If you keep up with MasterChef around the world, you’ll recognise Tim Read as a winner of MasterChef New Zealand. If you follow global fine dining, you might know him as an alumnus of Sweden’s Fäviken and Maaemo in Norway. A picture of success, but one that Read says doesn’t capture the whole story. “What it won’t tell you is while I was at university I struggled with extreme depression and attempted suicide.”
Now, he’s training his focus on developing an app that promotes mental health in the hospitality industry and beyond. It’s called Helmet – “headgear for the mind”, he calls it – and it’s here to ensure nobody goes through mental health struggles alone.
Hi Tim, thanks for taking the time to chat – who are you and what are you all about?
Thanks team, great to chat, too. I’m Tim Read. My LinkedIn says I trained and worked as a physiotherapist, won Masterchef in 2015, became a chef and worked at Fäviken and Maaemo before my time overseas was halted by COVID. What it won’t tell you is while at university I struggled with extreme depression and attempted suicide, battled anxiety and imposter syndrome whilst in the public eye and working at world-class restaurants, burnt out with my body faking a stroke, witnessed burnout in my employees and then lost a dear friend to suicide.
I’ve forever felt a conviction to contribute to a greater world at scale, and after Masterchef I naturally thought it meant this would be through cooking. But COVID was a time of reflection for me, as it was for many of us. I realised that the skills I had were more suited to creating moments between people that cultivated a deeper connection, rather than creating the food they enjoyed together. For me, those moments of genuine connection with people over food were the experiences that led to the greatest outcomes in relation to my mental health. Once I realised that, having seen the scale and severity of the problem, I threw myself at trying to build a way for people to connect deeply and be there for one another when life gets hard.
How did the idea for Helmet come about? What does the name mean?
Helmet is built on insight I gained when I was battling with my mental health. I had no motivation to help myself, no capacity to, and I couldn’t make decisions. But the people around me – my parents, my mates and my wife were desperate to help turn my situation around. They had all this capacity to contribute but just didn’t know what to do to help me. If they did manage to fluke it and do something that helped, the impact on my wellbeing was far greater than that of professional help. When we started talking about this, we realised it rang true for the majority of people, both those who need help and those trying to provide it. We identified that if we could find a way to provide tools, information and assistance to supporters, then we could create far more of these wonderful moments where family and friends become a solution. The name Helmet came from our desire to create headgear for the mind. The solution we’ve built is an app that acts much like a tight-knit social media platform with the smarts to understand what needs to be provided, so that supporters are empowered to have the impact they are desperate to see in their friend or loved one.
Ultimately, Helmet exists to ensure that nobody goes through mental health distress alone.
What excites you about this project?
I love that the solution we’re working towards is about building tighter communities. I still call hospo my industry; I fell in love with being a part of it, but for a number of reasons, struggled to sustain my presence in it. My goal when I started Helmet was to make something that could work across all industries and backgrounds, but it made a lot of sense to start with hospo. The obvious and desperate need for something to change is loud and clear, and getting to work alongside the industry again has just thrilled me to bits.
Let’s say I’m a kitchenhand working in a busy Melbourne restaurant – how will Helmet work in practical terms for someone like me?
When you’re working in a restaurant, often your colleagues become your greatest friends and you can tell when things aren’t right. As a kitchen hand, you might notice your friend acting out of character, struggling to keep up with the normal tempo, or avoiding normal connection points. If you had our app, all you’d need to do is give us some quick insight into what is happening in that person’s life. We’ll reply with practical answers specific to the situation you find yourself in, taking into account your capacity, the nature of your relationship, and the type of challenges facing you both. Sometimes those answers are tools, other times it requires a little learning, or even ways to look after yourself to ensure it’s not overwhelming you. In doing this, we empower you to be the friend you want to be, but also provide the assistance that your friend desperately needs.
It’s important to note though that we are more than just our roles in the kitchen. As a kitchenhand you’re busy at work, you work late and you’re exhausted afterwards, but you still carry roles such as sister, husband, friend et cetera. Our solution is not just for our close connections inside the industry, but for anyone hoping to better support those who are struggling with their mental health and wellbeing in their lives.
What do you need from the community to realise your vision?
In our early work, we’ve noticed regional- and location-specific challenges, so we’re actively looking for partners in Melbourne to help us establish our presence in the city and Australia as a whole. The ideal partners for us are ones with a grand vision who feel a similar responsibility to contribute to a greater world for all. The benefits of partnering with us early are that you’ll be able contribute to developing solutions specifically for your people and be seen as an industry leader in Australia on top of greater staff retention and improved service KPIs.
When can we expect to see Helmet roll out in Australia?
Our release in Australia is tightly linked to our early partnerships and so we are incredibly excited to have testing scheduled for early in 2025.
What else would you like people to know about Helmet?
If you would like to be involved in any way, or have ideas for how Helmet could contribute to your people or community, we would love to hear from you.
helmet.app; contact Tim at tim.read@helmet.app