Cases at Warlord, Noma prompt fresh questions about how to protect restaurant workers

Already this year, a pair of tectonic restaurant industry news reports have exposed years of alleged staff abuses by Trevor Fleming, the chef and former co-owner of Warlord, and Rene Redzepi, founding chef of Michelin-starred Copenhagen restaurant Noma.

Some observers expressed exasperation that the accusations went unchecked for so long despite, in each case, allegations that go back years. But restaurants remain hierarchical small businesses with few formal systems for employee complaints and power asymmetries between workers and the higher-ups, whose names often are on the door.

Still, in Chicago, at least two groups are trying to give hospitality workers a voice and forging a path toward levying formal complaints. The grassroots organizations Survivors Know and Chicago Hospitality Accountability & Advocacy Database (the CHAAD Project) say they are doing what they can to offer advocacy and mental health support services, albeit with limited manpower and budgets.

But for survivors, the paths toward safety, healing, and, murkiest of all, accountability are fraught, slow-moving and routinely unsatisfying.

“The fear of retaliation is 100 percent real,” said a longtime hospitality worker and former employee of Warlord, where star chef Fleming was accused of sharing nonconsensual sexual images of a worker. “Sometimes there is no justice. It’s just removing yourself from the harm.”

Most restaurants operate on razor-thin profit margins, meaning stress-inducing urgency is built into their very fabric. The power imbalance is exacerbated by a tipped wage structure and the often intentionally blurry lines of conduct in an entertainment-adjacent industry. (Chicago is in the process of phasing out tipped wages.)

Social justice advocates say part of the problem is chalking up workplace harassment to one bad seed as opposed to treating it like a community problem.

“What we’ve seen in Chicago and everywhere with the restaurant industry is there are these moments of ‘reckoning,’” said Jo Chernow, executive director of Survivors Know, a nonprofit advocating for survivors of power-based sexual violence. “If an individual chef is super toxic, there’s a wave of yeses then an acknowledgement that this is just part and parcel of the industry. Hyperfixation on individual chefs takes away from what this is, which is systemic and super normalized.”

To foster more interpersonal trust, a small but growing number of restaurants are engaging workers in internal policy and culture conversations. The movement has been galvanized by recent aggressive federal immigration tactics, which prompted honest conversations over how to respond and keep each other safe.

Call HR? There’s no HR.

According to police reports and multiple sources, Fleming allegedly shared sexual photos of women without their consent and created a toxic work environment by routinely berating Warlord employees. Fleming’s attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment by publication time.

The former Warlord employee said these alleged abuses were widely known at the Avondale restaurant, including by co-owners Emily Kraszyk and John Lupton. But the situation came to a head in January, when Fleming was charged with sharing explicit images of a woman without her consent.

Worker abuse in Chicago’s hospitality industry isn’t exactly a secret, but answerability remains elusive. Being part of a high-turnover industry built on relationships, workers have little incentive to speak up if something untoward happens. Amid a shift away from workers’ rights initiated by the Trump administration, the onus falls on those in charge to do the right thing and victims to make a case — often multiple times at their own risk — for their pain.

The former Warlord employee mentioned the private Chicago Service Industry Facebook page, which has some 51,400 members, as one of few reliable places for calling out abusive employers.

Five years ago, a group of current and former hospitality workers formed the CHAAD project in hopes of helping workers document abuse and demand accountability.

Today, the group receives reports of workplace abuse and wage theft through its website, social media, the digital platform ShiftChange (which CHAAD developed with Survivors Know and WorkIt Labs) and less formally as individuals.

“We don’t have a lot of policies that protect workers,” said Raeghn Draper, executive director of the CHAAD project. Draper added that Illinois is also an at-will employment state, meaning employers can terminate employees at any time for any reason that isn’t illegal. “If your boss gets a whiff of you filing a complaint with an enforcement agency, you can get fired for that, and there’s not much to do in an at-will state unless you’re really rigorous.”

Abuse reports spike between April and November, when there are more jobs available so people feel less vulnerable about taking action.

“December through March is quieter, when jobs are harder to find and people want to hold onto the one they have, even if it’s sh—-,” said Draper, who also bartends at Consignment Lounge in Logan Square.

Workers can file reports in English or Spanish through ShiftChange. (Since securing grant funding for Survivors Know’s hospitality arm, ShiftChange is hiring a new, native-Spanish-speaking lead organizer.) An advisor will follow up with an interview about next steps. If a worker is too afraid to leave their job or report abuse internally, advisors will help them identify a safety plan to recognize what they can lean on, externally and within. How do they get to work? Can they call someone to pick them up midday?

“By starting to map their own safety, people can start identifying their own power,” Chernow said. “We do the same thing with survivors planning to leave their abusers. So many of those workplace dynamics mirror domestic violence dynamics.”

Navigating uncomfortable terrain

One of Fleming’s victims told WBEZ/Sun-Times that when she learned that he was reportedly sharing sexually explicit photos of her without her consent, she feared for her safety most as she weighed her options.

Friends and family repeatedly discouraged her from contacting the police, citing concerns about her welfare, she said, asking to remain anonymous for security reasons. She contacted a lawyer instead, who said the firm could only assist with civil cases and couldn’t advise on criminal matters, “which added confusion and frustration about how to move forward,” she said.

She found a path ahead in part after meeting with a support group through the Chicago trauma and abuse support organization Women Rise Chicago, which also offers free one-to-one counseling. She decided to file a report with the police.

When survivor communities overlap, Survivors Know will connect victims to solidarity circles, which can make people feel less alone and help them draw contextual connections between singular experiences and systemic failures, Chernow said. The organization supports those seeking recourse by sending letters to restaurants asking them to meaningfully address worker allegations and drafting press advisories.

In the case of Warlord, Survivors Know submitted a letter requesting a third-party investigation of the allegations and recommending mandatory code of conduct and comprehensive anti-harassment training. According to Survivors Know, attorneys for the restaurant claimed their firm’s investigation found no wrongdoing, but didn’t respond when the group requested the findings.

Kraszyk and Lupton have since broken ranks with Fleming and are suing their former partner.

The broader goal of organizations that help hospitality workers, Chernow said, is to tangibly improve working conditions, “not to shut down restaurants.” But they’re also balancing victims’ comfort levels as they navigate painful terrain.

Draper, too, said initial action can fizzle when survivors see what’s required of them to pursue recourse.

Indeed, as the woman who filed the police report against Fleming later told me, “You do it scared; that’s the reality. You might not know what to do, and you’re doing each step scared.”

A better future?

For a restaurant industry battered by inflation, tariffs and rising costs for health care and labor, it’s likely not the moment to implement systemic overhauls to workplace culture.

CHAAD has spent the past few years studying cooperative and shared ownership restaurant models, and is piloting a Chicago worker-owned restaurant called Rad-Ish Eats, which now operates as a popular seasonal pop-up series.

“Research shows democratic ownership and shared leadership are far more sustainable in terms of shared risk and ownership responsibility,” Draper said. “It’s a shared workplace; the money made is shared, everybody should be involved.”

Former Noma employees felt compelled to speak out when Redzepi announced his $1,500-per-night series of Los Angeles pop-up dinners, which reminded them that “his empire was built on their work, and their pain,” wrote Julia Moskin, the New York Times reporter who broke the Noma story. Redzepi has since stepped down.

Locally, Draper is encouraged by growing reports of restaurants like progressive mainstay Lula Cafe, modern Chinese restaurant Lao Peng You, Consignment Lounge, Japanese dining bar Kumiko, and hospitality group 16 On Center engaging workers more democratically where policy and culture discussions are concerned.

Such conversations are happening in the months of fallout and introspection following last fall’s federal immigration enforcement campaign, dubbed “Midway Blitz.” Immigration actions hit restaurants especially hard and disrupted business for many. Figuring out how to get vulnerable employees to and from work or deciding protocol if ICE shows up prompted honest discussions about workers’ personal safety concerns and solidarity, as was the case at Kumiko.

“I think one of the most important things to remember when we think about restaurants as professional ecosystems is the sustainability of our most important resource: the people,” said Julia Momosé, founder, chef and bartender of Kumiko. “Ensuring their comfortability, safety and growth is at the forefront of all decision making.”

Having come from intense fine-dining environments before opening Kumiko in 2018, Momosé learned that keeping toxicity out of her workplace starts at hiring. She asks prospective employees very specific questions, “getting as personal as they’re comfortable with,” to get at their wants, needs and non-negotiables beyond compensation.

She places heavy emphasis on continuing education and hopes to offer financial aid for sake sommelier certification, in line with making sure employees “feel proud of what they do everyday for work.” She has internalized her own power to make adjustments — be it tightening the menu or limiting reservations to set the collective up for success at a high standard. It seems to be paying off, as some Kumiko employees have left and come back or been with the restaurant for three or four years, she said.

Much of Momosé’s hope lies with younger generations, who come in with much higher standards of how they expect to be treated and paid and aren’t afraid to say so.

“Their non-negotiables are very self-aware,” she said. “Some say it’s soft, but I welcome it.”

Indeed, for an industry where systemic abuse has long thrived in darkness beneath a facade of hardened individualism, speaking up remains a worker’s most potent tool for now.