Discrimination towards customers in the restaurant industry

Abstract

Despite laws like the Civil Rights Acts and the Americans with Disabilities Act, customers in restaurants are still faced with an inordinate amount of discrimination. The most prevalent forms of discrimination are race and disability based. Large restaurant chains such as the Waffle House and Cracker Barrel have learned nothing from the landmark Denny’s discrimination case as they face potentially larger class action suits today. Despite the bad news, there have been significant developments toward limiting restaurant discrimination. They are the industry wide impact of Denny’s diversity training programme and a recent court decision strengthening the ADA. The only true ways to limit and eradicate discrimination from restaurants is to continue educating our children about diversity, insist on expanding corporate diversity programmes, and increasing penalties on those organisations that do discriminate.