In 2018, at MAD, an influential symposium held in Copenhagen shaping the future of food and restaurants, an unusual thing happened. Of the 25 speakers, 14 were women. There were 11 men. I was one of them. To demonstrate how uncommon this is, at a previous symposium I spoke at, male speakers outnumbered female speakers, 20 to two.

MAD was held during the height of the reemergence of #MeToo in 2018. With an edge, my partner in life and business, who in her career has been subjected to sexual harassment by powerful men said, “You know, Ben, a woman should be telling the stories you are going to tell. Men always get the platform and it’s frustrating.” Kylie’s words were the truth. Many of my views are informed by her experiences, those of my mother and of female colleagues. My speech, which I called “No More Cock Rock”, was about the ways our Melbourne restaurant Attica had changed.

The following day at the symposium, I continued to digest stories, this time told by two heroic women, Trish Nelson and Lisa Donovan, fellow restaurant peers who shared their own harrowing tales of sexual assault and harassment in the hospitality industry.

In the audience and backstage, men were visibly grappling with what they were hearing. They seemed to not know what to think or how to act. More positively, the symposium provided a glimmer of hope that just maybe someone would be brave enough, and well-supported enough, to research and publish these sorts of stories back home.

Six years on, what felt like a real moment of change instead now feels more like a pause.

In restaurants, many of the worst stories that came out of #MeToo had two things in common: problematic men, and drug and alcohol abuse. Not for one second is the latter an excuse for indefensible behaviour. But it is a hard, cold fact that any workplace culture of regular partying, excessive consumption of alcohol and drug-taking will lead to problematic and potentially unsafe environments for its staff.

The glorification of this culture is a result of all sorts of horrifying things we’ve heard about recently involving the Swillhouse group.

Earlier this month various publications revealed allegations of sexual assault, alcohol and drug abuse, and a deeply misogynistic culture at the Swillhouse group that is pushing women out of the industry.

But there is something to be learned from reflecting on who helped give these sorts of people their platform in the first place, especially as often the abuse of power is hiding in plain sight.

The image of excessiveness is a social media marketing ploy. As devastatingly atrocious as it is, I don’t think we can say we didn’t know. Although I’d never heard any of the stories reported, I was not surprised. This is the tip of the iceberg.

Any business owner, restaurateur, head chef or head waiter who oversees this type of culture is putting the people they employ at risk of serious harm and holds us all down by damaging the reputation of our profession.

From my first job to my last, hospitality businesses have not always been safe or equal spaces for women. The change required urgently sits, both legally and ethically, at the feet of the owners of hospitality businesses, the vast majority of whom are men.

Ben Shewry, CONTRIBUTOR