NYC Michelin-star Gastropub Closes After 11 Employees Accuse Owner Of Sexual Harassment

The Spotted Pig, a Michelin-star gastro pub that was once boasted of celebrity clientele, has shut down its operations. The closure will affect 78 full- and part-time employees but the restaurant’s principal owner, Ken Friedman, assured that he had helped most of his former employees find new jobs.

The Spotted Pig became the epicenter of a sexual harassment case when 11 female former employees accused Friedman in 2017 of sexually harassing them, NY Daily News reported. The abuse would reportedly happen in an upstairs VIP area dubbed as the “rape room.”

Friedman said that he already did everything he could to keep the business running. “For over two years I have done everything possible to keep the Spotted Pig open,” Friedman said in a statement, according to The New York Times.

“I’ve been working to try to raise funds or sell my shares, in order to save the business, to continue to support our great employees — many of whom have been with us for over a decade — so they could keep their jobs and health benefits,” Friedman continued.

The closure came just a month after the New York State attorney general Letitia James announced that Friedman agreed to settle claims of sexual harassment, gender discrimination and retaliation to 11 of the restaurant’s former employees. Under the agreement, Friedman will pay a lump sum of $240,000 to the complainants plus 20 percent of the restaurant’s profits for the next 10 years.

Friedman said that the Spotted Pig was experiencing cash flow problems and was no longer profitable recently. “We’ve been unable to raise funds or sell the business, which we needed to do to pay the rent and other debts,” Friedman said. “The Pig has been running in the red for a long time. And so it must close.”

Friedman opened The Spotted Pig in 2004 in a partnership with celebrity chef April Bloomfield. It quickly became a hit with New Yorkers when it won a Michelin star after operating for a year that waiting time for a table would sometime stretch for hours. Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Jay-Z were regulars at the restaurant.