Grill'd needs to tackle issues head on, not resort to PR 101

“The dishwasher had build-up of debris and mould … as dishes containing raw meat and plates, and cutlery used by guests are cleaned in the dishwasher it must operate effectively to kill all pathogenic bacteria and virus.”

It was one of a number of observations in an internal audit of a company-owned Grill’d restaurant in Sydney. Other internal “gap analysis” reports of restaurants obtained by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald  highlight food safety problems that haven't arisen overnight.

Grill'd has been accused of having poor food hygiene and safety standards.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Some of the striking observations at one restaurant included a dirty scourer stored on top of an open packet of gloves and a dirty mat stored on top of cleaning cloths and scourers. Another had chicken tubs on the floor next to a bait station. In another store, chicken containers had a “pungent odour” and all containers need to be cleaned again. Many stores had gaps in the food safety book, which is mandatory under the Food Safety Code.

Some of the internal audits of company-owned stores, not those owned by franchisees, were conducted in 2017 and late 2018, but more recent internal documents point to some restaurants still grappling with food-hygiene issues. More recent documents suggest the problems are more prevalent in NSW and Victoria.

Grill'd's response to a series of questions on the standard of cleanliness and food safety was that it treats health and safety as an utmost priority. It said it had made “significant investments in systems, processes and people to ensure that our food safety and team safety [are] best practice in our industry”. This included compulsory food handling and safety training and a monthly third-party audit that exceeds the food safety standards required by local councils and state regulatory bodies.

But the photos and comments made in these reports and other internal documents suggest that some things fall through the cracks.

A common theme is a lack of proper training of staff in food safety standards, which is ironic given thousands of Grill’d staff have been put through a government-subsidised training program since the first restaurant opened in 2004.

Indeed, it has been estimated the government has spent millions of dollars subsidising training, known as a Certificate III in hospitality, for Grill’d workers.

For a 23-year-old like Patrick Stevenson, who has been working at Grill’d for two years, the hourly rate is $18.50 which is $3.25 an hour less than he would be paid under the Grill’d enterprise if he wasn’t a trainee. If he was a non-trainee paid according to the Fast Food Award, the safety net for workers, he would be paid $21.41 for weekday work, $23.55 for evening work and $26.76 for weekend work.

Not surprisingly the training program has attracted a lot of controversy over the years as workers have complained that it is a sophisticated ploy by the company to suppress wages.

Instead of being voluntary, as the company states, many say they felt they had little choice but to do the course if they wanted the job in the first place. "I think the training and EBA [enterprise bargaining agreement] is a method Grill'd has used to keep wages down and exploit weaknesses in the Fair Work Act," Antonio Lumley, a former Grill'd worker said.

While the company says it contributes towards the costs of the traineeship and is out of pocket each year, what it doesn’t say is the amount it saves on wages by having at least a third of its staff on traineeships. Nor is there a calculation of the cost of the Enterprise Agreement to workers.

As the national secretary of the United Workers Union, Tim Kennedy, National Secretary, said: “Traineeships are a cruel joke”.

Kennedy said the union’s analysis of the enterprise agreement is that it should not have been approved.

He said the traineeships, low wages and zero penalty rates were compounding the exploitation of those workers.

The media investigation into Grill’d has been an eye-opener. It is hard to recall researching a company that has so many unhappy former executives and workers.

It was also interesting to watch how the company handled media queries by organising a statement to workers. The company had been sent a series of questions the previous week and by Monday it had a lawyer and external PR team on the offensive. Franchisees were contacted to join a phone hook-up to discuss the impending article, restaurant managers were warned and a plan was being hatched to release a video and statement to workers.

The company would take the surprising step of doing a video and writing to thousands of workers before the story appeared to say, “We are aware of a pending media story that will wrongly claim we have worked against the interests of our franchise partners, and our restaurant teams, including how we conduct our training.”

Antonio Lumley in Perth worked at Grill'd and found traineeships a way to suppress wagesCredit: Tony McDonough

That alerted other news organisations to cover the comments then follow up the story before this story had even been published.

When those stories appeared, a staff meeting at head office was held on December 4 to say they were comfortably relaxed with the media so far and that the news stories had undercut this story. They said whatever this investigation talked about would be history-based and would be easily rebutted on the basis of a journey of continual improvement.

It is PR 101 for most companies under scrutiny to play down issues, relegate them to historical problems and a few disgruntled people and to ride it out until the media cycle turns.

Grill’d has opted to take this tack. Let’s hope for the workers' and customers' sake it rethinks this strategy and tackles the problems head on.