Hooters style restaurant workers strike, protesting racist sexist manager

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This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on January 24, 2023. It is shared here with permission.

Latino immigrant cooks and a group of racially diverse waitresses walked out of Twin Peaks Restaurant in Brentwood, Tennessee, on Saturday, January 14. They say their employer is serving a toxic brew of racism and sexism.

We went on strike to fire a manager for verbally and physically abusing my co-workers, Juan Carlos Mendoza, a barback for six years at the restaurant, told the Spanish-language news channel Nashville Noticias. The manager is a racist and that’s why we raised our voices.

Eighteen workers walked out, accusing general manager Andrew Hunter Kirkpatrick of racist and abusive behavior, including throwing away their lunches, scolding them for speaking Spanish and threatening to call the police. The kitchen workers are indigenous to Mexico and Guatemala.

Servers join the strike

The following Monday, 21 kitchen workers picketed the restaurant and joined an indefinite strike of 10 servers.

I couldn’t sit idly by and continue working for someone abusive, said a black waitress who joined the picket line and asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. We often had days when [Kirkpatrick] berated several house staff so harshly that they were moved to tears.

Twin Peaks was founded in Dallas, Texas in 2005; it has four locations in Tennessee and 100 in the United States and Mexico. Brentwood is near Nashville.

Cecilia Prado, director of the Nashville Workers Dignity worker center, described him as essentially a Hooters but more objectifying. Servers wear a uniform of short shorts and revealing tops, and the restaurant also holds lingerie days dictating what servers wear and stepping up the pressure to look a certain way.

Extended requests

As workers have come together across race, ethnicity, gender and work, their list of demands has grown.

They all want Kirkpatrick gone. Both groups claim that management steals their tips and does not pay overtime. Servers said they’ve noticed reductions in their take-out tips since Kirkpatrick’s arrival.

The waitresses also want security training to handle aggressive customers and a security guard to escort them to their cars. Other Twin Peaks sites have security guards.

The kitchen workers demand the reinstatement of an unjustly dismissed colleague and the right to lunch.

Ricardo Juarez, a cook who has worked at the restaurant for eight years, said Kirkpatrick began banning the afternoon shift from lunch until 10 p.m. once the restaurant was not as busy. . He then threw two workers’ food, slamming a cup of water out of another worker’s hand, Juarez said.

In one incident, the manager called a kitchen worker stupid and pushed him for not understanding a ticket order, recalled Patricia Mendoza, a barback who has worked at Twin Peaks Brentwood for 10 years.

These abusive incidents triggered the organization. I started talking with my colleagues that we needed to do something, Juarez said. They headed to the boss’s office and met with one of the franchise co-owners, Daniel Pierce, asking him to fire Kirkpatrick and telling him that if he didn’t respond to their demands right away, they would went on strike.

Pierce shrugged. We don’t matter to him, thought Juarez after the game. Soon after, they walked out, forcing the restaurant to close early on a busy Saturday.

The competition is collapsing

Elise Reilly started working at the restaurant last November, alternating the roles of hostess and server. At first, everything was going great. On my first day of training, [Kirkpatrick] told me I had a very bright future ahead of me,” Reilly said.

But the praise didn’t last long. I mentioned something to her about wanting to make sure the front of the house was uniting instead of competing, which is something I’ve seen the girls do a lot. That’s when he turned on her, Reilly said.

For servers, competition is built into their earning potential. The waiters, all female, are graded by Kirkpatrick based on their appearance, including makeup, hairstyle, and nails. Higher-ranked servers can choose restaurant sections and times that maximize tipping.

Racism affects rankings, according to Reilly, especially on lingerie days. There’s going to be so many women coming in with the most gorgeous hair, the most gorgeous makeup, and they kind of ended up way down the ranking list just because they’re not a blonde or a white girl, Reilly said.

Harassment expected

Waitresses have reported customers for sexually harassing them, including grabbing their genitals. But management blames the worker: maybe if you weren’t so flirty. A waiter said Kirkpatrick told him to expect harassment, comparing customers to kids who are taken to a candy store but told they can’t have anything.

While dealing with aggressive customers is part of the job, Reilly said the biggest issue at Twin Peaks is management. She doesn’t buy into the common narrative that men who frequent these kinds of bars are creeps. She said she had been harassed whether I was working one of the lingerie days at Twin Peaks or wearing super loose pajamas outside that showed no part of my figure.

Break down barriers

We never really made eye contact with the back of the house until all of this [the strike] happened, Reilly said. When we found out the back of the house was on strike, everyone in the front of the house was communicating with each other saying, oh my god, we went through the same thing.

Because the back of the house had the courage to stand up, it gave us all the opportunity to share our stories and unite.

Management deliberately divided the two groups of workers, preventing them from talking to each other and to each other even when the restaurant was not busy, Reilly said.

Twin Peaks Brentwood owners Gary Cassatelli and Daniel Pierce did not respond to multiple phone calls seeking comment.

Strikers are still defining next steps and a growing list of demands. But they are clear that unity across jobs is now key to their fight.

Weren’t fighting for a single position at the restaurant, Reilly said. Fighting for everyone in there; everyone who has been there; everyone is still coming and make sure we all have a happy and safe experience because that’s not been the case lately.

You can contribute to fundraising for the strikers here.

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