Swillhouse scandal: The sordid bet that unfolded behind the bank vault door at Baxter Inn

When Sydney hospitality group Swillhouse opened whisky bar The Baxter Inn in 2011, the all-male team was issued a challenge: the first to have sex with a customer would be awarded a bottle of 1982 Penfolds Grange.

It took three hours.

One bartender emerged from the store room, victorious, to collect his prize – a wine worth more than $1000. The room was secluded behind an old bank vault door, and though it was intended for rare whisky tastings, it became a go-to spot for staff to take customers to have sex.

Former staff say there was a policy allowing them to clock off early to have sex with a customer from the bar. Sexual conquests were noted down in the back room, ranked in order of attractiveness and discussed on Mondays during pack-down, when staff turned the music off for “hectic chat”.

“You lock 13 guys in a basement with a lot of whisky, and there’s going to be some weird … things that happen,” says one male bartender.

Nudity was rife in those early years. Anton Forte, the bacchanalian Swillhouse founder who has transformed Sydney hospitality, says the stories have been wildly exaggerated, and taken on “urban myth”-like proportions.

But he does not deny “instances of juvenile and regrettable behaviour”.

“Yes, some of these stories were inspired by events that occurred in the very early days of Baxter Inn’s existence,” he says.

On Wednesday seven former staff, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their future employment, revealed there was a darker side to the debauchery.

They say Swillhouse, which has grown from one subterranean dive bar just off Oxford Street to six of Sydney’s best-known venues in a decade, has not done enough to address sexual assault and harassment within the workplace.

Their allegations paint a picture of a sexually charged environment where one man divulged violent sexual fantasies, another groped his co-worker in public, and women were raped, both on and off premises.

“We sincerely regret and apologise to any former employees who felt unsupported,” says Forte.

The company did not employ a human resources representative until 2019, when it already had four venues and hundreds of staff. More than 2300 employees have worked for Swillhouse since it was founded in 2008.

“There were areas where we could have done better,” says Forte.

He says the company has transformed its policies by implementing employee assistance programs and mandatory sexual harassment training.

But staff say the company’s problems run deeper, pointing to its executive team who have been known to long-lunch in their venues and thrive off a culture of excess.

In February, Australian Bartender labelled the all-male Swillhouse executive “The Kings of Cool” after the company opened two new venues, Le Foote and Caterpillar Club, to rave reviews.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food Guide said Le Foote could re-define The Rocks: “The restaurant is the star”. In a Good Weekend review, it described Caterpillar Club as “a distillation of Sydney’s glamour and grunge”.

“Swillhouse are known for making very dark, broody and masculine venues and it shines throughout almost all of them,” says a male bartender.

None of the venues exuded this masculinity more than Frankie’s Pizza where a framed photo of porn star Tegan Presley sprawled across the bar naked took pride of place.

“An emblem of an era of excess never to be seen again,” is how Swillhouse executive and creative director Jordan McDonald described it when the bar closed to make way for the Sydney Metro in 2022.

“Never will the world know a Frankie’s other than at its most potent, balls-out version of itself.”

Few women worked behind the bar at Frankie’s. Those who did were sent to the pizzeria after being told they did not know anything about beer. For much of the past decade, that gender disparity echoed throughout many of Swillhouse’s venues, all the way up to its executive team.

Forte says a woman has served on the Swillhouse executive team. That woman is Allie Webb, Forte’s wife.

“At the end of the day, six white dudes sit down in this room and talk about us,” says one female bartender. “Is anyone shocked when they don’t understand what’s happening?”

Women were not hired as bartenders at The Baxter Inn until 2014. “Women can’t do the job,” one bartender says she was told.

Forte says there were fewer full-time female bartender applicants when all-male teams were in place at Swillhouse bars Shady Pines and The Baxter Inn, and the company has since worked towards an equal gender balance. Today, 40 per cent of all venue managers at Swillhouse are women. There are now eight women on its full leadership team of 24.

When women were first employed at The Baxter Inn, there was scant initial consideration given to their needs – there were no sanitary bins in the toilets, and no sexual harassment policies in place.

One of The Baxter Inn’s first female bartenders says it took just three months for sexual harassment to start.

“There’s a really interesting culture of sexuality … that [the company] promotes and allows in those venues,” she says. “I don’t even think problematic is the right word. I think it’s like, criminal, really.”

The bartender was targeted by a male colleague who locked her in a cool room with him, regularly pressed his groin against her, and followed her home after work. The harassment developed into an obsession, lasting several years.

“He followed me, screaming, [through] Town Hall [train station]. He grabbed me and tried to pull me out of a cab. He texted me every single night until 4am, asking, ‘Where are you? What are you doing?’” She says.

When she complained to management, they proposed one solution: work in a different area of the venue. The man was later promoted.

“He was stalking her, and [Swillhouse] had no idea how to handle it,” says a male co-worker.

From 2018, two other women complained of repeated sexual harassment in the form of inappropriate comments and physical intimidation, three former bartenders say.

“[My colleague] got to the point where she was terrified to come to work,” says one of the women.

Complaints were detailed in a nightly report emailed to the Swillhouse leadership team, including Forte, says a male co-worker. But there was no formal process, he says, and while a warning was ultimately issued, there “wasn’t enough evidence” for the company to take it further. All venue management could do was tell the man to “pull his head in”.

Forte claims the leadership team received “incomplete and inaccurate” details about sexual harassment at The Baxter Inn, but acknowledges the company should have handled it better.

“The rest of the men who worked there witnessed it every day, and they made reports about it as well, and nothing was done,” says another female bartender. “That’s the reason I left.”

The decision to quit a job at Swillhouse isn’t taken lightly. Nor is speaking out against the company.

“[Swillhouse] has massive control in the industry and … there’s obviously some fear of what they can do to my career,” says one.

The claims echo those sweeping other industries, including finance, entertainment and the media, where large organisations have been slow to respond to sexual harassment and assault claims, mostly made by younger women in companies run by older men.

Swillhouse has opened seven venues since 2008: Shady Pines Saloon (Darlinghurst), The Baxter Inn, Frankie’s Pizza (CBD), Restaurant Hubert (CBD), Alberto’s Lounge (Surry Hills), Le Foote (The Rocks) and The Caterpillar Club (CBD).

In 2022, the company also launched its quarterly lifestyle magazine, Swill, featuring interviews with celebrity figures including Stanley Tucci.

Over the course of a decade, the company built a reputation as the “cool” rival to Merivale’s super-venues such as the Ivy and Totti’s.

The Caterpillar Club now boasts one of the world’s largest private record collections. The Baxter Inn has made it into the World’s 50 Best Bar list six times. The Rocks restaurant Le Foote was the only Australian venue to make it onto the 2024 Condé Nast Traveller Hot List, after being named Best Restaurant of 2023 by Time Out Sydney. Le Foote, Restaurant Hubert (CBD), and Alberto’s Lounge (Surry Hills) each scored one hat in the Good Food Guide 2024.

“It was almost this attitude of, if they keep making money, they don’t really care what happens,” says one bartender.

On August 8, the company announced its newest venture: Swillfest. Non-member tickets for the festival at Le Foote in the Rocks sold out within four days for a lineup that includes Kingswood, a masterclass by restaurateur Maurice Terzini and dessert by Gelato Messina.

“This extraordinary celebration combines a wine fair, music festival, and Bacchanalian revival into a full cultural freakout,” a spokesperson for the group said last week.

It’s the same desire for drunken debauchery that bartenders say has put them at risk.

At Restaurant Hubert, former staff accuse supervisors of supplying cocaine to staff, some of whom developed a reliance on the drug. They would do lines on a tiny table in the “Cinque Room”, just out of view of the CCTV cameras, and bring cocaine to staff outings after hours. Supervisors used it as a manipulation tactic, and would ask for favours after supplying the drug, two former bartenders say. Senior staff would post publicly about “cinque,” the company-wide term for cocaine, joking “no more cinque for a little while please”.

On Wednesday, this masthead revealed that at Shady Pines, one bartender told police she was pressured to take MDMA while on shift before being sexually assaulted by her co-worker.

Those who didn’t partake were ostracised, they say. Swillhouse disputes the claim, and says any employee found drinking or taking drugs on shift is terminated.

“It’s a really good feeling when you are in [with them], but they will let you get sexually abused and they will tell you it’s your fault because you were drinking,” says one woman.

On one night out with a male co-worker, the woman alleges she passed out, and woke to him raping her. She reported the incident to management, and her request to be stationed elsewhere in Hubert, Swillhouse’s largest venue, was denied. She says the man received no disciplinary action, but she was iced out.

“I was at the top of my career … [but the day] I raised the assault was the day [they] said, ‘She doesn’t play ball,’” she says. “My lifespan in that job was ending from there.”

Forte disputes this claim. He says the male co-worker was immediately suspended, pending investigation, and did not return to work.

Another woman says consensual sex with a Hubert colleague led to a vicious beating. Scared of going to the police, the woman turned to her supervisor for help, and asked to be rostered on separate shifts.

“That didn’t happen, and I was forced to work with [him],” she says. “They let him continue to be employed there, and they offered me no resources, no support, nothing.”

The venue was known for tolerating poor behaviour, encouraging drinking and drugs during lock-ins as recently as last year, long after other Swillhouse venues such as the Baxter Inn and Shady Pines had cultural shifts.

One man cornered a co-worker in the bathroom; another told his co-worker he fantasised about raping her and hearing her scream; and a third man was “aggressively persistent” in his pursuit of a date. When the former employee tried to escalate the latter complaint, she was warned about spreading stories.

Some change finally came in 2023, after a supervisor served a potent cocktail to a female bartender that tasted like Yakult, then sexually assaulted her during staff drinks at Hubert.

“I got completely blackout drunk and … came to with him raping me in the women’s bathrooms,” the woman says. The waiter reported the incident to police and asked not to be named as she is pursuing legal action.

In the aftermath of the attack, restaurant Hubert no longer felt safe for her. The waiter’s head pounded with tension headaches, staff openly discussed CCTV footage of the lead up to the assault at Hubert and another Swillhouse venue, Alberto’s Lounge. When she requested a transfer to Le Foote, her pay was cut. Performance reviews followed, questioning the negative attitude she had developed (“I was in shock and traumatised”) and there were comments from upper management stating they “can’t take your personal circumstances into consideration”.

Forte says the HR team provided the woman extensive support.

“Swillhouse has never discriminated against an individual based on them bringing forward a sexual assault case,” he says. Forte says the bartender’s hours were cut due to discrepancies in the roster which were later rectified.

The man was fired, and in an all-staff email in February last year Forte said staff would no longer be entitled to free drinks after their shift or a 50 per cent discount on beverages any other time.

After-work drinks have always been an accepted part of the culture in hospitality, Forte says, and privileges were removed “as a small minority did not abide by the rules.”

“It was pretty obvious that it was just them covering their arses,” the woman says.

For years, the women stayed silent. “I’ve been working for shit business after shit business after shit owner and operator for so long, putting my heart and soul into this job every day,” says one bartender. “But I’m still drunk and sad, and I feel like it’s not going anywhere.”

One ended up in-patient psychiatric care after persevering within the company for years.

Others quietly left the industry or moved away. One returned when she needed a job, to find the company had implemented free counselling with The Indigo Project. It had also begun separate mandatory sexual harassment training with an external consultant.

When the external consultant told the group sexual harassment had never occurred at Swillhouse, the bartender walked out of the meeting.

In June, an anonymous Instagram account posted allegations about Frankie’s Pizza and the wider Sydney hospitality industry. It was a catalyst for former staff to share their experiences of an industry some say has pushed them “to breaking point”.

Now they say they want acknowledgement, justice, and a brighter future for young women pursuing a career in bars and restaurants across the city.

“I’d love to acknowledge that this shit actually happened, [and] you didn’t deal with it, … [and] we’re way past the due date of when this shit ends,” one bartender says.

“We need to stop putting people on pedestals because that allows them to get away with whatever the f--- they want.”

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