Swillhouse blues are a warning sign for hospitality industry

Sydney’s lockout laws were introduced a decade ago to reduce alcohol-fuelled violence at bars, pubs and clubs. They were a strong state government response to a brutal and highly toxic male culture that leached into nightclubs, where sexual assault and sleaze came to be tolerated with almost callous nonchalance.

Now, a Herald and Good Food investigation by Bianca Hrovat and Eryk Bagshaw has revealed one of the city’s most successful providers of hospitality, the Swillhouse Group, promoted a kind of edgy male culture redolent of all-boys schools of the past, rather than that of a highly profitable corporation responsibly attuned to staff and customers’ needs as required in the modern-day workplace.

Not only were the all-male bar staff at Baxter Inn promised a bottle of Penfolds Grange for the first to have sex with a customer when Swillhouse opened the bar in 2011, but five former female staff said they were sexually assaulted and harassed by employees across the group, which operates venues including Le Foote in The Rocks, Restaurant Hubert and Caterpillar Club in the CBD. The former staff also alleged they were encouraged to take drugs at work and the company failed to support them after they reported sexual assaults and harassment.

These revelations have damaged the Swillhouse Group: chief executive Anton Forte stood down from the board of the Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association, sponsors, artists and partners pulled out of the corporation’s first major festival, and food magazine Gourmet Traveller announced it was removing Restaurant Hubert from its NSW Top 25 list. Many customers may feel reluctant to return to these premises.

In a statement, Swillhouse said it responded with urgency whenever serious claims were presented. Part of the problem was that the group experienced massive growth in a short time, organisationally struggling to keep pace. The company did not employ a human resources representative until 2019, when it already had four venues and hundreds of staff. More than 2300 employees have worked for Swillhouse since it was founded in 2008. There is no suggestion that Forte was personally involved in the misconduct.

The mistreatment of women in the workplace is, of course, an issue across many industries including media (and Nine, owner of this masthead). The federal parliament this week debated a revolutionary new workplace code that grew out of former sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins’ independent inquiry into workplace culture, triggered by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins’ 2019 rape in a ministerial office.

But hospitality has some distinctions that make it high risk. It is a large employer of women, many young and inexperienced, and a key part of its operations involves serving alcohol, a drug often linked to sexual assaults.

You would have to wonder if the problems so evident at Swillhouse are hiding across the industry generally.

The Swillhouse expose is a cautionary tale showing what can go wrong when a blokey-driven business boasting “edginess” as a key marketing point grows too quickly, with few checks and balances. Swillhouse’s promotion of a culture revelling in drunkenness and misconduct reflects poorly on an industry that must protect women, not abuse them.

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.