This all blew up when someone named Cassidy Cho, a patron at Great White Melrose’s location, posted a TikTok video showing that all of the Asian patrons were placed in a corner. People in the comments section then said they experienced the same thing, while online reviews dating back years also said they were treated similarly at Great White’s Melrose restaurant and other locations. NBC Los Angeles spoke to former employees who said this was part of the management culture.
“They were very direct about telling me to make sure I limit the amount of ethnic people that are coming in,” said former employee Sarah Bryer.
“If Asian guests came in, we were told to seat them outside. Like they never got an inside table,” she said.
Another former employee, Montana Pine, said, “We were instructed to tell people that the restaurant was at capacity when, you know, certain demographics came in that they did not want in the restaurant.”
A content creator named Ed who shines a spotlight on Asian American news (@etchaskej) has been covering this, and he’s getting numerous DMs from employees shedding even more light on how abhorrent their practices were. One of the Sams told an employee not to let in too many Black people “because they didn’t want the place to get ghetto and trashy. They told all the DJs not to play rap and hip-hop to avoid having Black people coming in.”
A former employee DM’d Ed and told him that the Sams “consistently told us to wear skimpier clothing and felt us up.”
“Many female employees communicated they were inappropriately touched all the time,” the employee also told Ed over DM.
Source 1 and 2
