Chrissy Teigen led a group of celebrity servers in West Hollywood to raise money for One Fair Wage Thursday night.
The “Server for an Hour” fundraiser, hosted by One Fair Wage and chaired by Teigen, was meant to “highlight the urgent need to raise wages, end the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, and improve conditions for the millions of waiters, waitresses, bartenders, bussers and other tipped workers who earn suppressed wages,” according to a release.
A slew of celebrity servers, including Keegan-Michael Key, June Diane Raphael, Jesse Tyler-Ferguson, Matt Bomer, Ike Barinholtz and more, took to the floor of West Hollywood restaurant LadyHawk to take orders and serve food.
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“A lot of us here come from a background of the restaurant industry. I was a hostess,” Teigen told The Hollywood Reporter at LadyHawk just before the event. “For the past 30 years, people have literally, the sub-minimum wage has been $3.13. It’s disgusting. It’s crazy.”
The cookbook author emphasized that the industry is taking advantage of workers, which was a theme throughout the night’s speakers — which included Meena Harris, CEO of Phenomenal Media and niece of presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, One Fair Wage’s Saru Jayaraman and Teigen.
“Since Chrissy started this event last year, we were able to raise enough money to win a big wage increase for 1.2 million people in Michigan who got their wages raised from $3.87 to $15 an hour plus tips,” Jayaraman told THR.
“We calculated how much money that’s going into workers’ pockets, and it’s about 10 billion a year going into low-wage workers’ pockets,” she continued, explaining what that actually translates to for workers.
“It means for a waitress who works on $3 in Michigan, a single mom, that instead of working three jobs, she might be able to work one job, which means she might be able to spend time with her children,” she said. “She might be able to actually have the time to go vote.”
Throughout the evening, the celebrity service workers were seen trying their hardest. Key was spotted learning from the restaurant’s staff, concentrating and taking notes on how to put orders into the system, meanwhile, Raphael jumped right into trying her hand at getting orders in. The restaurant’s workers helped the guest servers throughout the evening.
Teigen picked several things she loved about the event and almost all came back to her love for the industry. “We’re all going to be working together tonight, and the best part is everyone that’s here and enjoying the food is enjoying the night. They’re not coming because we’re going to be great at what we do,” she laughed. “That’s why we have so much respect for those people that are in this industry.”
