Racially Discriminatory Service in Full-Service Restaurants: The Problem, Cause, and Potential Solutions

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.

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Racially Discriminatory Service in Full-Service Restaurants: The Problem, Cause, and Potential Solutions
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Cornell Hospitality Quarterly
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Restaurant Management
458178CQXXXX10.1177/193896551245
8178Cornell Hospitality QuarterlyBrewster
2012
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 cus-
tomers. 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 understand-
ing 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 restau-
rants 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 com-
munities 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 dis-
crimination 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 establish-
ments across the United States. As such, this article offers a
general social psychological framework within which
1Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA
Corresponding Author:
Zachary W. Brewster, Department of Sociology, Wayne State University,
2272 Faculty/Administration Building, Detroit, MI 48202
Email: zbrewster@wayne.edu
Racially Discriminatory Service in
Full-Service Restaurants: The Problem,
Cause, and Potential Solutions
Zachary W. Brewster1
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.
Keywords
organizational behavior, human resources, strategic management, editing

Brewster 275
racialized customer service is understood as being the out-
come of servers’ adherence to stereotypes that are associ-
ated 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 con-
cludes by encouraging academics and practitioners alike to
enhance their engagement with the issue of racially moti-
vated 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 ser-
vice 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 manage-
ment, 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 sub-
stantiated further by Brewster and Rusche’s (2012) commu-
nity 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 cowork-
ers making racist comments, 26 percent observed their man-
agers 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 discrimi-
nation 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 aver-
sion 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 cus-
tomers” (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 pro-
vide 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 dis-
criminate 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 mes-
sage, “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 set-
tlement describes instances where black Cracker Barrel
customers experienced segregated seating (e.g., smoking

276 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 53(4)
section), excessive wait times, inferior service, or denial of
service. Plaintiffs in this case even reported being “sub-
jected 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 nonsmok-
ing section where tables were available. When he com-
plained 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 dis-
crimination filed with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission,
Slonaker, Wendt, and Baker (2007, 57) found that an imme-
diate supervisor was identified as the perpetrator of dis-
criminate 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 per-
vasiveness of “dining while black” revealed virtually no
change over the 1997 figures. Of the 1,003 blacks who
were surveyed, 21 percent reported experiencing inequita-
ble treatment while dining out in the prior month (Gallup
Poll Social Audit 2001). Findings from a national represen-
tative survey conducted by The National Conference for
Community and Justice (NCCJ) (Smith 2000) lend addi-
tional credence to the problematic nature of racialized res-
taurant service. Of the 709 African Americans surveyed,
12 percent reported that in the thirty days prior to the sur-
vey 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 dis-
courteous 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 some-
times according to their customers’ race. The authors con-
servatively 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’ alle-
gations of experiencing discrimination in restaurants.
In sum, it’s clear that discrimination by race is systemic
in restaurants, not isolated. Thus, a complex causal explana-
tion 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 Service4
One principle of social psychology is that individuals tend
to naturally classify themselves and others into social cat-
egories (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 pro-
cesses 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 effi-
cient, 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 competen-
cies with group membership. Thus, some groups or indi-
viduals in our culture come to be considered more socially
significant and worthy of respect (e.g., whites) than are oth-
ers (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 increas-
ingly 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

Brewster 277
reality is facilitated not only via the appearance of consen-
sus 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 func-
tion 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 situa-
tional 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 ren-
dering the desirable behavior temporary as well (Fiske and
Taylor 2008; Pettigrew 1979; Hewstone 1990).
As illustrated in Exhibit 1, this social psychological pro-
cess operates in restaurant workplaces to sustain antimi-
nority sentiments and actions among restaurant servers.
Given a long history of racial oppression and contentious
race relations in the United States, many servers hold inter-
nalized 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 serv-
ers become acclimated into their work role, their percep-
tions 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 mak-
ing 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
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 uncon-
sciously, 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 cus-
tomers 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 sta-
tus 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 proph-
ecy, 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 embod-
ied 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
Exhibit 1:
A heuristic social psychological model of racialized customer service in restaurants
Racialized
Workplace
Discourse: Coded
Argot and Racist
Comments
Racialized
Customer Status
Beliefs Created
and Maintained
Discriminate
Service: Less
Hospitality Shown
to Customers of
Color
Customers of
Color Tip Less
and are
(Perceived to be)
more Demanding
Attribution Error:
Tipping/Dining
Behaviors are
Attributed to
Customers’ Race
Affirmation of
Status Belief:
Customers of Color
are Bad Tippers and
Difficult to Wait on

278 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 53(4)
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 per-
son, I’m surprised, or even a decent tip, I’m surprised”;
Mallinson and Brewster 2005, 3). Therefore, servers con-
tinue to adhere to an exaggerated association between cus-
tomers’ tipping behaviors and the racial categories in which
they have been cognitively placed.
To effectively and efficiently address the issue of racial-
ized restaurant service, industry leaders will need to inter-
vene 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 dera-
cialize 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 dis-
cuss or comment on the race of restaurant customers. If such
discussions or comments are taking place, restaurant opera-
tors can be fairly certain that racial discrimination is occur-
ring (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 minori-
ties to work (Adamson 2000; Brathwaite 2002).
While blatant expressions of racial prejudices continue
to occur in restaurant establishments, most restaurant per-
sonnel 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 pol-
icy would undoubtedly attenuate the risk of employee initi-
ated 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 dis-
course 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).

Brewster 279
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 conse-
quences associated with its violation should be clearly spec-
ified (see Winkler 2006). While enforcement of a zero
tolerance policy should be consistent, it is important that
managers also consider any qualifying information sur-
rounding 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 restau-
rant officials not only have the authority to set the organiza-
tional agenda but they also are able to allocate resources to
support and sustain programs designed to curtail discrimina-
tory service. For their part, frontline supervisors can model
organizational values and implement initiatives that front-
line employees will embrace (Larkin and Larkin 1996). In
this vein, Denny’s has utilized with success a computerized
interviewing technique that detects when potential employ-
ees are deceitfully responding to questions about racial
equality (see Adamson 2000 for a review of Denny’s diver-
sity 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 cur-
tail the spread of stereotypes surrounding the tipping and
dining behaviors of customers of color, although I recog-
nize 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, for-
mer editor-in-chief of Restaurants & Institutions, has
encouraged industry officials to focus on “improved train-
ing 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 unfor-
tunate racial assumptions, provide great service to every
guest” (2003, 10).
For such improved training initiatives, I suggest that res-
taurant 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 pro-
vide a milieu wherein servers could receive and discuss lit-
erature 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, sus-
tain 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 poten-
tially 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 adminis-
tered.9 As servers are made aware of their own unconscious
prejudices and are educated on how such prejudicial atti-
tudes 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 com-
mitment to racial equality (Devine 1989; Quillian 2006).
Restaurant operators are also encouraged to begin design-
ing, implementing, and institutionalizing educational work-
shops to examine the topic of racialized customer service.
Such workshops should include a segment on the alleged

280 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 53(4)
racial differences in tipping behaviors that explicitly under-
lie much of servers’ purported aversion to waiting on cus-
tomers 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 conversa-
tions 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 opera-
tors 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 (forth-
coming-b) estimates the black–white tipping differences to
be even smaller. Analyzing data from a large web-based sur-
vey, 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, ignor-
ing 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 discrimina-
tory 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 antimi-
nority 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 evi-
dence 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 associa-
tion 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 antistereo-
typical 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 shar-
ing 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 antiminor-
ity sentiments that they will hear from some of their cowork-
ers 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 repre-
sentations 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 necessar-
ily have to question the legitimacy of their adherence to the
status belief that Black and Hispanic customers are unwor-
thy of the best service that they could provide (Fiske and
Taylor 2008; Ridgeway and Cornell 2006). With the illu-
sion of consensus breaking down, other servers will likely
begin expressing their discordant views. With time, the sta-
tus 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 behav-
iors, thus enabling them to attend to the day-to-day opera-
tions of their establishments.

Brewster 281
Finally, restaurant operators are encouraged to engage in
ongoing efforts to detect and monitor race-based discrimina-
tory 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 mys-
tery shoppers or by conducting matched-pair audits.
However, a more cost-effective way to identify and monitor
discriminatory server behaviors would be to internally com-
pile, 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 demograph-
ics, particularly race (Kraft and Martin 1997). In the absence
of such indicators, service organizations, including restau-
rants, are impeded from internally ascertaining and thus cor-
recting discriminatory employee behaviors. Owing to the
subtle ways in which servers are likely to vary their service
according to their customers’ race, customer feedback instru-
ments 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 dis-
criminatory 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 under-
stood, 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 imple-
menting 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 inter-
rupting servers’ propensities to draw from such beliefs to
inform their service delivery.
The suggestions offered, however, should not be inter-
preted as an inclusive guide that if followed will eradicate
racist workplace language or discriminatory restaurant ser-
vice. 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 tak-
ing the necessary steps to proactively address this issue,
restaurants may be able to limit their liability when litiga-
tions 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. Ellerth10
and Faragher v. Boca Raton,11 the court ruled that employ-
ers 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 expres-
sions 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 supervi-
sors did not require any modifiers or qualifications to be
indicative of racial biases. Rather, according to the court,

282 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 53(4)
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 litiga-
tions 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 experi-
ences, and is economically costly to the industry on multi-
ple fronts (Lynn 2004a, 2004b; Selmi 2003). Thus, taking
steps to eradicate service delivery that is contingent on cus-
tomers’ race is economically sensible, makes for good cor-
porate 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 man-
agement, confirms this point. I hope that this article encour-
ages 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 prej-
udice and discrimination.
Acknowledgments
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 com-
ments 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, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. http://www.restaurant.org/advocacy/americaworkshere/ (last
viewed on September 21, 2011).
2. In 1992, Shoney’s family restaurant settled a class action law-
suit at a cost of $134 million or nearly 15% of the company’s
capitalization (Selmi 2003).
3. In this study 61.5 percent of the sampled respondents
reported to never vary their service according to customers’
race. Comparable figures were 31.5 percent for sometimes,
4.6 percent, often, and 2.1 percent, always. The authors con-
servatively assumed that subjects who reported to “some
times” discriminate in their service delivery do so only once
a month and those who reported doing so “often” do so 50
percent of the time, the proportion of nondiscriminatory
meals to the average number of meals served in sampled res-
taurants per month was expressed as [ (a) (x) + (b) (x – 1) +
(c) (x –7132) + (d) (x – x)] / x = nondiscriminatory meals;
where a = % never, b = % sometimes, c = % often, d = %
always, and x = average number of meals served per month
in each restaurant. Solving the equation indicates that
95.9 percent of all meals served per month per restaurant
result in nondiscriminatory service—a discrimination rate of
4.1 percent.
4. Interested readers should refer to Rusche and Brewster
(2008) for additional information on the social psychological
processes underlying racialized restaurant service.
5. Given that many frontline restaurant managers begin their
careers working as servers it is not surprising that some
members of management also endorse the status belief that
customers of color are poor tippers and difficult to wait on.
6. Implementing zero tolerance policies have been shown to be
an effective way to curtail a host of undesirable employee
behaviors including, but not limited to, sexual harassment,
theft, illicit drug use, aggression, workplace violence/aggres-
sion, and sleeping on the job (cf. Plass 2005 for a review).
7. These suggestions for implementing and enforcing zero tol-
erance polices without compromising employee relations
are adapted from the seven tests of “just cause,” which have
been successfully utilized and legally upheld in arbitrations
involving the dismissal of unionized employees (Lucero,
Middleton, and Valentine. 2004; Lucero and Allen 2006).
8. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit//demo/selectatest.html.
9. Project Implicit is a nonprofit organization that serves as an
infrastructure for a collaborative network of scientists doing
research on latent thoughts, feelings, and actions. Project
Implicit also offers consulting, educational, and training ser-
vices on issues pertaining to implicit biases. See the orga-
nizations homepage for additional information (http://www
.projectimplicit.net/index.html).
10. Burlington Industries v. Ellerth, 118 S.Ct. 2257 (1998).
11. Faragher v. Boca Raton, 118 S.Ct. 2275 (1998).
12. The restaurant industry has likely drawn U.S. Equal Employ-
ment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) scrutiny for some
time. The EEOC’s enhanced focus on subtle and implicit
racial biases was, for instance, preceded by an announcement
that the agency would be directing its enforcement efforts
toward curbing systemic discrimination, which is defined as
discrimination resulting from a “pattern of practices, policy,
or class cases where the alleged discrimination has a broad
impact on an industry, profession, company, or geographic
location” (see Slonaker, Wendt, and Baker 2007, 57).
13. Ash v. Tyson Foods, 1126 S.Ct. 1195 (2006).

Brewster 283
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Bio
Zachary W. Brewster, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the
Department of Sociology at Wayne State University (zbrewster@
wayne.edu).