sobriety support group for food and beverage workers.
She hesitated at first. “I thought, ‘Been here, done this — just get me sober.’” But the stories she heard resonated. “Ben’s Friends saved my life,” she says.
Today, Paquette is a regular at meetings, grounded in the simple act of showing up. Behind the bar, she feels a new sense of responsibility. “It’s helped me do my job better. I’m running a safe consumption site. I’m doing you a service and looking after you, and you need me sober.”
Dave Graziano, 56
Yellow Umbrella Provisions
For nearly three decades, Dave “Graz” Graziano has been a fixture at Westhampton grocer Yellow Umbrella Provisions. A Richmond lifer, he’s gregarious and quick with a joke in a way that makes strangers feel they’ve known him forever. Today, he’s reached a milestone he once never imagined: He’s spent more years sober in his marriage than drunk.
“I’ve never met anybody since I’ve gotten sober who’s more surprised that I’m sober than me,” Graziano says, grinning.
Alcohol has been a lifelong shadow. His late father drank heavily, and his older brother is battling addiction. Graziano assumed he’d end up the same way. “I just thought I was going to die from drinking.” There was no dramatic bottom, he says, just a slow unraveling. “It was death by a thousand paper cuts — everything in my life was just getting worse and worse.”
For years, he went to meetings drunk or blacked out. Once, when the group asked who would lead, he volunteered — only to be told he’d led the week before. He had no recollection. “I tell people it took me 3 1/2 years to be an overnight success,” he says.
I know I have another drunk in me. I don’t have another recovery in me.
Graziano’s turning point came in the driveway in 2012. His family’s luggage packed for a beach trip, he considered sneaking off to chug a few hard lemonades. “I finally cracked,” he says. “I stood there and said, ‘God, please keep me sober for the next 45 minutes.’ And from that first time I said it, to sitting here right now, I’ve stayed sober.”
Sobriety reordered everything. A mentor once warned him that addiction strips life away piece by piece until it’s just you and the bottle — alone and isolated. The message stuck. “If you have it, I don’t have to explain it to you. If you don’t, I can’t.”
Graziano attends meetings three or four times a week and supports several people. “You’ve got to give it away,” he says. “When you’re around people in recovery, someone’s always sharing something you need to hear.”
With his daughters in college, 25 years of marriage under his belt and his longtime job intact, Graziano stays vigilant. “I know I have another drunk in me,” he says. “I don’t have another recovery in me. If you have what I have, it’s not something to play with.”
Christina Wyatt, 28
Lucky AF
For most of Christina Wyatt’s 20s, drinking dictated where she went, who her friends were, how she spent her money. Now 28, the bartender celebrated a milestone one year of sobriety in October 2025; the month also marked the fourth anniversary of her father’s death. “My dad was sober for like 30 years before he passed,” she says. “Addiction runs in my family.”
The grief of losing him fueled her worst stretch of drinking. “My mental health got so bad that I resorted to being drunk all the time, which was easy when working at a bar.”
Born in South Florida, Wyatt moved to Richmond at 21. While working at Fat Dragon and Osaka restaurants, her alcohol use shifted from a casual pastime to a daily pattern, she says. “It just went downhill from there. This industry is not for the weak; I feel like it drives people to drink.”
Her days became a cycle: heavy inebriation followed by debilitating hangovers. Mondays off meant finding a partner for day drinking. Double shifts on Tuesdays meant shots midshift. Free drinks at her regular haunt faded into paid rounds, so money disappeared as quickly as she earned it. “I’d make all this money, spend it that night and think, ‘That’s OK — I’ll work another shift.’ And I’d do it every single night.”
She’d attempted recovery at 24 after a drunk-driving accident left her without a car. Avoiding legal consequences, she stayed sober for a year, living outside the city and keeping to herself. She even stepped away from bartending for a nine-to-five, but her drinking had already intensified again. Eventually, she returned to restaurants. “I would never drink alone, but death was the only thing on my mind.”
The first three months were awful. I was anxious, unstable, but your brain slowly comes back. I finally feel like I’m returning to my natural state.
The pandemic was a fault line in her life, widening every crack. Wyatt was out of work, on unemployment and numbing herself nonstop; those years are a blur.
While working at The Jasper, Wyatt decided to quit drinking again. For three months, she carried the unvoiced promise through each shift. When she finally shared the news with her co-workers, they were supportive, swapping shift drinks for nonalcoholic shots. Yet the emotional weight of working in a cocktail-focused bar wasn’t sustainable. She left for Lucky AF, which offers a pace and an environment that feels more manageable. “I love The Jasper, but I just couldn’t do it anymore,” she says.
She’s learned to create distance with certain friends — many also in the industry — and build firmer boundaries, an important act of self-preservation. Her boyfriend, a bartender at The Emerald Lounge, stopped drinking, too. While formal meetings aren’t for Wyatt, therapy and one-on-one support have been stabilizing forces.
“I had to go through everything I went through to get here,” she says. “People don’t understand the real reason I’m sober, which is, I didn’t want to be dead at my own cost.”
After four years without a car, she recently bought one — a powerful step toward a long-awaited sense of renewal, she says. “I’m still early in, but addiction is always there. The first three months were awful. I was anxious, unstable, but your brain slowly comes back. I finally feel like I’m returning to my natural state.”
Kailie Smith, 38
Don’t Look Back, The Jasper
Kailie Smith landed her first restaurant job at 15 and has worn aprons everywhere from Lulu’s to Burger Bach and Toast. The industry felt like second nature. So did drinking.
Both of Smith’s parents and her younger sister are in long-term recovery. Alcohol was off-limits growing up, so, she says, “drinking and lying in secrecy were immediately, very closely, intertwined for me.”
For years, she kept her substance abuse tucked away — even from her therapist. “When I finally told [my therapist] everything, she said, ‘Kailie, this is the source of all your problems.’ I walked downstairs after the session and told my husband, ‘I think I need to get sober.’”
Still, a sense of denial lingered. “When you work in restaurants, a lot of people party really hard,” she says. “I’d go out after work and have eight drinks — but so would the three people next to me.” Attempts at moderation failed. “Alcoholism and substance misuse run in my family. I just always thought I was the exception to the rule.”
Smith got sober on a Wednesday in 2022; on Sunday, a friend took her to a meeting. She soon connected with Ben’s Friends. “Ben’s Friends felt immediately comfortable.”
That attitude of, ‘This job is so sh---y and hard, and I deserve to get f---ed up’ — that attitude is changing a little bit. Now it feels more like, ‘This job is hard. I’m going to therapy.’
Early on, she kept her sobriety close. “I was so afraid to fail,” Smith says. “I didn’t want to make a big thing of it and then not be able to follow through.”
Most nights that first year, she went home after clocking out, despite the fear of missing out. Now, she sees her growth reflected in the culture around her. “At both places where I work, I know multiple people who don’t drink,” she says. “When I think about my 20s … maybe there’d be a pregnant co-worker who wasn’t drinking. Otherwise, I can’t think of anyone.”
She recognizes another shift, too. “That attitude of, ‘This job is so sh---y and hard, and I deserve to get f---ed up’ — that attitude is changing a little bit. Now it feels more like, ‘This job is hard. I’m going to therapy.’”
Smith attends weekly meetings and is navigating recovery with the support of her husband, who also works at Don’t Look Back, as they raise their 5-year-old son. Last fall, she launched Ben’s Friends Femmes, a support group for women, trans and femme-identifying people in hospitality seeking community.
These days, Smith will have a sans-booze sip after work and moves through spaces built around alcohol with a newfound steadiness. “It turns out that when you soak a depressed brain in a depressant, it doesn’t go that well,” Smith says with a wry smile. “And when you stop doing that, things get better.”
Vanna ‘V’ Hem, 42
Slack Tide Fish Co.
It’s hard to break away from the person people think you are — a truth Vanna “V” Hem knows all too well. A bartender at Slack Tide Fish Co., he’s also poured drinks at Black Lodge, Weezie’s Kitchen and beyond, and is a chef and co-founder of the Cambodian pop-up Royal Pig. In late 2025, Hem was approaching a pivotal point: one year of sobriety.
“I never thought I’d go a year,” he says. “I’ve done stints — three months, a few weeks — but never a whole year. It’s crazy. It’s gone just like that.”
Hem came up in an era of dining when debauchery felt customary. “There’s a camaraderie when you get off work and go out with co-workers,” he says. “A few drinks, a good time. And it compounded over the years … until you’re finding some reason [to drink] every day.”
But excess wore thin. A separation from his wife, the death of his grandmother and a string of small yet significant warnings — it all forced a pause. “There were red flags,” he says. “Not acting like a human should. Not meeting my own expectations. Breaking promises I swore I never would.”
A lot of drinking was running from things. Now, almost a year out, I’ve felt more than ever. When you’re sober, you feel everything in 4K.
After two decades in the industry, moderation felt impossible, but sobriety felt necessary. The transition was jarring. In the early months, he’d sit down at a restaurant and almost automatically be greeted with a shot or a glass of Champagne. “It was a shock to a lot of people,” he says of his sobriety. “For years I was the loud, outspoken one, always down for another round.”
Hem doesn’t attend meetings. He leans on his inner circle. “I’ll call my f---ing best friends crying. That’s what matters.” Recovery demanded a new honesty. “A lot of drinking was running from things,” he says. “Now, almost a year out, I’ve felt more than ever. When you’re sober, you feel everything in 4K.”
He’s also learned to name and acknowledge depression. “I always prided myself on being strong,” Hem says, “but now I’m learning it’s OK to be sad.”
Today, he says he feels supported in ways he never would have imagined. He’ll have a nonalcoholic beer as a shift drink, is content staying home and playing video games, and sleeps far more than he used to. “Everybody knows I’m sober, and they respect that,” Hem says. “Ten years ago, people would’ve given me shit.”
He’s also gentle with himself, aware that relapse can be part of the journey. What Hem holds onto is resilience — and the clarity it brings. “There’s a lot of crying in sobriety,” he says. “More this year than in my whole life. But it feels real. It feels like me.”
Recovery in Action
Resources that support sobriety
The local chapter of a national organization that supports sobriety in the service industry, launched in Richmond in 2018 by former chefs Jason Alley and Joe Sparatta. Meetings take place on Mondays at 10 a.m. at Penny Lane Pub.
A weekly in-person meeting for women, trans and femme-identifying people who work in restaurants and bars, founded by Kailie Smith of Safe Bars. Meetings are held on Sundays at 6 p.m. at Studio One Twenty in North Side.
This national nonprofit was founded by and for food and beverage workers. Its Behind You program provides no-cost counseling services via telehealth. Individuals must have worked at least 30 hours weekly for six months to receive services.
Musicians often work hospitality jobs, and this is a space for that crossover. Riffs and Recovery operates as a discussion-based support group for musicians and music lovers. Meetings are every Monday from 1 to 2 p.m. at Gallery5.
The multipurpose property in Varina hosts a weekly sobriety support group every Wednesday, focusing on the next steps to sobriety through open discussions and guidance on how to get and stay sober. To participate, call Matt Harris at 804-750-0400.
