Seven years of walking, and why we keep doing it
Every October, we give up a Sunday. We put on our trainers, give up our time, and cover 20km through Birmingham with a hundred-odd other people from hospitality. This year is the seventh time we’ve hosted the Birmingham leg of Walk for Wellbeing, and every year someone asks us why we do it.
It’s a fair question, so here’s the honest answer.
We came from this industry, and this industry is hard
The whole of the team at Tonic have done it all: the long days, the split shifts, the Christmases while everyone else was at home, missing out on family events, and we know what it can do to you. Hospitality runs on people who look after everyone else, and that can take its toll. And today, add in the current cost of living crisis, and you have a perfect storm.
Hospitality Action is the charity that exists for exactly those people caught in the middle of that. When a chef can’t make rent, when a kitchen porter needs counselling, when a family faces a bill they can’t afford, Hospitality Action is who answers the phone. They fund crisis grants, addiction recovery, and a 24/7 helpline for people who have nowhere else to turn. Since Walk for Wellbeing began in 2020, it has raised over £500,000 across the UK, and that money has gone straight to hospitality workers and their families at the worst moments of their lives.
We host the walk because hospitality is at its best when it takes care of its own, and this is one way we do that.
What seven years has taught us
The first year, we weren’t sure anyone would come. But they did, albeit a small group of us. Every year since, more of them have, until 100+ walkers and a genuine cross-section of the Birmingham scene now turn out for it, and the number keeps climbing.
What we didn’t expect was how much the day itself matters, separate from the money. Twenty kilometres is a long time to walk next to someone. Conversations happen. People who spend their working lives in the pressure of service get a few hours where nobody’s waiting on them, where the only job is to keep walking and talk to whoever’s beside them. Some of the most honest conversations we’ve had about how hard this work can be have happened somewhere between Albert’s Schloss and Edgbaston Reservoir.
That’s the part we keep coming back for. The fundraising is the aim. But the walking, together, talking, that’s what keeps us doing it year after year. It day when we gather together, and we’re reminded of the deep connection we have to one another.
This is one of the days we look after our own
We’re a recruitment agency. Most of the year our job is matching good people to good businesses. One Sunday in October, the job is simpler than that. We walk, we raise money for a charity that shows up for hospitality people when it counts, and we remind ourselves and each other that behind every placement and every rota is a person who deserves looking after.
Birmingham’s Walk for Wellbeing 2026 takes place on Sunday the 25th of October, starting and finishing at Albert’s Schloss. Individuals and teams are both welcome, and every penny raised goes to Hospitality Action.
If you work in hospitality, or you care about the people who feed you, walk with us.
