Executive Summary
The restaurant industry is one of the largest and fastest-growing employment sectors, but it provides the lowest wages and highest levels of racial inequities. Segregation of workers of color into more casual restaurants and lesser-tipping positions results in a $5 per hour wage gap between Black women and white men tipped workers—a gap which only worsened during the pandemic and its aftermath.
The High Road Kitchens (HRK) program was created to change these industry practices. By providing restaurants with funding, a toolkit, and training in equitable business practice, small restaurant businesses, especially BIPOC-owned, are able to profitably increase wages for workers of color, to desegregate staffing, and to create more equitable workplaces. Given the current staffing crisis in the restaurant industry, we have the opportunity to work with mayors and county executives across the country to grow the program nationally, supporting thousands of restaurants to increase wages and racial equity for hundreds of thousands of workers, engaging HRK restaurant owners in advocacy to pass state wage increase policies, and providing recognition to these restaurants—thus encouraging others to follow suit.
Charity, fund, non-governmental organization, religious institution, school, or other entity
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Accomplishments
**In 2024, the High Road Kitchens (HRK) program expanded to cities and states across the country with growing success at supporting small restaurants to raise wages and improve working conditions. As we evolved the program this year, we saw 3 major outcomes: 1) improvements in wages, career mobility and morale of the low-wage predominantly women of color and young restaurant industry workforce; 2) increased ability for small restaurants, primarily owned by people of color, to attract and retain staffing in the midst of the industry’s workforce crisis; 3) grew the numbers of business owners as key champions in fight for wage increases for millions of tipped workers who still receive “subminimum” wages. Our huge policy win in Chicago in October, raising wages by more than 50% for 100,000 service workers, was galvanized by HRK restaurant owners working in solidarity with worker organizers, a model we seek to expand nationwide.**
