Delivery provider GrubHub is dedicating both funding and marketing savvy to promote women-led restaurants across the country during March, which is Women’s History Month, the company said Monday.
But doing that means creating what could be the first national database of restaurants owned or run by women in the U.S.
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In a partnership with Women Chefs & Restaurateurs, or WCR, GrubHub launched the website RestaurantHer.com, which includes a searchable database by zip code to help diners find restaurants majority owned by women, or that have a kitchen helmed by a woman as chef or executive chef.
Not surprisingly, the database includes women-run restaurants in the GrubHub network. GrubHub works with more than 80,000 restaurants in more than 1,600 cities in the U.S. and London.
But with help from the WCR, the map also includes restaurants outside the GrubHub universe, said Katie Norris, GrubHub’s manager of corporate communications. “We were shocked that there wasn’t another map or director of women-led restaurants, so we created one.”
The database is also dynamic. Consumers are also invited to send in information about their favorite women-run restaurant, which GrubHub will verify before adding them to the directory, Norris said.
Women represent about 19 percent of chefs and 7 percent of head chefs in restaurants across the U.S., GrubHub said. And women chefs earn 28-percent less in base pay than their male counterparts.
GrubHub aims to champion women in the industry by raising awareness, but also money.
For every guest that pledges to dine in or order delivery from a female-run restaurant during March, GrubHub will contribute $1 to support women in the restaurant industry, up to $1 million. The first $100,000 has been pledged to the WCR.
“We’ve always believed it doesn’t have to be hard to run a fair and equitable kitchen,” said Amanda Cohen, chef and owner of the New York restaurant Dirt Candy and treasurer of the WCR board of directors, in a statement. “This partnership puts us in a position where we can provide the tools, not just to women, but to all chefs and owners who have long wanted to do things differently but didn’t know where to start.”
Contact Lisa Jennings at [email protected]
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