NOT SO LUCKY STAR
Can Doesn't Mean Should Bringing a big name to the table isn’t always the home run that it might at first seem. BY HUGH THOMAS
ow do you name a restaurant concept? Best not ask Jack Whitehall. In September 2020, the actor and comedian co-launched his pop-up FoodSlut at Provisioners restaurant near Tower Bridge, leaning into London’s enlightened food scene with ‘super slutty bone marrow gravy’, ‘Slutty Burgers’, and the option to ‘slut it up’ with extra hot sauce. Food Twitter didn’t quite embrace the idea. ‘Derogatory term for women but making it branding, Jack?’ food writer and editor Helen Graves weighed in. ‘I’m so bored of people confusing being a w***er with being edgy,’ wrote farmer James Whetlor. And my favourite, from broadcaster and Telegraph writer Debora Robertson: ‘Please shut up, close up, and go away you ludicrous child’. These were the more family-friendly responses. FoodSlut (not to be confused with LA import Eggslut) is one of a spate of celebritybacked entries into the hospitality industry within the last couple years. There’s also Mark Wahlberg’s now defunct Wahlburgers,
H
36 Q1 2021 INFLUENCEONLINE.CO.UK
Lewis Hamilton’s vegan burger chain Neat, and Ed Sheeran’s Bertie Blossoms, which Times critic Marina O’Laughlin described as ‘demented’. Some are questionable, some may do more harm than good. In an industry already suffering from damaging attitudes towards the women within it, you can see why something with a name like FoodSlut could be problematic. Partly due to a failure to modernise, many restaurant kitchens rely on the brigade system – a hierarchy of prep cooks at the bottom, and exec chefs at the top. As the term suggests, the brigade system was founded on military rank of authority, which doesn’t lend itself well to managing people in already hot, loud, chaotic kitchens. Women are more often on the receiving end than men. Stories – at least, the ones that are reported – include: staff making bets on who can make the new girl chef cry first; choosing not to wear skirts or dresses to disincentivise guests from getting handsy; a chef hitting a female member of staff almost daily, ‘leaving their mark’ on them; male staff watching female staff while they change clothes or shower
after a shift. Surveys tell us these cases are being reported more and more in recent years. ‘Hopefully,’ FoodSlut co-founder Marcus Petty-Saphon tells me, ‘people understand we are using it in a way to describe a certain type of food and not to cause offence.’ I hope the risk they took was worth it. Risk, though, is certainly part of the equation when expanding your brand into new areas. Celebrities may realise it late, but some sort of emotional investment matters most. ‘I have nothing against celebs opening up bars and restaurants,’ Goya Communications’ Sara Al-Ali tells me. ‘But, say, when footballers open restaurants, it tends to be style over substance, and lacking in soul.’ Perhaps you see it in your industry – celebrities dipping their toes in when they don’t know the temperature of the water. Before she founded hospitality communications firm Tonic, Frances Cottrell-Duffield worked in fashion and sport PR. She recalls a model who wrote a cookbook. ‘But that was a passion project – not just putting her name to
