24/06/2017
Marriage may be the most universal of startups. It always seems like a good idea at the time. Though the failure rate is high, nobody embarks on the venture intending to quit. Elements beyond your control can have outsize effects. And there’s a constant dance between wants and needs, hopes and realities.
By all accounts, Ryan and Jen Hidinger had a strong partnership. Intense but reserved, Ryan “was willing not to fully peacock, as a lot of chefs want to do,” says Ryan Turner, his boss at Muss & Turner’s, where Ryan was chef de cuisine when he fell ill. He’d worked his way up from line cook. “There was absolutely a humility there.” Jen proved no less strong-willed but more outgoing. Before he even applied for the job, for instance, she went on a recon mission, meeting Turner and testing the food so she could report back.
Together they forged a network of friends and supporters — one that, after Ryan’s cancer diagnosis, was even more formidable than they realized. Turner and his partners convinced several restaurateurs to add a donation line to their guest checks, and helped organize a fund-raiser called Team Hidi. Within two months, the Atlanta culinary community had raised more than $275,000 for the Hidingers. Ryan had medical insurance, but the donations helped pay for what the policy did not.
Still, $275,000 was more than they needed. So the couple decided to start a not-for-profit to pay it forward, assisting other people in the industry who were facing crises, medical or otherwise. They called it the . This was not the startup the Hidingers had long planned, of course. Turner remembers writing Ryan a strongly worded email, insisting that they keep working on the restaurant. “I was having trouble accepting the fact that this guy, who was like a younger brother to me, was not going to realize his dream,” Turner says. “I also felt that he needed something to pull him emotionally through the battle.”