Banning restaurant customers
The Sarah SandersRed Hen affair raises the question: Is the customer always right?
In his decades-long career as a chef, owner and manager of restaurants, Marcus Bressler came to believe that something very important set his profession apart from other businesses: “You’re providing hospitality, defined as the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.”
That’s why Bressler, owner of the former Kayak Cafe, on the grounds of what is now Jupiter’s Guanabanas, so strongly disagrees with a Virginia restaurant owner who recently asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her establishment because she believed Sanders represents an “inhumane and unethical” administration.
“In my opinion, this was a very bad move on the part of the owner, not just morally but financially,” Bressler says of Stephanie Wilkinson, of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, who told The Washington Post that asking Sanders and her group to leave, mid-meal, was a moral decision based on the discomfort of her gay employees with the Trump administration’s LGBTQ policies.
“Restaurants struggle to stay in business, and customer service standards have always held that it is easier to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one. (Wilkinson) went way beyond that,” says Bressler, who was also the director of training for the former national chain Victoria Station.
The Red Hen affair has not only incited the wrath of supporters of Sanders and the Trump administration who’ve declared a boycott on the Virginia restaurant (and many other similarly named establishments around North America), as well as started a discussion about civility, especially in business.
Is the customer always right, even when you think what they stand for is wrong?
Given the backlash against the Red Hen (even the wrong Red Hen), it’s perhaps understandable that none of the current restaurant owners that The Palm Beach Post reached out to would comment, and other business owners were comfortable speaking only off the record. “(The) management at The Red Hen was wrong,” said one, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Rule No. 1: Business and politics don’t mix. Grow up already and suck it in.”
Still, a few others in and around the hospitality industry were willing to talk — and most of them disagreed with Wilkinson. “To me, dismissing someone because of real or perceived political leanings is discrimination, pure and simple, no matter what side of the political coin you fall on,” says Lori Revilla, who runs the Lake Worth-based theatrical events company Actors With a Clue!, which performs at such hospitality-related venues as hotels and country clubs.
“When on-site, (the actors) are there to do a job, and I have been grateful to have professionals who know how to check their personal feelings at the door, so to speak. It’s like you can’t even go out for a meal, enjoy a good show or do pretty much anything without this unhinged political anger following you around,” she continues. “Totally cliche, but really, people, can’t we all just get along?”
However, Wilkinson was not without her supporters, among locals who responded on Facebook. “Buy the ticket, take the ride,” says Steve Ellman, a former Lake Worth resident and longtime entertainment writer for publications like New Times. “The shunning of Trump’s enablers is what they deserve for complicity in crimes against humanity. The least of what they deserve.”
Teisha Mckoy, of Riviera Beach, who has been a career adviser, finds it hypocritical that seemingly the same people “who applaud the baker for not making the cake for the wedding of the gay couple want to condemn the restaurant owner for doing (essentially) the same thing. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
The fallout for Wilkinson’s actions continue, as President Donald Trump sent insulting tweets about her establishment, and protesters continue to make their displeasure known against Lexington’s Red Hen, one even dumping feces in front of the restaurant. Former restaurant owner Bressler isn’t surprised about the backlash.
“The publicity she got out of what I considered grandstanding and virtue-signaling will result in the closure of her place and the loss of job,” he says. “I believe all rational people, regardless of political persuasions, believe in civil discourse and disapprove of over the top, rude behavior.
“Personal politics aside, the idea is that every person that walks through your door is a guest, not just a customer and you treat them as if they were invited guests in your home.”