It Starts with Forks. The Simple Act of Care.
Season 2, Episode 7. Forks—The Bear. Photo via IndieWire.
On purpose, service, respect, care and the regenerative work we're all part of in hospitality and tourism.
I love connecting art, mainstream media, and literature to complex topics to make them more accessible — for myself and for others. You've seen that in a previous post where I connected The White Lotus to the current realities of the tourism sector*. For this one, we visit the beautiful chaos of The Bear. If you haven't watched it yet, find a weekend and fix that.
Season 2, Episode 7. Forks.
It follows Richie, loud, resistant, chronically unfocused, sent on a "stage" (an apprenticeship) at one of the best restaurants in the world. His assignment? Polish forks. Hundreds of them. Precisely, repeatedly, without complaint. He hates it. Until, slowly, he doesn't.
What changes isn't the task. What changes is that Richie starts to understand what the task is actually for. Under the mentorship of Chef Terry, played with quiet, devastating warmth by Olivia Colman, he learns that every polished fork is an act of respect and care for the guest who will hold it, for the meal it will be part of, for the standard that makes the whole thing meaningful. By the end of the week, he's wearing a suit, singing Taylor Swift while he works, and thriving under pressure in ways no one, including himself, expected.
He found his purpose or north star. And it transformed him.
The Line That Stopped Me. And Stayed with Me.
Perhaps it's because I worked in a restaurant's chaos for years myself, not a Michelin star, but a place that remains close to my heart and makes this show feel so authentic. I have my sights set on returning to hospitality after this career chapter concludes. In the middle of all it, Garrett (a senior staffer) says something so simple it almost slips by:*.
“I just like being able to serve other people now. I think that’s why restaurants and hospitals use the same word: hospitality.”
One sentence. And it names the thing most people in hospitality and tourism quietly know but rarely say out loud.
At its best, this work is simply an act of care. Not customer service. Not an experience delivery mechanism. Care. The kind that sees people, tends to places, and holds something precious on behalf of someone else and, at the same time, for all of us.
The polished fork isn't just a polished fork. It's the guest feeling seen before they've said a word. That's what care looks like in practice: small, precise, present, repeated. And it's exactly the quality this sector needs right now.
Every Second Counts.
Another line in that episode becomes a shared mantra: every second counts. It is never too late to begin again. This isn't urgency in the frantic sense. It's the quiet, radical act of deciding, at any point, in any role, at any stage of a career, to do the work with more intention, more care, more purpose. I know this personally, having gone back to school and changed careers in my 40s. The paths are all connected, but it's messy. Finding your way forward takes courage and a reason to keep going.
I think about this constantly in the context of sustainable and regenerative tourism, which is full of what we call "wicked problems." Climate change. Overtourism. Inequitable distribution of benefits. Workforce precarity. Cultural erosion. These aren't problems you solve and move on from. You navigate them slowly, together, with no clean finish line.
The people, businesses, and communities I see staying in that navigation almost always have a Richie-style turning point in their story: a moment when the task is connected to something bigger. When the fork-polishing made sense. Purpose doesn't make wicked problems easier. But it makes them holdable. It tells you why you're still at the table when the table is hard to sit at.
In tourism right now, that weight is real. Climate instability is accelerating. Communities are being hollowed out by high-volume, low-value visitation. Ecosystems are crossing thresholds that they can't easily recover from. Workers are leaving. Every decision we make: how we design an experience, pay a wage, protect a piece of land, or help a community become the shapers of its own tourism future, either builds resilience or erodes it. There is no neutral ground.
But urgency doesn't have to mean chaos. In that Michelin kitchen, "every second counts" isn't panic—it's presence. A whole team, each holding their piece of the work, oriented toward the same thing. That's the kitchen we need to build for tourism. All of us, together. And it starts with each of us asking: who am I here for, and why?
We Each Have a Gift
Regenerative tourism doesn't happen because a handful of visionaries get the framework right. It happens because enough people, each with their own gift, their own north star, choose to act with care. Iteratively. Collectively. One decision at a time.
One of my gifts is translating complex ideas into conversations people can actually have, making regenerative tourism feel less like a policy discussion and more like something that matters to your real work and life. That's one of my polished forks.
Yours is different. And this shift needs yours, too. Maybe it’s:
The way you welcome a guest with the warmth that makes them feel they belong to a place, not just passing through it.
Your knowledge of a watershed, a harvest, a culture, the kind that transforms an itinerary into something true.
The way you run your team, the schedule that gives people their life back, the living wage that means they don’t work three jobs.
The procurement decision, the supply chain choice, and the community partnership that routes money where it’s actually needed.
The conversation with a colleague or client that shifts how they think about what this work is really for.
Every one of these is hospitality, an act of care and becomes more powerful when it's rooted in a shared sense of purpose; a north star that holds you when the work gets hard.
The Challenge
What are you ultimately in service of? And what's one act of care, however small, that your answer asks of you this week (and beyond)?
Every second counts. Every act of care adds up. We need all of us.
*Pssst! Season 4 of White Lotus is officially in production in France’s French Riviera in St. Tropez, Cannes, Monaco and Paris, specifically.
Note: Claude was used to help pull together real and critical human thoughts for this piece and gently refine our perfectly imperfect writing.
