Does Your Menu Include Racism?
Everyone eats, and everyone at some point will eat in a restaurant or cafe.
In the past year (and in years before) we have seen restaurants and businesses involved in the industry hit with lawsuits, and charges of racism and discrimination from customers and employees. Police are called on people of color who were waiting for friends, asked to pay in advance, or charged extra for plastic utensils. And there are those that continue to defend those actions and they continue.
Lawsuits are not only expensive but the resulting publicity leads to loss of business and a working environment that is uncomfortable for people of color, women and any one else who feels devalued because of their differences.
For companies in this or any other industry to be successful )and move ahead of competition they need to build environments where can do their best work(unless Racism is the main product or entree.) Stop tolerating and making excuses for racism and other forms of bigotry (unless you want to destroy your business or only sell to white supremacists.)
While some organizations may understand the need to have its employees be representative of its customer base in order to stay competitive, many of them don’t know how to integrate diversity into the overall business strategy. They may hire more people of color and women, but often don’t address systems and processes for recruitment, and retention, promotion, mentoring and leadership. It’s not enough to talk about diversity, or have a few training sessions. Create change in the culture of the organization from the top down.
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Training is important to teach people how to mitigate bias, racism and other forms of discrimination for managers. However, too many organizations don’t bring it to the level of employees that interface with employees. It’s essential relate training to practical every day behavior which is also not done enough.
Employees who resist learning, exhibit racist or discriminatory behavior, and refuse to learn need to be let go. (They shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.) Hate and bigotry is bad customer service. “Bye Felicia”
Diversity initiatives need to begin with an assessment of the organization, no matter how big or small, to identify how employees perceive things. Its more than just race, and gender, but includes differences like age, ethnic background, work function, education, sexual orientation and religion. You have to address the diversity of the customer base and how well you are meeting their needs. If you have a restaurant where there is a large Spanish speaking population, it only makes good business sense to have some employees that speak Spanish.
Create an environment and set written norms of what you won’t tolerate, like customers raging about people talking in languages other than English. The customer is not always right. Over 30 years ago, I was fired from my server job for telling a customer to leave after she had called another server the “N word.” As much as I needed the job, I walked off, never looked back and glad I took a stand.
Educate employees about how to handle offensive, bigoted, haterade behaviors by customers. That intervention training is often not included in training and orientations but needs to be. Educate employees about how to intervene, and what to say and do when they witness another employee acting inappropriately towards a customer. Your business is more important than one employee not wanting to confront racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. behavior from a customer or another employee. Take a stand, provide the right tools and practice and run your business according to your values (if you value inclusion and serving people of every race, religion, gender, etc.)
Organizations like Women’s Foodservice Forum, and the Multicultural Foodservice and Hospitality Alliance are good resources for networking and best practices from people who are involved in promoting diversity in their organizations and the industry.
As industries compete for qualified employees at all levels, in a shrinking labor pool at all levels, no one should be disqualified because of their differences. t,
Doing it “right,” takes a commitment to change, not only how the company looks but how people treat each other personally and professionally.
