It’s Time for Restaurants to Change

Chef Amethyst Ganaway from North Charleston, South Carolina, is the winner of the 2020 LDEI Culinary Legacy Award. She is also a voice for change, especially in the restaurant industry.

In this Eater essay titled, Restaurants Must Use This Moment to Change, Too, Chef Ganaway calls out the “racism, sexism, ageism, and every other -ism there is,” in the industry. She wants to know why the same people who were so angered over large chains taking federal relief loans have remained silent on the Black Lives Matter movement.

Right now, restaurant owners, chefs, and people across the food industry should be at the frontlines with protesters, speaking as loudly about social injustices as they did about the Paycheck Protection Program and unemployment due to COVID-19. They should be fighting just as hard to end systemic racism, poverty, and the inhumane treatment of immigrants as they did to save their businesses, seeing as their entire labor force depends on it.

Chef Ganaway is calling on all restaurants to rip down the walls, stop the stereotyping and finally become the safe “third spaces” they should have always been.

Read more of Chef Ganaway’s powerful words, here.