Staff Safety

Taken from CODE Bulletin Monday 8 November

You might have already seen Gary Usher’s video, writes Josh Barrie. Yesterday, the Elite Bistros founder posted about an incident at Hispi, his Disbury bistro, where he said members of staff were abused by four male customers.

We have to be careful what we write here, obviously. All we’ll say is what the restaurateur describes is really shocking. Particularly worrying is how a female member of the restaurant team was treated by the party in question. 

A statement from Hispi was also released. It said: “An incident happened last night [Saturday] at Hispi and we just want to make everyone aware that assault or abuse of any kind, verbal or physical, will NOT be tolerated at Hispi. Drunk or sober, the tolerance is zero…

“If that’s your attitude towards our team you do not deserve our level of service or to dine at our establishment again.”

Usher also posted a screenshot of the name of the man who booked the table and we want to show our support to Elite Bistros. We have no doubt the business is run as safely as possible. Given we hear about instances such as this fairly frequently across the industry, we wonder what else can be done to protect hospitality staff who, in 2021, still face abhorrent mistreatment from diners?

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