In "Memphis Restaurant Workers Unite," Gravy follows a group of restaurant workers that’s slated to become the first formal union of food and beverage workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Led by Lily Nicholson, the group, Memphis Restaurant Workers United (MRWU), organized a petition that resulted in $2.5 million in pandemic support grants from the county government and has begun negotiating contracts with local restaurants so that workers can make a living wage with benefits. At the average restaurant in Memphis, the front of house staff will be majority white, while the back of the house will be predominantly made up of immigrant workers and workers of color. This unsettling trace of Memphis’s segregated past reflects a larger structural issue in the industry. Part of MRWU’s challenge is to make sure that the union is as diverse as the city. 

In this episode, reporter Sarah Holtz talks to Lily Nicholson, Allan Creasy, and Zach Barnard, restaurant veterans and organizers of Memphis Restaurant Workers United, all about the working conditions that led them to form the union and the process entailed. She also speaks with Jeffrey Lichtenstein of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of unions, who helped get MRWU off the ground; and Victoria Terry, who works with the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based group of African American trade unionists. Holtz attends an MRWU meeting at RP Tracks, a Memphis bar and restaurant that supports the efforts of MRWU.