Local: Mission Eatery

Local: Mission Eatery Employee Fired Days After Reporting Sexual Harassment, Lawsuit Claims

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

With Local: Mission Eatery, Local's Corner, and this week's opening of Local Mission Market and the announcement of Local Cellar, Yaron Milgrom's business empire continues to grow and make an impact on the neighborhood.  However, a string of complaints this year are beginning call his business practices into serious question.

According to a complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court, Local: Mission Eatery's general manager “repeatedly harassed” server Ariel Rose “throughout the course of her employment,” despite the restaurant's owners being aware of the situation:

“[The General Manager] repeatedly engaged in sexual harassment through persistent, offensive comments based on sex, including but not limited to the following: commenting on PLAINTIFF's breast size, comparing PLAINTIFF's breast size to other employee's breast size, commenting on PLAINTIFF's weight and appearance, and repeatedly telling PLAINTIFF graphic details of his sexual encounters.”

After “repeatedly complaining” about the harassment, Rose formally met with Milgrom on January 8th to discuss the harassment.  Five days later, she was fired.

The general manager was still posting to Mission Eatery's Facebook wall as of July 16th, suggesting he was not terminated.

The lawsuit also alleges other employee abuses, including:

  • Failure to provide employees with legally-mandated rest periods, or further compensating those employees as required by law.
  • Not giving employees working more than 5 hours time to eat.
  • “On at least one occasion,” the restaurant didn't pay employee's wages on a scheduled payday.
  • Failure to provide earning statements for tax purposes.
  • Not paying owed wages to the fired employee.
  • Taking tips left for servers.

According to additional documents related to the case, “settlement discussions [have] reached an impasse” and the case is scheduled to go to trial in April 2014.

The lawsuit precedes another controversy for the “Local” businesses.  In April of this year, a Latino family alleged Local's Corner refused to seat them despite having available seating, implying it was racially-motivated discrimination.  Yaron later apologized for the incident, saying he was “deeply sorry” and it was “a huge failure to enact our commitment to everyone with whom to interact.”

As the tipster who sent us the server's complaint told us:

I'm starting to actually feel sorry for Yaron, despite having his weird empire of businesses, he's kind of the most hated person on this side of the Mission. But the attached does not do any good for his image at all.

We agree—the attacks on Yaron and his personal property have been, at times, overwhelming.  However, if any of these claims prove to be true, it casts a damning light on the man's business practices and general ethics.

Neither the Milgrom nor Rose have responded to emails for comment, but you can read the original complaint below:

[Photo by markevnic72]

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

New Farm-Fresh, Local Supermarket Coming to the Inner Mission

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Grub Street brings us word that the folks at Local: Mission Eatery (where I've tried to eat lunch at like a million times but they never seem to be actually open) plan on expanding their “empire” this summer with a breakfast-centric cafe at 23rd and Bryant and a market on Harrison between 22nd and 23rd:

Then there's Local Mission Market, an 2700-square-foot space with 70 feet of street frontage which will be moving into a former industrial space on Harrison between 22nd and 23rd. The plan there is for a full-service market, with cheese counter, butcher, dry goods, and fresh produce, all either made in-house or sourced from Northern California farmers and producers. This of course means no bananas or pineapples, ever, but it also means they'll be the only market in San Francisco who can boast this kind of purely local ethos. (The only exceptions will be coffee, chocolate, and sugar, which will still come from Northern California-based companies.)

Also, [owner Yaron Milgrom] wants to set a new standard for sustainability in the way the market runs. “Supermarkets throw out fifteen to twenty percent of their unsold perishables,” he says. “So with a full production kitchen doing all this canning and preserving, nothing will be thrown out. It's going to be about finding efficiencies to reduce waste from common supermarket practices.”

Construction on said market is slated to kick-off this February with the anticipated opening date penciled in for sometime mid-summer (although, these things never seem to go as planned).  They also plan on having an open-kitchen, so you can watch cooks “take a bunch of perfectly ripe peaches off the store floor” and “go back into the kitchen and start turning them into peach mostarda”—which means none of that fun, Anthony Bourdain-level 'hijinks' one might expect from an inner-Mission kitchen will be going down.

While some people will assuredly, ahem, “point out” that Local Mission Market is ripping off Bi-Rite and not serving the everyday needs of Mission residents, remember that Bi-Rite Market earns eight times more money per square foot than Safeway and needs a bouncer to keep the throngs of weekend traffic at bay.

[Grub Street]

Previously on Uptown Almanac: