This week’s restaurant nightmares: Artful ouches

Good intentions can often go awry. Look at some of the developments in the restaurant business that started off 2018. A red carpet was literally rolled out for an arch antagonist, a law intended to help workers is siphoning off their pay, and marketing promo intended to be clever proved brilliant only in its offensiveness.

Here’s what we mean.

We’re going with boldfaced names here because it only seems right. Eyeballing the marquee names that traipse the red carpet en route to the Golden Globes award ceremony has become as much a part of the hoopla as the program itself. Among the oohs and aahs from keen-eyed restaurant observers might have been the response to the plus-one who accompanied comic star Amy Poehler: Saru Jayaraman, head of the union-in-disguise Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. Jayaraman was there to voice her group’s resistance to the tip credit, which it has publicly blasted as a cause of sexual harassment of women within restaurants, since so many servers are female.

“We are calling for solutions that leave no woman behind—solutions like #1FairWage for tipped workers, which has the potential to cut sexual harassment in the restaurant industry in half,” she wrote on her Facebook page in a preview of the high-profile Golden Globes appearance.

The unusual stab at publicity was successful. Globes host Seth Meyers mentioned Jayaraman from the stage, asking the celebrity-packed audience to “give it up for Saru.”

The appearance of Jayaraman, a New Yorker, came as Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to scuttle the tip credit in the Empire State.

ROC insists it’s not a union, even though it walks and quacks like one, and gets funding from Service Employees International Union. And it’s not alone in functioning like a union without having to meet the regulatory obligations that fall on acknowledged labor representative groups. 

Now those groups are escalating their union-like behavior under a law that’s becoming a headache for restaurateurs in New York City. The measure requires employers to deduct money automatically from workers’ paychecks at their behest and channel the funds directly to a nonprofit group of their choosing. Any organization that gets 500 workers to cite them as a beneficiary is entitled to the automatic deposits.

A group called Fast Food Justice is expected to announce Jan. 10 that it’s now receiving automatic payments of $13.50 a month from 1,200 employees of quick-service restaurants, and plans to use it to push for higher wages and more benefits. But, it insists, the group is not a union, even though it’s been on the vanguard of the push for a $15 minimum wage.

Labor advocates have said they hope the New York law will be copied by municipalities and states throughout the nation.

The National Restaurant Association and an affiliated group, the Restaurant Law Center, have filed a lawsuit that alleges the mandatory deductions violate constitutional protections against compelled speech. The groups say the law requires restaurants to support groups with which they don’t agree.

These have been tough times for the Disneyland of Italian food, an inspiration and model to dozens of food halls across the nation. The person who really put the concept on the map, Mario Batali, has admitted that he’s set back human evolution with his predatory behavior toward women. And now the high-volume operation has suggested it may be oblivious to the scandal, erecting signs in its stores that some have taken as inappropriately suggestive as well as ethnically offensive.

The in-store placards are meant to be tongue-in-cheek promotions of Italian staples. “Bring home an Italian. Great legs. Better body,” reads the one that some found too sexually tinged to be used post-Batali (a number of his name-branded products were reportedly pulled off Eataly’s shelves).

The capper was a second sign: “Bring home an Italian. It’s worth the smell.” Smaller type calls attention to the aromatic white truffles on display. It also references a “well-shaven Italian,” as if that’s an anomaly, we Ities being hairy beasts.

Anger apparently escalated when an internal email was leaked. It directed personnel of the chain to leave the signs up and ignore customer complaints.