How Mission Chinese Is Contending With Past Allegations of Racial Discrimination

Like many restaurants in New York, Mission Chinese Food has been speaking out on social media about its efforts to support the protests against police brutality, in the wake of George Floyd’s killing while in police custody. When Mission Chinese Food first reopened last week, all of the sales from the first night went to Black Lives Matter, and a few days later, owner and chef Danny Bowien announced that 10 percent of sales moving forward would go toward the Conscious Kid, a nonprofit dedicated to education “through a critical race lens.”

But the popular restaurant — known as much for its loud flavors as it is for Bowien’s progressive, cool-kid persona — already has a very public and negative track record for its treatment of Black people. In 2017, former staffers sued Bowien and the restaurant for discrimination, alleging that management fostered a toxic environment where Black staffers were treated poorly, and retaliated against anybody who spoke up. While Bowien himself wasn’t accused of inappropriate actions, the staffers pointed to managers with racist behavior and alleged that he knew of it and did nothing. The suit was ultimately settled.

By Sunday, as people started asking Mission Chinese Food why it wasn’t donating more money and some people posted about the lawsuit, Bowien addressed the suit in a follow-up Instagram post, on both his personal page and the restaurant’s page. Though he thinks the company abided by all the appropriate legal requirements for the staffer reports, he now admits that he and the restaurant could have done more to be anti-racist instead of simply following the existing regulations.

He also started limiting the number of comments allowed on the pages, and instead asked people to DM him or email Mission Chinese with their feedback. On Monday, Eater NY spoke with Bowien about his decision, what he learned from the discrimination lawsuit, and why he decided to close public comments on Instagram.

Bowien’s words have been edited for clarity and length.

It sounds so cliche right now because everyone is issuing these statements. I don’t want this to be taken out of context. I mean this earnestly as I can, we didn’t want to do something that was performative.

This is a part of our narrative. This is part of our history. This happened. To me, it made sense. We have been thinking about it for a long time. This is a part of our story. Yes, we did have these things [like HR] in place. It went sideways. I’ve thought a lot about it. Why did this happen? Rather than wait for someone to ask us about this, we wanted to get ahead of it. This is something that we wanted to own, and also say, hey if you have any questions, let us know.

It’s a scary thing. All of the allegations that were named in that lawsuit, the people that were involved, it hurts me so much as a person, if someone comes to work here and had a bad experience. I’m not perfect. I’m a very human person. I’m always learning. To be able to be honest and say, we’re not perfect, and on paper, we have these policies and all of these things in place, but some people’s experiences have been different.

First, we needed to address this with our staff at the restaurant. That’s the most important thing. That’s another thing we’re hearing, having people have open conversations, and be able to talk to our staff.

A lot of people have reached out to us since we issued the statement. A lot of people have reached out to us with resources.

One of the reasons we turned off comments was not because we’re afraid of addressing the conversation. A lot of this work that needs to be done, I firmly believe it needs to be done offline or in person. What I’ve seen happening in the comment threads on a lot of people’s post, is that it’s like YouTube comments. They can get so nasty. They go after each other. We saw it happen with a previous post. It wasn’t about this issue particularly, it was about what we were donating to. They were like, ‘Why are you only donating this percentage?’ Then everyone start going after this person.

If you want to say something to us, you can DM us. Email us. But I didn’t want people to be negative towards each other. It’s hard to think that it’s something we instigated. [Turning off comments] wasn’t trying to hide anything. We’re open. We hear you. We responded to every single person.

I had someone who was commenting a few days ago. I noticed that she had some mutual friends of mine. Not food industry friends, like my friends from SF, one of my tattoo artist friends. I wanted to reach out to her specifically. I told her, the only reason I’m messaging you directly is because we have mutual friends in common. I want to let you know, I’m really sorry. If you have anything you want to address, if there’s anything I can bring you up to speed on. She was actually like, ‘No hard feelings. I used to work there. And I had a pretty bad experience.’ Dude, I wish you could have told me. She said ‘I think I tried to reach out to you, and I told a manager, and you never responded.’

That really hit me hard. I addressed that. Maybe as a staff member, you don’t want to bother owners or approach them. Back then, I probably wasn’t making myself approachable. I was in a bad place with drugs and stuff like that. I was self-medicating in really bad ways. She said, ‘I wish I could have said something. But I’m happy that I can now.’ It’s been good to have conversations offline and not in front of a captive audience and not where everyone can jump in. That’s been productive and highly helpful.

Look, in a nutshell, I have always been really scared. This industry, for so long, has been one of perfection. Don’t admit when you’re wrong. You have to be perfect. I realized a long time ago that perfection isn’t possible. I have to own that. I wasn’t available in the sense that I need to be. Just being human. It’s the biggest step toward improving.

The other thing is, I don’t know if there’s a right way to do anything. I don’t want to be the person who’s like, ‘This is how you do it.’ This is what’s working for me. Being vulnerable, being transparent, and being honest. My quest to doing that is engaging offline a little bit more than just in the comment section. DM me. We will get back to you. I will get back to you.

My son’s mom, Youngmi, she was instrumental in helping me. She has been there the whole time. We co-parent. She’s been there. She knows, and said, ‘Are you ready for what could happen and what people will want to say?’

I’ve never really spoken publicly about what happened, or the steps we’ve taken to move beyond what it was like three years ago. Complicit, or not complicit, compliance isn’t enough. We weren’t doing anything to be anti-racist. We were doing everything we could to be compliant as a business. We weren’t checking in with our team and our staff. It was scary. People didn’t feel like they could talk to us.

Those walls have to come down. I think that also people don’t want to talk to HR. For so long, you need to take it up with HR. I think a lot of people don’t think HR hears their complaints.

That’s what I’ve come to realize. HR is always, ‘You can never be responsible for what people do, you’re only responsible for what you do after you’re made aware.’ A lot of times, what’s happening is that we’re not made aware of it. In the past, it could go to a manager or HR. As an owner, if you have people who work for you, you have to be plugged in — perceptive, available, and open to them. I’ve learned that.

I don’t think there’s one complete right way to do anything. If there is, it’s not going to come from me. I want to be as open as I can be and as fair as I can be, and as honest with myself as I can be. I’m definitely not going to tell anyone how to feel or what to feel. Or even how I feel. Here are the facts. This is where we were.

As for the donations, it’s difficult business-wise. The first night we did it, we had a soft opening, we were able to donate all of the money that we made. Internally we had a conversation. We were donating to my business partner Anthony [Myint]’s food initiative, ZeroFoodPrint. We were like, ‘How can we do something that’s not going to last just a month? What’s a number we can give continuously that would work for our business?’ We’re not that big. We don’t make that much money. Our margins are not that great, especially coming back from COVID-19. So we crunched the numbers, we decided can do this for now. Let’s explore other things. Fundraiser, raffles — once the city starts reopening more, we can do more.

Again, this is uncharted territory. I saw what Brooks [Headley] is doing. At Superiority Burger, they’re donating the highest sale from that week, they donate that. I wish chefs were talking more about this. I haven’t called my friends and saying, ‘How are you handling this?’ It’s taken so much to reopen. It’s a scramble. We’ve been closed for months.

To answer your question, did I post the statement in response to the comments? To me, it felt like what needed to happen. And you know, it’s hard. I learned stuff. People are commenting on business and margins. They said it better than I could have, but it was in a mean way. The other commenters could be asking an honest question. It’s so much. That definitely informed my choice to turn the comments off. I wanted to it to be constructive and positive.

Again, I’m not an expert. It sucks because it’s a cop out. I don’t really know. I can tell you how we’re dealing with it. Hopefully we can be constructive by owning our narrative. Yeah, we fell down. We got back up. We weren’t necessarily right. People make mistakes. If anyone knows me, anyone who works for us, I don’t believe in perfection. You gotta be better everyday. If you can learn, you are better.