Abstract
Most of the scholarly and popular discourse to date on the topic of racial discrimination within the restaurant industry has centered on the unjust treatment experienced by employees who are racial minorities. However, discriminatory service based on race also is—or should be—an industry concern. Based on a review of evidence, race-based discrimination in restaurants is a systemic, industry-wide problem. One source of this problem is a social psychological process involving the diffusion and reinforcement of racial stereotypes that servers use to inform the nature of their interactions with customers. Using social psychological principles, restaurateurs should first interdict the diffusion of inappropriate stereotypes by immediately squelching all such talk. Then management must reverse existing damage, by demonstrating the inaccuracy or exaggerated nature of certain beliefs. This article concludes with a call for increased engagement with the issue of racially motivated discriminatory service in our nation’s restaurants.
Although the U.S. restaurant industry has taken public steps to improve employment and career opportunities for racial minorities, 1 substantial evidence shows that the industry still lags in equitable treatment of racial minorities as customers. As a consequence, restaurant operators have faced a host of legal problems involving claims of racial injustices to customers over the last two decades (cf. Slonaker, Wendt, and Baker 2007). Despite the fact that this is a longstanding problem, only recently has there been a notable increase in the attention devoted toward documenting and understanding racial discrimination against restaurant patrons. The relative lack of attention to racially motivated disparate treatment of restaurant consumers is surprising given that such employee behaviors, regardless of motives, is not only harmful to minority consumers but also detrimental to the success of the restaurant industry.
Servers’ antiblack attitudes and behaviors render restaurants vulnerable to litigation (Lynn 2004a), and in the event of a guilty verdict this cost can be devastating (Selmi 2003). 2 Further, there are reasons to believe that servers’ aversion to waiting on racial minorities contributes to high turnover rates in restaurants largely frequented by such customers (Amer 2002; Lynn 2002, 2011; Lynn and McCall 2009). These factors, in turn, make markets in racial minority communities unattractive for restaurant development (see Amer 2002; Lynn 2004a, 2011). Moreover, racial discrimination against restaurant consumers impedes establishment profits more directly in the form of reduced minority patronage (Lynn 2004b, 14; Lynn 2006). Given the disparate treatment that some customers of color experience in restaurants, it is not surprising that relative to the U.S. adult population they spend less money eating out and are less likely to frequent full-service restaurants (Scarborough Research 2006).
To promote additional and much-needed attention to race-based consumer discrimination in restaurant settings, this article offers a literature review and meta-analysis to document the nature and pervasiveness of race-based discrimination against restaurant consumers. Given the current state of this literature, it is argued that incidences of racially motivated discriminatory restaurant service cannot be understood as reflecting unfortunate and isolated events but rather are indicative of more holistic and complex processes manifest in server behaviors in many restaurant establishments across the United States. As such, this article offers a general social psychological framework within which racialized customer service is understood as being the outcome of servers’ adherence to stereotypes that are associated with customers’ tipping and dining behaviors. Based on this analysis, I offer recommendations that restaurant practitioners might consider in their efforts to combat such disparate and illegal employee behaviors. This article concludes by encouraging academics and practitioners alike to enhance their engagement with the issue of racially motivated discrimination in our nation’s restaurants.
The Problem of Race-Based Discriminatory Restaurant Service
After years of inattention regarding this issue, there is now an emerging body of scholarly literature documenting racialized discourse, stereotyping, and discriminatory service in restaurant establishments across the United States (Brewster and Rusche 2012; Carton and Kleiner 2001; Dirks and Rice 2004; Curry and Kleiner 2005; Harris, Henderson, and Williams 2005; Perry 2005; Riesch and Kleiner 2005; Rusche and Brewster 2008; Siegelman 1998). Dirks and Rice argued in a 2004 CQ article, that the environments of restaurants constitute what they refer to as a “culture of white servers.” Indicative of such a culture are code words that servers use to refer to black diners and include such terms as Canadian, cousins, moolies, black tops, and even white people (see also Large 2006; Rusche and Brewster 2008). More recently, I heard a server refer to her black clientele as “Mondays” because, as it was explained to me, “nobody likes [to wait on] Mondays.” Sometimes these code words are promoted by management, as occurred at a Denny’s restaurant (prior to the chain’s discrimination settlement) where the code word “blackout” was used to convey that there were “too many black customers in the restaurant at one time” (Relin and Gaskins 1995 see also Dirks and Rice 2004, 4). Similarly, after observing a large number of black clientele in the restaurant where Rusche did fieldwork, she overheard a manager comment that “it must be welfare Monday” (cited in Rusche and Brewster 2008, 2020).
The commonality of racist discourse in restaurants is substantiated further by Brewster and Rusche’s (2012) community survey of two hundred restaurant servers across eighteen full-service chain restaurants (see also Rusche and Brewster 2008). They found that 63.4 percent of their respondents reported that they at least sometimes observed their coworkers making racist comments, 26 percent observed their managers making such comments, and 69.6 percent reported observing the use of coded argot in their workplaces. More generally, the authors found that three-quarters of their respondents reported at least sometimes discussing the race of their customers with their coworkers (Brewster and Rusche 2012; Rusche and Brewster 2008). Such racialized discourse has been a contributing factor in the vast majority of significant cases alleging racial discrimination in restaurant establishments, which have been filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC 2011).
Not surprisingly, research has also shown that actions follow beliefs. Dirks and Rice (2004) document situations where servers simply were unwilling to serve black patrons, and to avoid doing so they would participate in the servers’ game of “Pass the [black] Table.” This type of blatant aversion to serving black customers led to a recent lawsuit filed by an employee against a P.F. Chang’s China Bistro in Kansas City. The claimant in this case, an African American woman, alleged that, “restaurant management insisted that she serve the restaurant’s black customers when white servers wouldn’t [and that] on a nearly daily basis, Caucasian servers openly opposed serving minority customers” (Raletz 2011). Servers have even been known to pay their coworkers to wait on black customers seated in their section (Schmit and Copeland 2004). When servers do wait on black patrons, they often will admittedly provide inferior service to them (Brewster 2012; Brewster and Rusche 2012; Dirks and Rice 2004).
Servers’ aversion to waiting on customers of color (e.g., Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics) is purported to be, in part, the result of the widespread sentiment that such customers do not tip well (Brewster and Rusche 2012; Harris 1995; Lynn 2004a, 2004b, 2006, 2011; McCall and Lynn 2009; Noll and Arnold 2004; Rusche and Brewster 2008) and are difficult to wait on (Brewster and Rusche 2012; Dirks and Rice 2004; Lynn 2004a). As a consequence, servers and managers feel economically justified in providing inferior service to customers of color (Bragg 1999; Brewster 2012; Brewster and Mallinson 2009; Dirks and Rice 2004; Lynn 2004a, 2004b, 2006; Margalioth 2006; Noll and Arnold 2004; Perry 2005).
Restaurant managers have also been implicated in discriminate treatment of racial minorities. Recently McFadden’s Restaurant and Bar in Philadelphia settled a lawsuit filed by Michael Bolden, one of the restaurant’s bartenders, who alleged that his general manager instructed a subordinate to end a promotion that was popular with black customers. He further alleged that the manager sent the following text message, “We don’t want black people, we are a white bar!” Policies forbidding patrons from wearing baggy clothes, white T-shirts, and work boots were also cited in the federal lawsuit as evidence establishing a pattern of discriminatory practices that are unlawful under Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Moran 2010).
Management’s role in perpetuating racial injustices was also evident in the class action lawsuit against Cracker Barrel, a Tennessee-based company with more than fifty thousand employees in 505 locations. The $8.7 million settlement describes instances where black Cracker Barrel customers experienced segregated seating (e.g., smoking section), excessive wait times, inferior service, or denial of service. Plaintiffs in this case even reported being “subjected to racial slurs and served food taken from the trash, while Cracker Barrel management ignored or condoned such actions” (Schmit and Copeland 2004). After watching white patrons being seated promptly, while he was forced to wait for 35 minutes, Rev. Henry Harris and his family, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, were finally seated in the smoking section of a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Arkansas along “with other African-American patrons.” This was despite the fact that he had requested to be seated in the nonsmoking section where tables were available. When he complained to the manager, Rev. Harris was told that if his family was “dissatisfied . . . there was a Burger King” nearby (Schmit and Copeland 2004). This is not an isolated example. In an analysis of 9,452 claims of employment discrimination filed with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, Slonaker, Wendt, and Baker (2007, 57) found that an immediate supervisor was identified as the perpetrator of discriminate treatment in 72 percent of the allegations against restaurant establishments, compared with only 54 percent in other industries.
National polls have also documented the maltreatment of racially underrepresented group members. A 1997 Gallup Poll found that 20 percent of African American respondents reported that they had been discriminated against in a restaurant in the prior month (Siegelman 1998). A 2001 nationally representative sample assessing the pervasiveness of “dining while black” revealed virtually no change over the 1997 figures. Of the 1,003 blacks who were surveyed, 21 percent reported experiencing inequitable treatment while dining out in the prior month (Gallup Poll Social Audit 2001). Findings from a national representative survey conducted by The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) (Smith 2000) lend additional credence to the problematic nature of racialized restaurant service. Of the 709 African Americans surveyed, 12 percent reported that in the thirty days prior to the survey they had experienced at least one incident of unfair treatment in venues such as restaurants, bars, or theaters, most typically by being ignored or having service denied, observing others being served first, receiving rude or discourteous service, and being treated “unfairly.”
African Americans’ perceptions of being victims of unjust treatment in restaurants have been corroborated by servers themselves. Brewster and Rusche (2012), for instance, found that 38.5 percent (n = 195) of their server respondents professed to vary their service at least sometimes according to their customers’ race. The authors conservatively estimate that on average service varied according to customers’ race in roughly two of every fifty dining encounters in the restaurants they studied (Brewster and Rusche 2012). 3 Finally, an examination of federal court decisions between 1990 and 2002 by Harris, Henderson, and Williams (2005) found that 36 percent of the eighty-one published federal court opinions involved customers’ allegations of experiencing discrimination in restaurants.
In sum, it’s clear that discrimination by race is systemic in restaurants, not isolated. Thus, a complex causal explanation is warranted to identify ways in which antiminority server and manager sentiments and actions can be curtailed. Toward this end, in the following section, I outline a social psychological framework within which the enduring nature of racialized customer service can be further understood.
A Social Psychological Explanation for Racially Discriminatory Restaurant Service 4
One principle of social psychology is that individuals tend to naturally classify themselves and others into social categories (Ashforth and Mael 1989; Ridgeway 1997; Fiske and Taylor 2008; Fiske 2000, 2004; Hogg, Terry, and White 1995). During social interaction, people form behavioral expectations of one another by deriving information from the categories to which each has been assigned (Correll and Ridgeway 2003; Fiske and Taylor 2008; Fiske 2000; Ridgeway 1997; Taylor et al. 1978). Categorization processes facilitate cognitive efficiency by providing order to an otherwise infinitely complex social world (Ashforth and Mael 1989; Fiske and Taylor 2008).
While placing others into categories is cognitively efficient, it also may bias the processing of information about other persons (cf. Fiske and Taylor 2008; Ridgeway and Erickson 2000; Ridgeway and Cornell 2006; Schaller 1991). Categorizations, for instance, are often shaped by and surface as status beliefs about individuals or social groups (Fiske 2000, 2004; Fiske and Taylor 2008; Ridgeway and Balkwell 1997; Ridgeway and Erickson 2000; Ridgeway and Cornell 2006). Status beliefs are widely held sentiments that differentially associate esteem or competencies with group membership. Thus, some groups or individuals in our culture come to be considered more socially significant and worthy of respect (e.g., whites) than are others (e.g., blacks; Ridgeway and Cornell 2006). Status beliefs can emerge out of localized social interactions wherein an association between group-level attributes and social esteem is created and then taught to others (Ridgeway and Balkwell 1997; Ridgeway and Erickson 2000; Ridgeway and Cornell 2006).
As this diffusion process unfolds, individuals increasingly come to perceive that there is a consensus surrounding the status hierarchy (e.g., most servers believe that white customers are better tippers than customers of color), are pressured to behave in accord with the status belief, and expect that others will do the same (cf. Ridgeway and Cornell 2006). Acceptance of the status belief as a social reality is facilitated not only via the appearance of consensus but also when endorsed by a legitimate authority (e.g., managers, cf. Ridgeway and Cornell 2006, 437). In this way, status beliefs operate to produce cognitive schemas that become manifest in intergroup interactions and function to produce, sustain, or otherwise justify the primary axes of inequality in the United States, such as race, gender, and class (Fiske and Taylor 2008).
The resiliency of status beliefs can be understood as a partial outcome of errors in attributions or inferences about of the causes of events. The most widely documented causal reasoning error is what Pettigrew (1979) has referred to as the “ultimate attribution error” (see Fiske and Taylor 2008, 156). On one hand, this error or bias in thinking occurs when the undesirable behavior of an out-group member is attributed to internal or dispositional factors (e.g., that is the way those people are), but when the same behavior is observed among in-group members it is attributed to situational factors (e.g., he is having a bad day). On the other hand, when a desirable behavior is observed among out-group members it is attributed, not to internal factors, but rather to luck, an exceptional case, or some combination of external or situational factors that are temporary, thus rendering the desirable behavior temporary as well (Fiske and Taylor 2008; Pettigrew 1979; Hewstone 1990).
As illustrated in Exhibit 1, this social psychological process operates in restaurant workplaces to sustain antiminority sentiments and actions among restaurant servers. Given a long history of racial oppression and contentious race relations in the United States, many servers hold internalized racial status beliefs. Those beliefs alone might not lead to discriminatory service but they are magnified by discourses of prejudice that are disseminated throughout restaurant workplaces and which function to produce and sustain a desirable–undesirable customer dichotomy that corresponds with racial categorization schemas (Brewster and Rusche 2012; Dirks and Rice 2004; Mallinson and Brewster 2005; Rusche and Brewster 2008). As new servers become acclimated into their work role, their perceptions of customers converge with those of the existing work group (cf. Ashforth and Mael 1989) thereby further solidifying the perception of consensus around the status belief that racial minorities don’t tip and are difficult to wait on. When servers observe their managers either making racial remarks or failing to reprimand those that do they are further led to accept the status belief as a valid social reality (cf. Ridgeway and Cornell 2006). 5
A heuristic social psychological model of racialized customer service in restaurants
Within a relatively short amount of time, new servers, like many of their coworkers, are likely to begin behaving in accordance with such status beliefs, even if unconsciously, by attempting to avoid waiting on customers of color or providing discriminatory service to those that they do serve (cf. Brewster 2012; Dirks and Rice 2004; Lynn 2004a; Noll and Arnold 2004). Servers’ expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies. Because servers expect to have to work harder for lower tips when waiting on customers of color, they feel justified in delivering relatively inferior service to them. If these customers reciprocate with lower than average tips, that merely confirms the status belief, demarcating desirable–undesirable customers along racial lines (Barkan and Israeli 2004; Bodvarsson, Luketich, and McDermott 2003; Dirks and Rice 2004; Rusche and Brewster 2008).
Rather than ascribe the poor tip to a self-fulfilling prophecy, servers commit an attribution error by understanding the poor tip as an outcome of customers’ race. In the context of antiminority restaurant environments, this attribution error seems to makes sense. When a server does receive a good tip from an African American, the status belief embodied in the racialized good–bad customer dichotomy is not called into question; rather, the good tip is often interpreted as being an exceptional case (e.g., “that was a really good tip for a black person”; Rusche and Brewster 2008, 2023) or the result of luck (e.g., “ . . . if I get a good tip from a black person, I’m surprised, or even a decent tip, I’m surprised”; Mallinson and Brewster 2005, 3). Therefore, servers continue to adhere to an exaggerated association between customers’ tipping behaviors and the racial categories in which they have been cognitively placed.
To effectively and efficiently address the issue of racialized restaurant service, industry leaders will need to intervene in the social psychological processes I’ve outlined here. To the degree that these social psychological processes are not interrupted, some servers will not only continue to participate in the spreading of negative status beliefs and thereby indoctrinate new servers into racialized restaurant cultures but will also continue to act in accord with such beliefs (i.e., discriminate).
Potential Solutions for Curbing Race-Based Service
While most corporate restaurant chains already maintain well-established diversity programs (Selmi 2003), these programs are directed primarily toward management and workforce diversity (e.g., Gilbert and Ivancevich 2000; Iverson 2000; Robinson and Dechant 1997) and thus do little to affect the frontline wait staff. To adequately deracialize restaurant cultures, initiatives will need to not only curb the discursive spreading of racial stereotypes but also interrupt or otherwise alter the cognitions of servers that are embodied with status beliefs about customers of color. While Fiske and Taylor (2008, 177) argue that status beliefs are persistent, they do suggest that discrepancies are the most common catalysts of change. Given the social components of cognition, it will however take more than individual self-reflection on such discrepancies to change servers’ cognitive schemas. Since the environment shapes the way we think, so does the way we think shape the environment (Morgan and Schwalbe 1990). Thus, servers will need the cognitive cooperation of others to affirm those discrepancies and begin to construct perceptions of consensus around new nonracialized schemas. In the absence of such cooperation, even when encouraged to reflect on information that is discrepant to the status beliefs (e.g., good tips from customers of color), servers are likely to continue to perceive that most other servers believe the status belief to be true and, as such, conclude themselves that it must indeed be true.
Zero Tolerance for the Spreading of Racial Status Beliefs
Restaurant officials can begin by making a concerted effort to eliminate the spreading of racialized status beliefs by developing and enforcing a comprehensive zero tolerance policy forbidding the use of coded, stereotypical, and racist language in restaurant workplaces. 6 Aside from situations that warrant the use of race as a descriptive adjective (e.g., the black, white, or Asian couple at table nine), there should be no reason why servers (or managers) would need to discuss or comment on the race of restaurant customers. If such discussions or comments are taking place, restaurant operators can be fairly certain that racial discrimination is occurring (Dirks and Rice 2004; Rusche and Brewster 2008).
Such a policy was an element of a much larger diversity initiative implemented by Denny’s in the years immediately following its 1994 class-action discrimination settlement (Adamson 2000). Denny’s employees are required to decree to “never make derogatory or inflammatory comments about any groups of people and never knowingly allow such comments to be made,” and according to Jim Adamson (2000, 59), former CEO of Advantica Restaurant Groups, Inc., parent company of Denny’s: “Denny’s employees know from the start that they face penalties for not living up to what we expect of them.” Adamson’s motto was simple: “If you discriminate, I’m going to fire you” (Jones 1995). By 1998, just four years after having been the industry exemplar of racial injustice, Denny’s found itself on Fortune magazine’s list of the fifty best companies for racial minorities to work (Adamson 2000; Brathwaite 2002).
While blatant expressions of racial prejudices continue to occur in restaurant establishments, most restaurant personnel recognize the potential ramifications associated with using historical racial epithets in their workplaces. Managers charged with enforcing a zero policy on racialized language should thus be particularly diligent with regard to the use of subtle and implicit verbal expressions of racial prejudices, including the use of “code words.”
Curbing such racialized and stereotypical server and manager discourse is not only the right thing to do, it also reduces the risk of discrimination litigations arising from staff members’ discriminatory behaviors. Similarly, employee-initiated lawsuits involving allegations of racial harassment often emerge from the use of racial slurs in the workplace, or at minimum, are cited as evidence establishing a pattern of discriminatory restaurant practices. Thus, in addition to consumer-initiated allegations of discrimination, such a policy would undoubtedly attenuate the risk of employee initiated claims as well (EEOC 2011; Winkler 2006).
Even when restaurants have an antibias policy in place, the evidence indicates that enforcement is lacking (Dirks and Rice 2004; ROC-NY 2009). One former full-service restaurant manager, for instance, told me that she “heard racialized language all the time [at the restaurant] but there was always so many other issues to deal with, I had to pick my battles.” For a zero tolerance policy on racialized discourse to be effective, managers will need to make its enforcement a priority. In doing so, care should be taken so as to not impinge on employees’ rights, expectations, and perceptions of fairness (cf. Lucero, Middleton, and Valentine 2004; Lucero and Allen 2006; Plass 2005).
Toward this end, it is crucial that restaurant servers (and manager) be adequately trained on the types of verbal expressions that are prohibited under the policy, and consequences associated with its violation should be clearly specified (see Winkler 2006). While enforcement of a zero tolerance policy should be consistent, it is important that managers also consider any qualifying information surrounding the incident and then sanction accordingly (Lucero, Middleton, and Valentine 2004; Lucero and Allen 2006). Similarly, a violation of a zero tolerance rule on racialized language should not unequivocally result in an employee’s termination. Rather, a holistic approach should be taken when disciplining zero tolerance infractions by not only considering the severity of the incident but also the employee’s disciplinary record, duration of employment, and work record. In short, the punishment should fit the “crime” (cf. Lucero, Middleton, and Valentine 2004; Lucero and Allen 2006). 7
Given the fact that managers and supervisors have been cited as the perpetrators of spreading racialized status beliefs and engaging in discriminatory behaviors, members of management should also be required to participate in similar training programs that are tailored to this audience. Restaurateurs should encourage employees to anonymously report incidents in which management has failed to comply with such a policy by either making racialized comments themselves or failing to sanction those that do make such comments (cf. Moran 2010).
Moreover, because of the importance of leadership in this regard (cf. Gilbert and Ivancevich 2000; Hanover and Cellar 1998; Plass 2005; Rynes and Rosen 1995), restaurateurs should actively screen applicants for executive and frontline management positions to ensure that those hired have a strong commitment to racial equality. High ranking restaurant officials not only have the authority to set the organizational agenda but they also are able to allocate resources to support and sustain programs designed to curtail discriminatory service. For their part, frontline supervisors can model organizational values and implement initiatives that frontline employees will embrace (Larkin and Larkin 1996). In this vein, Denny’s has utilized with success a computerized interviewing technique that detects when potential employees are deceitfully responding to questions about racial equality (see Adamson 2000 for a review of Denny’s diversity initiatives). Restaurant operators might also explore the viability of screening potential executives and managers (and servers) with the Modern Racism Scale (MRS), which flags discriminatory behaviors (e.g., discrimination in hiring decisions; Ziegert and Hanges 2005).
Interrupting Employees’ Adherence to Racial Status Beliefs
A comprehensive policy on racialized language would curtail the spread of stereotypes surrounding the tipping and dining behaviors of customers of color, although I recognize that these attitudes are hard to eliminate once they have been internalized. As such, any policy designed to curtail the use of racialized workplace argot should be coupled with strategies that effectively challenge servers’ implicit and explicit adherence to the racial status beliefs that affect service quality. In this vein, Patricia Dailey, former editor-in-chief of Restaurants & Institutions, has encouraged industry officials to focus on “improved training so that managers never again falsely inflate wait times for black diners or preemptively add service charges to their tables, and servers, having discarded their own unfortunate racial assumptions, provide great service to every guest” (2003, 10).
For such improved training initiatives, I suggest that restaurant managers consider designing and implementing programs wherein the topic of racialized service is broached and discussed candidly without fear of reprisal. Workshops of this sort would dovetail nicely with the aforementioned training on racialized workplace language and would provide a milieu wherein servers could receive and discuss literature on topics related to race and customer service. The information about customers of color acquired from these workshops could function as a catalyst for altering servers’ adherence to the racialized status beliefs that, in part, sustain discriminatory service (Fiske and Taylor 2008, 177).
While delineating an exhaustive list of ideas with regard to the possible content of such training initiatives is beyond the scope of this discussion, restaurant operators might first consider taking steps to make their employees conscious of their implicit racial biases (cf. Bargh, Chen, and Burrows 1996; Kawakami, Young, and Dovidio 2002). One potentially fruitful recourse in this vein would be to require servers (and managers) to take the race-related Implicit Associations Test (IAT; see Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz 1998). Designed to measure unconscious racial biases, these tests have been shown to be valid predictors of discriminatory behaviors (see a recent review by Nosek, Greenwald, and Banaji 2007). An IAT could be taken by restaurant staff via the Project Implicit website at no cost to restaurant organizations. 8 It would also be advantageous to explore the feasibility of contracting with Project Implicit to create a training module customized for restaurants wherein measures of implicit racial biases are administered. 9 As servers are made aware of their own unconscious prejudices and are educated on how such prejudicial attitudes become manifest in their interracial interactions (cf. Dovidio, Kawakami, and Gaertner 2002) some will be motivated to actively inhibit the expression of such implicit biases in their service delivery, especially those with a commitment to racial equality (Devine 1989; Quillian 2006).
Restaurant operators are also encouraged to begin designing, implementing, and institutionalizing educational workshops to examine the topic of racialized customer service. Such workshops should include a segment on the alleged racial differences in tipping behaviors that explicitly underlie much of servers’ purported aversion to waiting on customers of color (Brewster 2012; Lynn 2004b). Racial differences in tipping is a topic that is met with strong server sentiments and is a common source of informal conversations in restaurant workplaces (Rusche and Brewster 2008). Yet there is no evidence that restaurateurs have conceived this issue as an appropriate subject around which a training program should be established (see Lynn 2004b). By making this a legitimate training workshop topic, restaurant operators could combat servers’ reliance on anecdotal and often inaccurate information about customers’ tipping behaviors by disseminating evidence derived from scholarly sources. Servers, for instance, should first and foremost be reminded that despite their coworkers’ claims to the contrary (see server quotes in Lynn 2004a, 2004b), most customers tip appropriately, irrespective of race (Thomas-Haysbert 2002, but see Lynn, Pugh, and Williams, 2012). Similarly, servers’ perceptions of racial tipping differences should be put into context. For instance, in a study of customer tipping in Houston, Texas, Lynn and Thomas-Haysbert (2003) found that whites on average tipped 16.6 percent of the bill whereas their black counterparts tipped 13 percent—an average black-white tipping disparity of 3.6 percentage points (or just over 21 percent). More recent research by Lynn (forthcoming-b) estimates the black–white tipping differences to be even smaller. Analyzing data from a large web-based survey, the author found whites to on average tip 15.66 and blacks 13.75 percent of the bill—an average difference of 1.91 percentage points (or just over 12 percent). Thus, ignoring all other factors that have otherwise been shown to affect customer tipping behaviors (e.g., experience working for tips, income, education), these studies indicate that on a $20.00 bill, servers could expect whites to on average tip between $3.13 and $3.32 while blacks could be expected to tip between $2.60 and $2.75, an average difference ranging from 38 to 72 cents.
It is also important for servers to recognize how their attitudes and actions actually sustain the tipping disparities that seem to support their decision to provide discriminatory service. Learning about the self-fulfilling prophecy in which servers are trapped (Barkan and Israeli 2004; Bodvarsson, Luketich, and McDermott 2003) should force them to acknowledge that their explicit and implicit antiminority attitudes and actions are counterproductive (see Lynn, forthcoming-a; see also Dovidio, Kawakami, and Gaertner 2002). The status belief that customers of color are more difficult to wait on relative to whites (Brewster and Rusche 2012) should also be challenged based on a lack of empirical evidence. Once again, however, even if such evidence did exist, it would likely reflect the inferior service that customers of color at least sometimes receive in U.S. restaurants (Dirks and Rice 2004; Brewster 2012). It should likewise be pointed out to servers that their adherence to the status belief that Asian Americans tip less than whites (McCall and Lynn 2009) is empirically unfounded (Lynn, forthcoming-a).
Equipped with information of the sort just reviewed would contribute to the deracializing of restaurant cultures by encouraging wait staff to confront the exaggerated or counterfactual nature of their negativity toward customers of color (Fiske and Taylor 2008). Moreover, by identifying servers’ behaviors as an important source of poor tips from racial minority customers, the attribution error stemming from the cognitive association between tips and race should with time deteriorate and be supplanted with an enhanced association between service quality and tips—an association that restaurant officials can certainly embrace (Kwortnik, Lynn, and Ross 2009). Workshops broaching the topic of racialized customer service would also provide a controlled platform wherein servers could openly and honestly share their contrasting experiences with waiting on customers of color. As some servers share their antistereotypical sentiments and positive experiences with waiting on racial minorities (e.g., good tips) other servers who embody racial biases will be forced to acknowledge that there is not a consensus around the status belief that racial minorities are undesirable patrons (cf. Ridgeway and Cornell 2006). Such conversations could, in other words, promote the sharing and spreading of new information about minority patrons that do not trigger the conscious and unconscious activation of negative stereotypes (Fiske and Taylor 2008).
Another way to end the assumption of uniformity in servers’ perceptions of customers of color is to employ servers with a demonstrated commitment to racial equity as certified trainers. These servers will immediately embrace any equity initiative and as such could be utilized as “change leaders” to communicate to new servers that the antiminority sentiments that they will hear from some of their coworkers are not shared by all wait staff (see Ford, Heisler, and McCreary 2008, 199). These servers could also be trained and compensated for actively challenging the verbal representations of racial stereotypes when they emerge in the workplace. If a server were to be actively confronted for verbal or nonverbal expressions of discontent with having to wait on a table of racial minorities, they would necessarily have to question the legitimacy of their adherence to the status belief that Black and Hispanic customers are unworthy of the best service that they could provide (Fiske and Taylor 2008; Ridgeway and Cornell 2006). With the illusion of consensus breaking down, other servers will likely begin expressing their discordant views. With time, the status belief that, in part, sustains discriminatory restaurant service will deteriorate and service should become more homogenous across racial groups. This approach would not only directly attenuate the risk of litigation but would also have the added benefit of precluding managers from having to be the sole monitors of employee discourse and behaviors, thus enabling them to attend to the day-to-day operations of their establishments.
Finally, restaurant operators are encouraged to engage in ongoing efforts to detect and monitor race-based discriminatory service in their establishments so that they can respond appropriately (Walsh 2009). Testing for racialized service could be done by using ethnically and racially diverse mystery shoppers or by conducting matched-pair audits. However, a more cost-effective way to identify and monitor discriminatory server behaviors would be to internally compile, maintain, and periodically analyze data derived from customers about their service experiences. Irrespective of how restaurant operators collect such data (e.g., customer satisfaction surveys, comment cards, etc.), the mechanism used to do so should include an indication of customers’ race. I say this because most devices used to gather customer feedback fail to include measures of customer demographics, particularly race (Kraft and Martin 1997). In the absence of such indicators, service organizations, including restaurants, are impeded from internally ascertaining and thus correcting discriminatory employee behaviors. Owing to the subtle ways in which servers are likely to vary their service according to their customers’ race, customer feedback instruments should also include nuanced indicators of hospitable server behaviors rather than one holistic measure of service quality (e.g., did your server smile when greeting you; see Brewster and Mallinson 2009; Brewster and Rusche 2012). Finally, it is important that restaurant operators devise a way to link customer feedback with the appropriate server whose behavior was evaluated.
Continuously collecting such data would over time allow restaurant operators to ascertain the extent of discriminatory service delivery in their establishments. In the event that discriminatory service is revealed, corrective actions could be taken, and subsequent data could be analyzed to assess the effectiveness of such actions. Furthermore, the information garnered by compiling server-specific customer satisfaction data could provide an empirical basis for rewarding those who treat all customers equally (e.g., monetary bonuses) and to take appropriate action to correct the behaviors of those specific servers who fail to do so. Discriminatory service revealed from these data could also have a sensitizing effect on servers who are not conscious of their racialized status beliefs regarding customer desirability (cf. Dovidio, Kawakami, and Gaertner 2002). Confronting people with such information might be a particularly powerful way to encourage servers to deliver equitable service when coupled with the results of the race-related Implicit Association Tests, as previously discussed.
Summary and Final Thoughts
By delineating a theoretical framework within which racially motivated discriminatory service can be understood, this article adds to the literature on this relatively neglected area of inquiry. More important, by illuminating some of the likely root causes of discriminatory service the social psychological explanation outlined in this article enables restaurant operators to begin designing and implementing viable and cost-effective strategies to curtail such undesirable server behaviors. To facilitate and accelerate such efforts, I have outlined some potentially fruitful approaches to deracialize restaurant cultures by not only curtailing the discursive spreading of racial status beliefs in the workplace but also by actively and strategically interrupting servers’ propensities to draw from such beliefs to inform their service delivery.
The suggestions offered, however, should not be interpreted as an inclusive guide that if followed will eradicate racist workplace language or discriminatory restaurant service. In fact, considerable more scholarship is needed before arriving at any definitive conclusions regarding the effectiveness of the recommendations that have been put forth. Moreover, the reality is that as long as we live in a society characterized by contentious race relations, some individuals will continue to exhibit behaviors that result from firmly entrenched racial biases and as such, there is little that even employers with the best of intentions can do to completely eradicate the risk of allegations of racial wrongdoing.
Nevertheless, by making a concerted effort to design, implement, and evaluate theoretically derived initiatives to ensure racially equitable service, such as those outlined in this paper, restaurant operators will likely reduce their risk that discrimination allegations will arise. Moreover, by taking the necessary steps to proactively address this issue, restaurants may be able to limit their liability when litigations do arise by drawing on a defense established in two 1998 U.S. Supreme Court rulings on workplace sexual harassment. In the cases of Burlington Industries v. Ellerth 10 and Faragher v. Boca Raton, 11 the court ruled that employers could avoid liability or limit damages in some sexual harassment lawsuits if they could demonstrate that they exercised “reasonable care” to prevent and redress promptly the sexual misconduct committed by their supervisors (cf. Daniel 2003; Sherwyn and Tracey 1998; Sherwyn 2010).
I propose that a multifaceted approach to preemptively combat racialized restaurant service would go a long way toward satisfying the criteria of reasonable care in the event of litigation, if the court would accept that argument, as it well may do. Furthermore, the EEOC (2011) is making it a priority to curtail the types of subtle and implicit expressions of racial biases evident in restaurant establishments across the nation. 12 In a 2006 case, Ash v. Tyson Foods, 13 the U.S. Supreme Court set a clear legal precedent with regard to the legality of veiled expressions of racial prejudices (e.g., code words). The court ruled that the term “boy” when used to refer to two African American Tyson Foods supervisors did not require any modifiers or qualifications to be indicative of racial biases. Rather, according to the court, given the historical usage of the term, it was in and of itself evidence of racial bias (see Winkler 2006). Following this decision, the EEOC has filed or supported numerous litigations alleging discrimination that stemmed from the use of racial code words in the workplace (EEOC 2011).
Discriminatory service is damaging at many levels. It impedes racial minorities from dining in restaurants that are free of racial prejudices, degrades customers’ meal experiences, and is economically costly to the industry on multiple fronts (Lynn 2004a, 2004b; Selmi 2003). Thus, taking steps to eradicate service delivery that is contingent on customers’ race is economically sensible, makes for good corporate citizenship, and is simply the right (and legally mandated) thing to do. In this article, I offer suggestions based on social psychology to help restaurant owners break the cycle of racially motivated discriminatory service. There is no silver bullet, but my hope is that this paper will encourage operators and scholars alike to begin engaging the issue of race-based service delivery in U.S. restaurants much more than they have done to date. This issue has received scant attention relative to other industry problems (notably, sexual harassment). A cursory review of the archives of published articles in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, one of the premier journals in hospitality management, confirms this point. I hope that this article encourages the dialogue and scholarship that will be necessary in order to ensure that all customers have an equal opportunity to dine in full-service restaurants that are free of racial prejudice and discrimination.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Kelly Brewster, David Merolla, Bruce Tracey, Glenn Withiam, and three anonymous reviewers for Cornell Hospitality Quarterly for their helpful and insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.