When chef Dominique Crenn won the award for best chef of the World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2016, she called it “stupid.” “A chef is a chef.”
“I agree with Dominique: a chef is a chef,” says Mary Sue Milliken, chef and co-founder of Respect Her, a nonprofit organization for women in the food and beverage industry. “I agree that we don't need to talk about the 'best' women. But barriers need to be removed for women in this particular field, and many others, so they can wield half the power and create an industry that is more welcoming and sustainable.”
It's a lonely and isolating business, especially for women.
Then, on a Wednesday night in March, applause erupts as Stephanie Izard, clad in an apron, stands at the end of a long table set up inside the Guerrilla Cafecito adjacent to Guerrilla Taco, which typically serves coffee, pastries and breakfast burritos. during the day in downtown Los Angeles. Arts District.
“How's everybody?!” the chef at nearby Girl & the Goat restaurant asks the group of cheering guests. Izard just left the kitchen alongside chefs Crystal Espinoza of Guerrilla Tacos and Kat Hong of Yangban. The three made buttery Peruvian empanadas, hamachi toast, and golden Hokkaido scallop toast as part of the Women's History Month festival organized by Respect Her.
“I'm very excited,” Izard tells diners. “I think the more we can celebrate women in the industry, the more the better.”
In an industry that has never been easy for women and is struggling, Respect Her offers educational and financial programming to help chefs, leaders and entrepreneurs.
A restaurant industry reckoning due to the pandemic has given restaurant workers a chance to step back and see that the system is broken. “We focus on women because it has been much more difficult for women for many different reasons and we want this organization to be able to help accelerate gender parity. [and] remove barriers for women,” says Milliken.
The Chefs of the Arts District dinner is just one of dozens of events hosted by Respect Her, which was born in 2020 as a response to the pandemic crisis by nine Los Angeles female restaurant professionals on a Zoom call. Since then, the group has grown to more than 1,000 members in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to business owners, and launched the Academy, a 10-week career accelerator program for women entrepreneurs in the food industry.
“I remember exactly where I was,” says Brittney Valles, founding member and owner of Guerrilla Tacos, about the moment she started Respect Her (or RE:Her). “I was driving in the catering van. I was on the phone to pick up a heater from a trailer park because we had to move our restaurant outside,” she says, remembering being in the middle of the pandemic. That's when she joined forces with the other eight founding chefs and restaurateurs: Socalo's Milliken, Border Grill and Alice B; Dina Samson of Rossoblu and Superfine Pizza; Lien Ta of All Day Baby and Here's Looking at You; Bricia López de Guelaguetza; Kim Prince of Hotville Chicken and Dulanville; Sylvie Gabriele of Love & Salt; Sandra Cordero, from Gasolina Café; and Heather Sperling of Botany.
Respect Her co-founders include, from left, Dina Samson, Kim Prince and Mary Sue Milliken at a Respect Her event. “The idea was, at the time, not only to drive business toward women-owned restaurants, but also to try to raise money to help those who were really struggling,” Samson says.
(Regarding her)
“We quickly realized that we had really hit on something that needed a lot more energy,” adds Milliken. That “something” was support of all kinds: practical, emotional and financial for women in the food industry, and Milliken and RE:Her have no problem focusing specifically on women.
And while this is the core of what Respect Her sets out to do, Milliken also strives to shed light on restaurants' unsustainable financial model.
“The idea was, at the time, not only to drive business toward women-owned restaurants, but also to try to raise money to help those who were really struggling,” Samson says of her initial COVID grant program. Samson herself raised $150,000 through the DoorDash and OpenTable partnerships, which she then distributed to 15 female applicants.
Now, despite partnerships and donations from large corporations, individual donors and grants, funding remains Her's biggest challenge.
Membership to join Respect Her is free, and qualifications have expanded from just female business owners to allowing women in other leadership positions, such as CEOs and general managers, to apply. It also offers access to an online network called Circle where women can ask each other questions, such as how to negotiate a lease, where to find a good plumber, or how to choose a good point-of-sale system. According to Samson, members are quick to share resources and RE:Her has even offered advice and moral support to restaurants during the closure process.
Collaborative events hosted by Respect Her aim to build a community for its members while exposing them to new audiences and revenue. The consensus among the women participating is that the community and practical support has been most invaluable.
(Anne Fishbein)
In 2022, Respect Her launched its largest program yet, the Academy, the women's business program that also offered each participant a $20,000 grant.
Chef Rashida Holmes attributes her participation in the Academy in part to her ability to transition her acclaimed Bridgetown Roti pop-up into a brick-and-mortar business opening this summer.
“I know I can contact them for anything,” Holmes says. “Someone like me, who has been in kitchens for 15 years, no one taught me how to do HR. Nobody taught me different management strategies.”
The consensus among the women participating is that the community and practical support has been the most invaluable and transformative.
“I think many of us sacrifice our own mental health so that other people in our restaurants, in our communities, can be better,” Valles says. “But ultimately the fish rots at the top, so if you're not careful, people will feel it.”
Pointing chefs to resources like therapy sessions and the 3 Chefs 3 Moms program from Abundance Environment, a Chicago-based nonprofit, is one of the ways Respect Her has aimed to encourage and support women .
“I think Respect Her, if we're successful, will help move that needle to heal the industry in certain ways, to make it easier, more sustainable and more attractive to women who want to have families and more attractive to the people who love it. but I don't want to work for miserable wages,” says Milliken.
“Nonprofits are not going to save the restaurant industry,” he says when asked if organizations like Respect Her could become the norm. “Nonprofit business will not be the way for the industry to right itself and take a better course. “That will happen through the legislature and through tax credits.”
The Academy will soon accept applications for its summer program and community programming such as dinner at Guerrilla Cafecito featuring chefs Izard, Hong and Espinoza.
“It's just fun to be back in the kitchen talking about our kids and just talking about being a cook,” Izard says. “I would say we're talking about balancing life, but that doesn't exist.”
