FeedFeed was recently named in a lawsuit over allegations of gender and racial discrimination.
Feedfeed, one of the largest crowdsourced publications, is at the center of a lawsuit filed by two former employees over allegations of discrimination. According to the suit, the employees, Rachel Gurjar and Sahara Henry-Bohoskey, argue the office culture fostered gender and racial discrimination. It specifically names Feedfeed’s senior management as the defendant. That senior management includes the company’s founders, Dan and Julie Resnick, and its editorial and test kitchen director Jake Cohen.
Equality graphic; image courtesy of GDJ via Pixabay, www.pixabay.com
What kind of discrimination did the plaintiffs endure, though? Well, according to the suit, women of color allegedly received lower salaries and were “verbally abused and retaliated against when they complained.” Additionally, the women claim that “while opportunities existed for white staff, they had to work harder to get the positions they wanted.” To make matters worse, the plaintiffs allege “they were even routinely asked to work overtime without being compensated for it.” They were later “paid more than $30,000 worth of overtime after they left the company.”
So far, the Resnicks have pushed back against the allegations and claim they worked hard to build a creative and constructive work culture. The couple also said that “while the plaintiffs were given opportunities, they were not able to meet the company’s performance expectations.” When commenting on the allegations, the couple further stated that they “are distraught that it has come to this…The number of falsehoods and inaccurate, misleading statements are too numerous to mention in this brief response but will be presented in a court of law.”
“I treated everyone at the Feedfeed equally and fairly and never demeaned or disparaged any of my co-workers in any way.”
When asked about the allegations, lawyers for Gurjar and Henry-Bohoskey said:
“I don’t believe that the Resnicks necessarily set out to create a racist caste system in their company. But it is what they did, because they didn’t care to try not to.”
FeedFeed isn’t the only company in the food industry to come under fire in recent years. Back in 2020, Bon Appétit came under fire when its editor-in-chief, Adam Rapoport, was accused of fostering a toxic work culture. Additionally, Rapoport was accused of treating his assistant, Ryan Walker-Hartshorn “like the help,” and on a whole, the company “treated people of color as beneath its white employees.” A contributor at the time also stated:
“Bon Appétit is an unbelievably hard place to work at as a person of color, and even harder for Black staffers. That became clear to me almost immediately when I was brought on as a contributing writer in 2018. It’s why I’ve never been interested in going on staff.”
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