Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

A Seat at the Table

As a company with "hospitality" in our name, we’ve long strived to make people feel valued and heard. Hospitality exists when people feel you are on their side, but it can only fully exist when all people feel like they belong. It takes an engaged culture of diversity and inclusion to ensure that all stakeholders feel like they have a seat at our table. 

We have a lot of work to do and much more to learn, but with our collective commitment to make progress, we will more fully express and live our values:

• We commit to being actively anti-racist.  
• We commit to increasing racial and gender representation in our leadership and ensuring pay equity across levels.  
• We commit to being a welcoming and inclusive workplace without bias towards gender, race, sexuality, religion, political beliefs, age, abilities or disabilities, and socioeconomic status.  

This work is an ongoing journey and we've taken the actions below as a starting point. We invite your thoughts and ideas to help create a dialogue.  

Danny Meyer
Founder & CEO

Equity and Opportunity Within Our Company

We’re committed to excellence where it matters most, specifically when it comes to diversity, inclusion and gender parity across our organization. We have set organization-wide goals to reflect the diversity of the cities in which we operate. Each quarter we will update our progress below.

REPORTING PERIOD: Q3 2022

BY GENDER AND DEPARTMENT

OUR GOAL: 50% MALE, 50% FEMALE

We are committed to racial parity, with people of color making up at least 50% of our overall makeup. We are proud to have achieved this overall goal, while we continue to strive toward racial parity, gender parity, and pay equity at all levels.

Average of Average Wage for each Gender. Color shows details about Gender. The marks are labeled by average of Average Wage. The data is filtered on Period, which keeps Q1 2022.

* Constitute 10 employees or less

Continuous Learning and Development

We are committed to ongoing action to better understand systemic racism and bias — in our country, in our field, and within our own organization:

• We continue our partnership with DIBS expert Dr. James Pogue for ongoing assessment of our organization needs, annual DIBS training for all employees, quarterly DIBS and diversity highlight meetings, and an annual employee survey and company-wide compensation analysis.
  
  
• We developed and implemented an ongoing DIBS training for all employees, which highlights unconscious bias and the tenets of an anti-racism organization. It will be reviewed by all employees annually alongside quarterly town hall meetings and an annual employee survey.
  
  
• We have evaluated our internal policies and practices through a lens of diversity, inclusion, and belonging, including a policy review to eliminate inherent bias and the addition of Juneteenth to our holiday calendar.
  
  
• We completed a company-wide compensation analysis to ensure equity by gender, race, and ethnicity in our restaurants. When our team returns to its normal size, we will publish our pay equity analysis.  
  
  
• We have implemented I-sight, an anonymous platform to report issues or provide feedback, in all our restaurants to provide enhanced reporting and accountability.
  
  
• We have removed all gender pronouns from job descriptions and added pronouns to our email signatures.
  
  
• We have given all employees paid time off to vote and/or volunteer at a polling location on election days.
  
  
• We have committed to further diversifying our Board of Directors. 

Community Building

To truly make progress as a community, we ask each of the stakeholders we do business with to uphold our values on diversity, inclusion, and belonging. We are implementing new processes to measure racial and gender diversity in our suppliers so we can develop goals for improvement. 

In addition, we have partnered with these organizations to develop opportunities for underserved communities:

When we re-opened in 2020, we donated our first week of revenue to these organizations, and raised over $100,000 in funds for them through an online auction:

USHG also supports these hunger relief initiatives and civic organizations:

In 2021, we donated over $120,000 to the following nonprofits addressing issues of racial injustice; food insecurity; homelessness and incarceration; LGBTQ+ rights; and community services for immigrants, refugees, and youth and families in need:

The steps above are our first in a lifelong journey to a more equitable society.