Amex pulls its Noma LA support
The Resy/Tock parent and longtime Noma partner confirmed the move after it canceled a planned industry dinner scheduled for next week.
This is a developing story and was last updated on Tuesday, March 10 at 9:20am PDT with a statement from Blackbird founder and CEO Ben Leventhal.
Update 3/10, 10:40am PDT: Blackbird has been removed from Noma LA’s website after pulling its sponsorship.
American Express, parent company of reservations services Resy and Tock, is stepping away from its planned involvement in Noma’s Los Angeles residency. A spokesperson for Resy confirmed the move.
This comes after a remarkable New York Times report that highlighted a history of alleged physical and mental abuse inside Noma from 2009 to 2017. A decade later, as reported by Julia Moskin in the Times, former workers say Noma’s founding chef, René Redzepi, “has not acknowledged the extent of the violence they say he inflicted for years.”
The Copenhagen restaurant’s pop-up opens this week and lasts until June. On Monday, Amex/Resy cancelled a planned industry dinner scheduled for next week. In an email sent to a small group of invitees, a Resy executive wrote:
In light of the disturbing information that has come to our attention, American Express, Resy, and Tock have made the decision to step away from our involvement in Noma’s LA residency. As a result, we are no longer hosting the dinner.
Resy’s rep also said they feel badly about canceling an industry event people were excited to attend, but “felt it was important today to take the first step of exiting the sponsorship.” The bookings company is considering several options to make it up to the group of invitees, they said.
It’s notable fallout for Noma, whose long-planned Los Angeles residency is scheduled to open on Wednesday. (The opening is continuing as planned, according to a Monday Los Angeles Times report.) A previous reference on Noma’s website to “our longstanding partner American Express” has been removed.
Blackbird, the loyalty company led by Resy founder Ben Leventhal, was until Tuesday listed on the Noma LA website as the restaurant’s global partner, “without whom Noma LA would not be possible.” Blackbird granted some of its members special access to Noma LA, which sold out of $1,500 per person tickets in minutes after releasing them to the public. Leventhal said in February that Blackbird planned to subsidize the cost of meals during four industry nights, inviting members of the local restaurant community to dine for a relatively affordable $250 per person.
On Tuesday via email, Leventhal confirmed Blackbird pulled its support as well:
“Rene’s past practices, by his own admission, were unacceptable and abhorrent. We cannot lean on time elapsed and rehabilitation claims when these things resurface. Regardless of context this is highly problematic behavior.
Our priority is the restaurant community of Los Angeles and our fight continues to be for them. There are many restaurant workers and small producers and purveyors who are in the blast radius of this situation. We would like to reduce the further damage to a battered LA-based restaurant community and that will dictate how we act.
All proceeds from all of Blackbird’s ticket sales will be donated to organizations that are advocating for hourly wage workers and hospitality industry professionals. In addition, we’ve cancelled all of our events at Noma LA. We will continue to engage with the community and do our best to do what’s right.”
For the last month, former Noma chef Jason Ignacio White has been collecting and chronicling stories of abuse inside Noma on his Instagram account and an associated website, noma-abuse.com. White is scheduled to lead a protest Wednesday outside the restaurant with industry advocacy group One Fair Wage. He plans to deliver a formal demand letter to Redzepi calling for immediate dialogue, reparations for workers harmed by abusive practices, and structural change to workplace policies.
In a statement provided to the Times last week (and in a longer version posted to his Instagram account), Redzepi said,
“Although I don’t recognize all details in these stories, I can see enough of my past behavior reflected in them to understand that my actions were harmful to people who worked with me. To those who have suffered under my leadership, my bad judgment, or my anger, I am deeply sorry and I have worked to change.”
Noma also posted a lengthy statement to its Instagram account, including, in part:
“We’re aware of the stories circulating online and want to be clear: These claims do not reflect the workplace Noma is today. Although the stories appear to date back many years, we take them seriously and are looking into them carefully. Since that time, we have improved processes to address concerns. We are continuing to do so with an independent audit that ensures we keep our standards high and our workplace safe.”
