How my restaurant dealt with harassment from customers

As a female chef, I am disheartened to open the paper and see the latest news of male chefs behaving badly. Mario Batali, John Besh, Ken Friedman . . . every day it seems to be someone new. Although it is encouraging to see men finally being called out for inappropriate behavior, it’s less so that the focus is still, frankly, on men. How did they react? What will happen to their empires? What’s needed is a conversation about women — not as victims, but as revolutionaries. I am an overtly feminist restaurateur, and harassment still happened at my restaurant. This is my story, my solution and my call to action.

I am co-founder and chief executive of a mac-and-cheese restaurant in Oakland, California, called Homeroom. Homeroom’s stated mission is to be the best part of people’s day for both guests and staff, and we are committed to building a restaurant culture that is inclusive, diverse and counter to many damaging industry norms. I thought we were doing an excellent job until three years ago, when I received a flood of emails from staff labeled “harassment” and requesting a meeting with me. I was terrified.

The catalyst was a customer — a father of four who had put his hand up the shirt of a busser clearing his family’s table. The busser was so stunned she didn’t report it, but the event sparked a flood of reactions from staff members who’d had similar experiences. At our meeting, women shared stories about harassment from customers and said that when they tried to report it to male managers, they were often ignored because the incidents seemed unthreatening through a male lens.

I went home and started bawling. I couldn’t believe this was happening right under my nose. We reconvened for a problem-solving session: We knew that we had to create something that didn’t rely on men making judgment calls on women’s stories, because it was clear that system was failing all of us.

We decided on a color-coded system in which different types of customer behavior are categorized as yellow, orange or red. Yellow refers to a creepy vibe or unsavory look. Orange means comments with sexual undertones, like certain compliments on a worker’s appearance. Red signals overtly sexual comments or touching, or repeated incidents in the orange category after being told the comments were unwelcome.

When a staff member has a harassment problem, they report the color — “I have an orange at table five” — and the manager is required to take a specific action. If red is reported, the customer is ejected from the restaurant. Orange means the manager takes over the table. With a yellow, the manager must take over the table if the staff member chooses. In all cases, the manager’s response is automatic, no questions asked. (At the time of our meeting, all our shift managers were men, though their supervisors were women; something else we’ve achieved since then is diversifying each layer of management.)

In the years since implementation, customer harassment has ceased to be a problem. Reds are nearly nonexistent, as most sketchy customers seem to be derailed at a yellow or orange. We found that most customers test the waters before escalating and that women have a canny sixth sense for unwanted attention. When reds do occur, our employees are empowered to act decisively.

The color system is elegant because it prevents women from having to relive damaging stories and relieves managers of having to make difficult judgment calls about situations that might not seem threatening based on their own experiences. The system acknowledges the differences in the ways that men and women experience the world, while creating a safe workplace.

The kind of behavior that is now being widely exposed has gone on for as long as business has existed. For just as long, many women have been toiling to change the culture. Theirs are the stories we rarely hear, and it is time they are spoken. Instead of discussing the misbehavior of men, let’s start exposing the great work of women around the country to create more inclusive places for us all to work.

This is just one story from one restaurant — but I know there are others. The revolution we need is not just ousting powerful men behaving badly, but elevating the status of women behaving well.

Women of America’s businesses — please share your suggestions for solving the problems plaguing your workplace. This moment is ours — let’s take hold of it and make the world listen.

Erin Wade is a chef, restaurateur and co-author of “The Mac + Cheese Cookbook.” She wrote this for The Washington Post.