According to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the restaurant industry is the single largest source of sexual harassment claims in the U.S. Restaurant employers need to take action to protect their employees from harassment and their businesses from potentially costly lawsuits.
Surveys show 90% of women and 70% of men working in restaurants have experienced some form of sexual harassment from either managers, co-workers or customers, and recent headlines support those statistics. On a regular basis, well-known restaurant companies and celebrity chefs are being hit with sexual harassment claims as well as high dollar judgments or settlements. In March 2022, a Long John Silver’s restaurant in Illinois paid $200,000 to settle a lawsuit over sexual harassment of a teenage female employee by two adult male managers. In July 2021, celebrity chef Mario Batali paid a $600,000 settlement after an investigation revealed widespread sexual harassment of women and men at three of Batali’s Manhattan, New York, restaurants.
Why is sexual harassment so pervasive in the restaurant industry? One reason is that unlike other businesses, the workplace atmosphere in a restaurant or bar is typically more informal and less structured. It’s more susceptible to the type of behavior that constitutes sexual harassment. Another reason is that the industry is still male-dominated. Most owners, chefs and managers are men, and the majority of workers are women. Likewise, many...
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