December 1st, 2020 • Chris Stang

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, and inclusion COMMUNITY UPDATE

a LETTER FROM our ceo

On June 1st, following the murder of George Floyd, I issued a letter on behalf of our company standing in solidarity with the Black community while denouncing all forms of racism, police brutality, systemic injustice, and white supremacy.

In that letter, part of The Infatuation and Zagat’s commitment was to hold ourselves more accountable for playing a proactive role in creating change. Today marks six months since we shared this message and I felt it was important to update you regarding progress on the commitments we made, along with some of the other steps we've taken towards making our company and content more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

Hiring, Talent & Culture

On August 17th, we proudly welcomed Angie Báez to our leadership team as Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Angie reports directly to me, ensuring that our DEI initiatives have high visibility and high priority within the organization. Angie is an incredibly talented DEI executive and thoughtful leader who brings experience and enthusiasm to her work. And while we know that this work must be a part of our shared company values and not just one person’s responsibility, she and the rest of our Talent team have already made an impact by putting in place some key initiatives. They are as follows:

Executive Training: We enrolled our C-level executives in a six week training program called DEI Foundations Course by Jennifer Brown Consulting. This work began in June (before Angie arrived at the company) but an internal training program will be a part of the company’s regular executive training moving forward with the goal of deepening our leaders’ understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.

Our First-Ever Internal Self-Identification Campaign: A survey - which all full-time employees will be encouraged to complete - that will provide us with important demographic data, allowing the company to set benchmarks for DEI, specifically as they relate to hiring, promotions, pay equity, and professional development.

A New Partnership With The Mosaic Collaborative: The Mosaic Collaborative is a Black and Queer-led organization dedicated to providing organizations with the framework and tools needed to incorporate all voices in decision making, cultural norms and programmatic innovations. In partnership, our staff will be offered continued education in 2021 to promote and affirm anti-racism, intersectionality, and inclusivity in our day to day lives.

People Manager Training: As a point of priority in her first 90 days, Angie, in partnership with our Talent team, hosted a required training series for all people managers, which focused on inclusive leadership and equitable hiring. The goal of this training is to coach our people managers on key competencies and behaviors for inclusive leadership, as well as best practices for inclusivity throughout the hiring process.

An Internal Speaker Series: In October, we kicked off an internal speaker series called The Journey, which is a monthly program featuring a group of accomplished professionals, all from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Each guest brings a new perspective, sharing honest discussions around their personal lives and careers, as well as the challenges and triumphs they've faced on their journey.

Freelance Content Compensation: To ensure equity in our freelance hiring, our company implemented competitive, fixed, non-negotiable rates per freelance project.

Content & Editorial

For our audience and greater community outside the company itself, The Infatuation’s Editorial team has taken many steps to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion. These changes are reflected in the content we publish externally, but those shifts stem from efforts to open dialogue and to have more transparent and honest conversations internally. In order to move forward as a more diverse and more inclusive publication, it was essential to also look retrospectively, openly acknowledging missteps, mistakes, and problematic decisions made in the past. In each step we take, we are simultaneously examining our past and making changes for the future.

The ideas, inspiration, and impetus for many of these changes should be credited to the Editorial Diversity & Inclusion Task Force, a group made up of BIPOC editorial staff members. In a letter shared with editorial leadership in August, the group outlined key challenges, and proposed solutions. Their contributions have been essential to the progress we have made over the past six months. Thank you to Anikah Shaokat, Bryan Kim, Joel Ang, Julia Chen, Kat Hong, Lani Conway, Nikko Duren, and Rianne Shlebak for their partnership and continued dedication to this important work.

Content Audit: This Fall, we began the work of a content audit, which involves a thorough review of our content, starting with the oldest published reviews in our longest-standing cities. Knowing that various articles published on the site in the past had included stereotypes, tropes, or other non-inclusive language, our team recognized the need for a major review of past work. In order to move quickly but also thoroughly, while allowing staff members to continue to perform their roles producing new content, we hired a diverse group of experienced sensitivity readers to work on a freelance basis, and tasked them with flagging problematic language. Topics they have flagged include content centering or assuming a white perspective, romanticizing of gentrification, lack of cultural awareness, heteronormativity, and others. Moving forward, this will inform updates to our Style Guide and editorial team trainings.

Coverage & Strategy: Our commitment to cover a more diverse group of restaurants can be seen in newly published content. New research practices have led to new guides covering more cuisines, a more diverse set of dishes, more multicultural holidays, and which address restaurant ownership (e.g. Black-owned restaurant guides). Our new peer editing program also adds a layer to ensure that the language used is inclusive. When we reintroduced our list of the best new restaurants in a given city, which we call the “Hit List,” we created new guidelines that prioritize the breadth and depth of coverage. As mentioned in the new standards we’ve created internally, our intention is “to shed light on underrepresented restaurants, cuisines, and neighborhoods to balance the ‘buzzy’ white-owned, affluent, Euro-centric restaurants typically featured on these kinds of lists across food media.”

DEI Accountability: Each month, the editorial team holds two formal conversations around DEI. The first is a monthly accountability update from editorial leadership, recapping all DEI progress made in the past month. The second is a conversational salon led by Angie Báez, which uses a variety of resources and formats to promote discussion based learning. Topics covered so far include white supremacy in the restaurant industry and the role restaurant coverage in a gentrified world, and upcoming salons will dive into labor practices, food colonialism, and more. These are just two examples of our commitment to join and lead practical and honest conversations around DEI.

Zagat Stories: At the beginning of this year, we launched a new editorial platform under the Zagat brand called Zagat Stories. This platform has embraced the democratizing, populist spirit of the Zagat brand by covering stores about people from all backgrounds. In particular, we’ve spent the last 6 months highlighting restaurant industry stories of women, people of color, LGTBQ, and nonbinary individuals, as well as other groups across America - particularly if their voices are historically underrepresented in mainstream food and hospitality media.

Social Impact

As a company, we have always tried to find ways to do good in the world, whether it be by volunteering our staff and community or raising money for important causes. This became even more important in 2020, and our efforts that focus on benefitting underrepresented groups have been the following:

Black Lives Matter: In June, we committed $15,000 to the NAACP, as well as $10,000 in matching donations to various social justice organizations that our employees were supporting. Reclaim the Block, Black Visions Collective, and The Bail Project were among the 37 non-profit recipients.

Feed The Polls: We felt passionately about making an impact on Election Day in the U.S., particularly in a way that supported underrepresented and underserved communities. In late September we created an initiative called Feed The Polls. In partnership with The Migrant Kitchen, Feed The Polls was a campaign designed to ensure that food insecurity didn't keep anyone, particularly those in lower income communities, from turning out to vote. We proudly served 41,000 meals on November 3rd in 18 cities across nine states, raising more than $533,000.

By sharing today’s update, I hope that we are sending a message of continued commitment to creating a world-class organization with diversity, equity, and inclusion deeply rooted in its core values. That said, I also know how much work we have to do. We still need more diversity in leadership roles. We need to continue to work on our content. And we need to show results and hold ourselves accountable on an ongoing basis. To that end, expect to see more communication from us on these topics. Our next update will be to publish the first of what will be an annual diversity report, along with further accounting on content initiatives, internal programs, community partnership, and more.

We appreciate you reading this and your continued dialogue and support. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas. Reach out anytime at community@theinfatuation.com. 

Chris Stang
Co-Founder & CEO