Sex, sleaze and Swillhouse: The sinister side of the glitzy hospitality scene

One of Sydney’s top bar and restaurant groups has been hit with claims it pushed female staff out of the company after reporting sexual assaults, encouraged staff to have sex with customers and take drugs while on shift, and discriminated against women as it built up a hospitality empire that now spans six venues across the city.

Five former female staff say they were sexually assaulted and harassed by other employees across the Swillhouse group, which operates six of Sydney’s most high-profile venues, including Le Foote in The Rocks, Restaurant Hubert, the Baxter Inn and Caterpillar Club in the CBD.

In response to the allegations raised in a months-long investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Food, Swillhouse chief executive Anton Forte said the company was aware of sexual assault allegations at its venues and said it “sincerely regretted and apologised to any former employees who felt unsupported and at risk”.

One former Hubert bartender said she was raped in the restaurant toilets by a fellow staff member last year after she was given a cocktail made with 10 different gins. “I got completely blackout drunk and blacked out and came to with him raping me in the women’s bathrooms at work,” she said.

The bartender, who asked not to be identified because she is pursuing legal action, reported the incident to NSW Police.

She said she was “driven to breaking point” by the company, which initially offered her counselling but then subjected her to performance reviews. When she asked to move to another venue, Le Foote, she had to take a pay cut and then had her hours reduced after she began suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder while at work.

Internal emails reveal that one manager said her “general negativity within the workplace” was “not in line with our core values of ‘good times’ and ‘devoted hospitality’.”

A different manager said in an email that her “personal situation” could not be taken into account to give her extra hours, and that “we only take into consideration restaurant needs”.

Forte said Swillhouse provided extensive support to the employee including accompanying her to the police station and psychological assistance after she reported the allegation.

“Due to the roster in place at that restaurant, there were some discrepancies in hours, which were rectified upon being brought to our attention,” he said.

Another Hubert bartender said she was sexually assaulted by a colleague at home. She said she was told by her supervisor the next day that it was her fault for drinking and that she was a “square peg in a round hole”.

“The people that are making money are doing it off our broken bodies,” she said. “This industry that I have given so much to has completely f---ed me over.”

“They wheel you out on International Women’s Day, but you are afraid to be feminine,” said another bartender. “It was established that if you say anything, you are out.”

Forte said Swillhouse had never discriminated against an employee who raised sexual assault allegations.

“At Swillhouse, sexual assault allegations are handled with the highest level of urgency and care,” he said.

But three former staff members, who requested anonymity to protect their future employment, said the company put them in vulnerable situations as part of a wider culture that fostered a reliance on drinking and drugs for day-to-day work.

“It was like a cult,” said one bartender.

Supervisors and staff at Hubert would frequently use “the cinque room” to do lines of cocaine during and after shifts, six former bartenders said.

Forte said Swillhouse had a no-drinking and no-drugs policy on shift but did not address claims about regular cocaine use at Hubert. The Parisian bistro in the Sydney CBD has won a Good Food Guide chef’s hat for the past two years.

“There was previously one staff drink allowed after work,” said Forte. “Unfortunately, this was abused, and the privilege was removed after instances of the policy being breached.”

‘Physical intimidation’

Down the road at Swillhouse’s whisky bar, The Baxter Inn, bartenders called out “Shoes” or “Jimmy Choos” (rhyming slang for “boobs”) to alert other staff members when a woman with large breasts walked in.

The bar staff were also allowed to clock off early to have sex with customers, a male bartender said. Occasionally, they took customers to have sex on top of the washing machine in the accessible toilet or in the store room, where expensive whiskys were kept in an old bank vault.

“We don’t deny there have been some instances of juvenile and regrettable behaviour that, in hindsight, should not have occurred,” said Forte.

The bar wall had notes written on a sliding scale of attractiveness, with staff ranking each customer the bartenders had slept with.

One male bartender said the company’s policies encouraged “loose” behaviour. He said little consideration was given to how the behaviour would affect female employees, given there was a “blanket ban” on hiring women in the bar’s first years.

“It was the ‘have a beer’ policy,” the former bartender said. “They would only hire people they thought they would want to have beers with.”

Forte said the original teams at the Baxter Inn, named sixth-best bar in the world in 2015, and Shady Pines Saloon, which opened in 2010, did consist solely of men.

“At the time, there were fewer female, full-time bartenders and, as such, not many applicants. Swillhouse’s first female bartender was hired in 2012,” he said.

When women were eventually hired at the Baxter Inn in 2014, there were no sanitary bins.

“No one had ever considered that,” one male bartender said.

Two women left their bartending positions at The Baxter Inn after the company failed to act upon repeated complaints of sexual harassment made against another male colleague between 2019 and 2020, former employees said.

“It was physical intimidation,” said one of the women.

“This guy would brush up against us, he would ask us really intimate questions about our sex lives, just out of the blue and during service.”

The sexual harassment continued after meetings with a human resources representative and upper management.

“[My colleague] got to the point where she was terrified to come to work,” she said.

“She felt completely helpless because they wouldn’t give him a warning [and] there were no efforts made to investigate it.”

Forte said the incidents “should have been better handled”.

“Unfortunately, the details of the claim provided to senior management were incomplete and inaccurate, so while the bartender was relocated, the matter was not addressed as thoroughly as it should have been,” he said.

‘The Wild West’

Swillhouse’s best-known venue, Frankie’s Pizza, was also its most notorious. The bar’s merchandise sold its vision: “Get f---ed at Frankie’s,” a T-shirt read.

“It was just the Wild West,” said one bartender.

The dive bar was mourned when it shut down in 2022 with a week-long party dubbed “Frankie’s Pizza goes to hell” after a decade spent hosting celebrities including Jack Black, Cuba Gooding jnr, and members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine.

But staff said it bred a misogynistic culture that denigrated women.

“I’d be taken out of the main bar there and put into the pizzeria because women didn’t know anything about beer,” said one former bartender.

When women were allowed to work at the bar, they were shown violent pornography by managers. “You’d love that,” the bartender said she was told.

“People would try to get me to have sex with customers constantly,” said the bartender. “There were multiple recordings of people having sex in the venue without their consent. There were always videos being passed around of women being filmed without their consent.”

Forte said the company had never received complaints about videos being taken of people having sex.

“We can confirm that while we want our employees to be positive and engage with our customers to give them a great experience, they have never been encouraged to have sex with customers,” he said.

One acronym was frequently plastered around the venue and on its promotional material: STC. “Suck the C--k”.

On social media, Frankie’s often pushed a hypermasculine, rock ‘n’ roll image to its customers. In one Facebook post, it “promised minimal predatory behaviour” from one of its performers who was pictured holding up a packet of “Wipe on Sex Appeal”.

Behind the bar, cocktails were made from a book known by the homophobic slur staff used to refer to it: “The faggot book of recipes”.

Forte acknowledged the terms were used at his venues, describing them now “as offensive, derogatory and juvenile”.

“We regret not stamping them out sooner than circa 2016 when we believe they were last used,” he said. “We acknowledge these examples are indicative of wider cultural issues we had at the time and have since been working to rectify these harmful behaviours.”

‘We could have done better’

Inside Swillhouse’s first bar, the Nashville-style Shady Pines Saloon in Darlinghurst, one bartender said a male co-worker sexually assaulted her.

The bartender filed a report to the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad of the State Crime Command in 2022.

“[My co-worker] was encouraging everyone to drink and then gave most of the other staff MDMA [ecstasy] to take while working,” the bartender wrote to police.

“He then started asking me what kind of underwear I was wearing that night. I refused to answer and attempted to ignore him as I kept serving. Then he started groping my ass before shoving his hand in the back of my shorts from the leg and inserting his fingers inside me.”

Swillhouse fired the male co-worker, but the bartender said he was repeatedly allowed back into the venue to drink despite being sacked. Forte said he did not believe the co-worker had returned to the venue, and if he did, the company was not aware of it.

“Every job I’ve had since then, I’ve had someone say, ‘You know, it’s okay you don’t work at Swillhouse any more’,” the bartender said.

The bartender did not want to press charges because the venue had already been hit by a police strike over an unauthorised after-hours lock-in, which saw its managers sacked.

“It could have been shut down,” she claimed.

Forte said Shady Pines was never on a “final warning” with police, and the company had never pressured anyone not to file a police report for the benefit of the business.

“In hindsight, there were areas where we could have done better,” he said.

“That is why we have comprehensive policies, training and [employment assistance program] services in place for all employees today.”

When the company began mandatory sexual harassment training in 2022, the bartender was too distressed to remain in the seminar after the host, an external consultant, claimed that sexual assault “doesn’t happen here”.

“I suffered with pretty much constant harassment, multiple sexual and physical assaults, stalking and bullying the entire time I worked for the company, it completely broke me as a person,” she wrote in an email to the human resources (HR) manager after she left the meeting early.

“As this was never taken seriously or even addressed at all, it was too hard to sit in the ‘values’ training yesterday. I’ve spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in therapy just to be able to approach being in hospitality service again.”

The HR manager offered her support and assured her they wanted to “make sure we have everything in place to ensure this would never happen again”.

But in June 2022, the bartender had a meeting with the company over her treatment.

“They brought me into a meeting; they said, ‘We didn’t know any better. We didn’t go to business school’,” she said. “They could have said sorry. They didn’t give a f---.”

Industry accolades

Swillhouse has won multiple accolades for its establishments across Sydney and is now one of the city’s largest hospitality groups. It has 334 staff across six venues that earn millions of dollars in revenue each year.

The Good Food Guide described Le Foote’s opening in The Rocks in May 2023 as “the hottest Sydney restaurant opening of the year” for its blend of Mediterranean grill with harbour views.

In 2019, after a series of incidents, Forte reminded all staff to respect their co-workers and to report incidents to their managers. In the same year, Swillhouse appointed an HR specialist and implemented policies on sexual harassment for the first time.

They also offered staff 10 free counselling sessions at the Indigo Project, began hosting a monthly diversity forum and implemented a target of 50 per cent non-male employees company-wide.

In text messages and a phone call after an employee reported sexual harassment at one of the company’s venues in 2022, Forte was empathetic and offered to talk through their concerns over lunch, but it never eventuated. There is no suggestion that Forte assaulted or harassed employees.

In an all-staff email in February last year, after other allegations were raised, Forte said employees would no longer be entitled to free drinks after their shift or a 50 per cent discount on beverages any other time.

“This email is tough to write,” he said. “Due to several incidents at our venues involving staff and alcohol, we have had to decide to no longer offer this benefit. We understand that this benefit has been part of the fabric of our business and a considerable part of our culture.

“However, our commitment to you is more significant than just offering benefits. As a business, we also need to prioritise and promote a culture of safety and well-being.”

But some employees believe the measures fail to address Swillhouse’s history as a “wild party company”. “It is still ingrained in the foundation,” said one bartender.

In public social media posts dating back to 2013, Forte is repeatedly pictured partially naked in his venues and boasts of a morning blood alcohol content of 0.07. In 2015, he captioned a photo of award-winning bartenders at The Baxter Inn with “STC”.

In one post, Swillhouse executive Toby Hilton is pictured alongside Forte who straddles the bar in his underwear. Hilton said “from memory … we were trying to recreate a photo by Jean-Claude Van Damme”.

Staff say Swillhouse’s position as one of Sydney’s most prominent hospitality groups meant they felt pressured to stay silent over fears for their economic security.

“People need jobs and if you want to earn decent money, you aren’t left with many options, it’s either Swillhouse or Merivale,” said one bartender.

“I got really depressed,” said another bartender who said she was assaulted while working at Hubert’s. “I came out of the cult world, and I could not get a job.”

The women said they were speaking out now so that younger women did not have to go through the same turmoil.

“These owner-operators in Sydney are hiring younger and younger,” one former Baxter Inn bartender said.

“It just terrifies me that they think they’ve had a culture shift and that other people will have the same experience that we did.”

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).