Why is Neurodivergence and Neurodiversity in Hospitality So Common?

It is all too common for people with a neurodivergent condition to have not had the best experience in the education system.

Hours on end stuck in a classroom, constrained to sit in a chair and feign interest in the formation of an oxbow lake.

Intelligence judged on your ability to retain this information and regurgitate it in an exam setting or your ability to read aloud from a book in front of a room full of unforgiving teenagers.

Strict rules which must be adhered to “just because” and little outlet for creativity or pursuing vocational skills.

NB: This is by no means an attack on teachers. The overwhelming majority do an amazing job with less-than-optimal resources and work INCREDIBLY hard. However, the system in which they are bound to operate within was not necessarily designed with neurodivergence as a consideration.

Because of this rigid environment, it is commonplace for a neurodivergent person to exit the education system at the first possible opportunity.

This is often where hospitality enters their lives. Many will take a job behind a bar, as a KP, as waiting staff, a linen porter etc.

Suddenly they enter a world they did not know existed. A world which does not measure their worth by their ability to sit still and instead by their ability to work hard and look after people, something they have in abundance. They find people like them, people who also believed they “didn’t fit in” and for many, this may be the first time they have ever felt like they fitted in.

I love the way Tom Kerridge discusses this phenomenon. Whilst he has only recently linked this to concept with neurodiversity in hospitality, I recall hugely resonating with his “Pirate Ship” analogy in reference to the lovingly named “misfits” and “outlaws” that work in his restaurants. The same people that spent their lives worrying they may not amount to much, are the same people doing incredible, industry defining things in hospitality.

Then they discover that hospitality doesn’t require 14 GCSEs, 4 A-Levels and a Masters to make it to the top. It requires passion and dedication.

They see CEOs that came from the pot wash and the laundry room, not from Eton and Harrow.

Something to pay the bills becomes something to build a career out of and many, many do so.

Why do some people say hospitality feels like a drug?

I recall when I first started in this industry. A little beach cafe, 1 pizza oven, a 2 hob stove and a flat top, 60 covers of seating. Yet we would easily serve over 500+ guests throughout day, even more on bank holidays. I have probably never had a higher guest to staff ratio than these days, yet I absolutely LOVED it.

The buzz of a busy Saturday night felt like a drug to me. It was addictive.

I now know that this was a dopamine spike, triggered by an environment so high octane it rivals what I imagine working in the emergency services must feel like. However, our dopamine spikes are rounded off by the significant lack of lives at risk which the emergency services don’t benefit from.

As someone with ADHD, the dopamine receptors in my brain are dysfunctional. This means my dopamine (hormone which regulates pleasure) levels are lower than the average person. Dopamine dysregulation is also associated with autism and OCD. Some research even found dopamine dysregulation links with dyslexia and dyspraxia (Hsiung et al, 2004 & Steele, 2026).

Activities which trigger an adrenaline response simultaneously flood the brain with dopamine. This release of dopamine is what creates the “buzz” that so many of us experience.

As we discussed earlier, you have an industry that welcomes neurodivergent people with open arms, it then rewards them with massive amounts of pleasure inducing dopamine, something which they have struggled their entire lives to obtain.

It is no wonder that the prevalence of neurodivergent conditions in hospitality is so much greater than the general population.

I could not write this article without discussing addiction in hospitality.

Substance abuse and addiction are two of the largest issues currently plaguing our industry. Alcohol and a vast number of harmful substances make people feel “good” because they increase dopamine uptake.

It is no coincidence that both addiction and neurodivergent conditions are hugely prevalent in hospitality. They are intrinsically linked.

ADHD is 10x more prevalent in those with an alcohol addiction than in the general population and 1 in 3 adults with ADHD will experience substance abuse disorder in their lifetime (Begnaud et al, 2026).

30% of people with autism experience substance abuse disorder, compared to only 7.5% of the general population. (Weir et al, 2021).

Then you add all of the industry specific issues which increase the risk of substance abuse and it is no wonder we see the rates of addiction we do in hospitality.

If anyone is currently struggling with addiction or substance abuse, Hospitality Action The Burnt Chef Project® and We Recover Loudly are all amazing resources.

There are very, very few other industries which reward and value intricate, specialist knowledge in the way hospitality does.

The Barista that knows the exact processing method, origin location, growing altitude, and flavour profile of your new coffee beans before they have even hit your menu.

The Housekeeper that can tell you the active ingredient in every single one of your cleaning chemicals and exactly what concoction will lift that brown sauce stain right out of your crisp white shirt after a busy breakfast.

The Somm that you can give any bin number to and they can tell you the corresponding wine to that bin number, the exact blend of grapes, the complexities of its terroir and the names of the producer’s grandchildren without even glancing at the wine list.

The Chef who can list every fruit and vegetable in season during each month of the year, the name of the farmer that grows your asparagus and makes an argument for why those extortionately expensive plates are so critical to the sensory experience of their new dish that the GM simply can’t argue with.

Despite misconceptions, many neurodivergent conditions entail what are known as hyperfixations or special interests, in which a person engages a huge amount of attention into a specific topic area or niche and develops specialist levels of knowledge in this area.

Whilst specialist knowledge is valuable in many industries, we put huge emphasis on it within hospitality. We love a team member who can wax lyrical about the menu tableside or who can come up with the solution to a problem in record breaking time.

So, as we have previously established, we have an industry that values work ethic over the ability to sit still, rewards neurodivergent people with huge amounts of dopamine and now rewards them for deep diving into a specialist area, something which they likely thoroughly enjoy doing.

Is it any wonder hospitality has a 1 in 2 neurodivergence rate compared to 1 in 7 in the general population?

Do you have that one member of your team who seems to be loved by every single guest that enters your door?

They say things to guests you wouldn’t dream of, yet they are absolutely adored. Guests asked for them by name, and you see a look of disappointment creep across their face when you say they aren’t in today.

Their effortless charm knows no bounds and they will go to the ends of the earth for not only your guests, but the other team members too.

They might be neurodivergent.

There is a plethora of research which links neurodivergent conditions with an inherent desire to make other people happy and ensure that a sense of fairness always exists. This phenomenon is referred to as justice sensitivity.

The reasoning behind this behaviour is debated. Some academics argue it is the result of neurotransmitter regulation differences, some argue it is linked to impulsivity and a lack of inhibition, whilst others believe it is a learned defence mechanism in response to rejection sensitivity dysphoria in which neurodivergent people may be significantly impacted by perceived rejection.

I am by no means saying that I was “effortlessly charming” but I always prided myself on service during my operational career. This came relatively easily to me because, to put it frankly, making other people happy made me really happy.

Now, I am also not trying to say that I am some wonderful, utterly selfless individual who dedicates his life to the happiness of others. Realistically, this links back to my lacking levels of dopamine. Making other people happy gave me a dopamine boost and hospitality gave me a plethora of opportunities to do this.

I think the best way to describe it is akin to the satisfying feeling you get when you help someone lift a heavy bag off a train. Hospitality gives us hundreds of opportunities every day to replicate this feeling, and for somebody who seeks out dopamine, this is incredibly attractive and enjoyable.

Then we add in the fact that people in hospitality who go out of their way to make others feel happy often get rewarded with praise and potentially promotions and once again, we have an industry which is enormously captivating for somebody with a neurodivergent brain.

Across these posts we have explored four different reasons why neurodivergence is so prevalent in hospitality.

Hospitality is as the name would suggest, hospitable. It is an industry that cares more about your ability to work hard than your ability to recall the formation process of an oxbow lake and largely doesn’t care if you have a visible tattoo as long as you can work well in a team.

People with neurodivergent conditions often have differences in the regulation of dopamine inside their brains. Hospitality offers them an all-you-can-eat buffet of dopamine. Similar to industries such as medicine, care or the emergency services but hospitality has a distinct lack of people’s lives being at stake, typically!

Hospitality loves people with passion and amazing specialist knowledge. Neurodivergent people often love being passionate and developing specialist knowledge.

People with neurodivergent conditions typically find great pleasure in making other people happy. Hospitality in its simplest form is simply about making people happy.

However, we must understand that my points here are generalisations and and simply an introduction to the intricate relationship between neurodivergence and hospitality.

Every neurodivergent lived experience is absolutely unique to each neurodivergent person and what is enjoyable for one person may not be enjoyable for another, what works for one person may not work for another. Even if they have the same diagnosis.

In fact, hospitality may be certain neurodivergent people’s worst nightmare but it can also be the dream role for others.

We must also not forget that hospitality isn’t always sunshine and rainbows and the hard parts can hit even harder when you are neurodivergent. Systems not designed with you in mind, teams that don’t understand why you prefer to do things differently, managers that don’t understand how to get the most out of you. All of these factors and many, many, many more will impact on the ability of a neurodivergent person to reach their full potential in hospitality.

This is why I created ADHospitalityD.