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 You can expect your restaurants to provide you with great food, good service and a pleasant ambiance. But, can you also expect them to operate conscientiously, and to treat their employees with exceptional standards of respect and care? Well, the New York City Restaurant Industry thinks that you can, as they’ve shown with the inaugural round of their annual Exceptional Workplace Awards. Restaurants were awarded this honor for displaying workplace practices above and beyond the requisite standards and committing to the highest level of employee concern. Fundamentally, the awards are also a means of informing consumers so they can consider this distinction when choosing which restaurants to patronize. The necessity for change was exposed after a 2005 study which indicated that over half of restaurant workers earned poverty level salaries and illicit wage and tip withholding deeply pervaded the industry.
Fair workplace practices are not only a tangible concern for millions of people within the restaurant industry, but are also generally essential to a humanitarian ethos. The Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY) was initially founded to address concerns of restaurant workers displaced by September 11, and now acts as a pseudo-union for employees of the industry, campaigning to protect their rights and concerns. Though the bulk of their attention is concentrated on fighting “low road” practices, they also want to support and encourage those restaurants with admirable operations. The recently launched New York City Restaurant Industry Roundtable is an organization comprised of restaurant owners and workers, city officials and government industries that are working together to devise strategies that support profitability through a “high road” method. This designation of “high road” is meant to signify policies that are to the benefit of restaurant employees and allow them to work within salary boundaries that enable them to provide for their families and find opportunities for advancement within the industry. Member restaurants of the Roundtable agree to a Code of Conduct which marks their voluntary decision to not only respect all codified legal protections for their workers but also to “go above and beyond” through provisions such as health insurance for all employees, paid sick leave, opportunity for professional development, multilingual employee manuals and more. (A full copy of the Code of Conduct is available here.)
The services that ROC-NY provides for their partner restaurants, in exchange for their conscientious operation, include information on cost cutting measures, training on a range of management and accounting skills, access to litigation services, and positive business exposure. Working in tandem with ROC-NY, is the C.H.O.W. institute, which trains employees in all the necessary skills of the restaurant hospitality business to provide a force of skilled and loyal workers that restaurants can depend upon. Its full name, Colors, Hospitality and Opportunities for Workers Institute, reflect its commitment to providing training and placement for minority and immigrant workers who ordinarily would face extreme difficulty in securing a fair and respected position.
This new program is among the first of its kind and seeks to educate restaurants and consumers alike on the benefits and necessities of healthy workplace practices. This year’s first round of award recipients includes COLORS, Crema, Las Chicas Locas, La Palapa Cocina, Raw Soul, K-Dog and One if by Land, Two if by Sea. While they are certainly not the only restaurants in the city to execute respectable workplace standards, they are the restaurants who have avowed it as an integral aspect of their operation, demonstrated by collaborating in the Roundtable’s efforts and future plans hope to greatly augment its membership. The Roundtable plans to further encourage adherence to high workplace standards, as not only a humane, but as an economic consideration, motivating customers to make it a primary factor in their dining choices. To this end, they recently released The New York City Diner’s Guide to High Road Restaurants, a listing of the city restaurants enforcing superior workplace practices. (Available here.) Additionally, diners can look for the above emblem in the windows of their restaurants. Restaurants are encouraged to achieve this distinction and obtain membership to the Roundtable by applying to meet with a representative who will ensure that their policies are in line with those delineated in the Code of Conduct. The effort thus far is, of course, fledgling but as the nation continually shows greater concern for humanitarian and nondiscriminatory behavior, ROC-NY hopes these initial attempts will flourish into a fairer and more positive industry for all involved.
For more information, please visit the New York City High Road Restaurants website.
Images courtesy of NYC High Road Restaurants and La Palapa Cocina.
-Lauren Smith
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