Graphic content: When hospitality group Swillhouse opened a new whisky bar, the all-male team was issued a challenge: a special prize to the first to have sex with a customer.
When Sydney hospitality group Swillhouse opened whisky bar The Baxter Inn in 2011, the all-male team was issued a challenge: the first to have sex with a customer would be awarded a bottle of 1982 Penfolds Grange.One bartender emerged from the store room, victorious, to collect his prize – a wine worth more than $1000. The room was secluded behind an old bank vault door, and though it was intended for rare whisky tastings, it became a go-to spot for staff to take customers to have sex.
They say Swillhouse, which has grown from one subterranean dive bar just off Oxford Street to six of Sydney’s most well-known venues in a decade, has not done enough to address sexual assault and harassment within the workplace. “An emblem of an era of excess never to be seen again,” is how Swillhouse executive and creative director Jordan McDonald described it when the bar closed down to make way for the Sydney Metro in 2022.“Never will the world know a Frankie’s other than at its most potent, balls out version of itself.”
Forte says there were fewer full-time female bartender applicants when all-male teams were in place at Swillhouse bars Shady Pines and The Baxter Inn, and the company has since worked towards an equal gender balance. Today, 40 per cent of all venue managers at Swillhouse are women. There are now eight women on its full leadership team of 24.
When she complained to management, they proposed one solution: work in a different area of the venue. The man was later promoted.From 2018, two other women complained of repeated sexual harassment in the form of inappropriate comments and physical intimidation, three former bartenders say. The decision to quit a job at Swillhouse isn’t taken lightly. Nor is speaking out against the company.
In 2022, the company also launched its quarterly lifestyle magazine, Swill, featuring interviews with celebrity figures including Stanley Tucci. “This extraordinary celebration combines a wine fair, music festival, and Bacchanalian revival into a full cultural freakout,” a spokesperson for the group said last week.It’s the same desire for drunken debauchery that bartenders say has put them at risk.
“It’s a really good feeling when you are in , but they will let you get sexually abused and they will tell you it’s your fault because you were drinking,” says one woman.On one night out with a male co-worker, the woman alleges she passed out, and woke to him raping her. She reported the incident to management, and her request to be stationed elsewhere in Hubert, Swillhouse’s largest venue, was denied. She says the man received no disciplinary action, but she was iced out.
“That didn’t happen, and I was forced to work with ,” she says. “They let him continue to be employed there, and they offered me no resources, no support, nothing.” “I got completely blackout drunk and … came to with him raping me in the women’s bathrooms,” the woman says. The waiter reported the incident to police and asked not to be named as she is pursuing legal action.
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