Plum Southern Kitchen & Bar has been closed since the beginning of July.
A social media post attributes the closure to a standard summer break. But former employees of the upscale Durham restaurant tell a different story.
According to eight former Plum employees, all of whom worked there until a few weeks ago, Plum owner Lisa Callaghan, who is white, used the N-word multiple times in May. The former employees say the restaurant was closed at the time and that they were playing the song “Euphoria” by Kendrick Lamar while preparing for dinner service; Callaghan then appeared upset and expressed discomfort with the song’s use of the n-word, and in the course of doing so used the word herself.
The employees—most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity—say that later, in June, Callaghan fired a Black bartender who had criticized her usage of the slur.
Callaghan confirmed that she used the slur when reached for comment and described the song lyrics as “explicitly offensive.” She did not respond to inquiries about the termination of the Black employee.
“I reiterated the offensive lyrics in explaining the discomfort or offense the words could cause others in our space,” Callaghan wrote the INDY in an email. “I believe it was a mistake to repeat the words, regardless of my intent. I am profoundly sorry that this caused injury or distress to the employees to whom I spoke.”
When the INDY reached out to the bartender, the bartender confirmed that she was fired six weeks after the incident. Callaghan, she says, told her “you are part of this chapter that I need to close.” She says Callaghan fired her at the end of a shift on June 24, waiting until everyone else had clocked out and then handing her an envelope with $700 in it.
“She goes, ‘This is severance,’” says the former bartender, who asked the INDY not to use her name due to concerns around being thwarted from future employment opportunities. “And then she says, ‘But I also hope that this check, as a sign of good faith, will be enough for you to speak positively about your time here.’”
Callaghan also fired Plum’s executive chef, Trent Shank, over email when he refused to back her up amid the fallout from the incident, according to former employees.
Shank confirmed to the INDY that Callaghan fired him, but declined to go into detail on the grounds for his termination due to concerns about legal retaliation.
An email obtained by the INDY that Callaghan sent to staff on June 27 alludes, at least in part, to the series of events former employees described.
“This has been a very difficult period for all of us at Plum,” Callaghan wrote. “My mistake, using a word that deeply offended, has grown tentacles that have stolen the camaraderie that we always had. I deeply regret my mistake.”
Callaghan went on to inform staff that Shank would be leaving the restaurant. She also wrote that Plum would be shutting down temporarily and that, when the restaurant reopened, things would look a bit different.
In the past, the restaurant’s menu has featured items like hushpuppies, shrimp and grits, and cheddar drop biscuits.
“Going forward we will be ‘Plum’, leaving out the ‘Southern Kitchen & Bar,’” wrote Callaghan. “We will still honor our Southern food traditions, our farmers and producers, but we will be freer to explore.
“I am sorry that I am late making this decision, but hope you welcome the time off,” Callaghan wrote.
In the wake of the email, the majority of Plum staff—including the chef de cuisine, the sous chef, the pastry chef, and more than a dozen servers, bartenders, hosts, line cooks, and dishwashers—have resigned. Only one manager remains on staff.
Plum announced on social media on June 28 that the restaurant would be closed July 2 through July 10 for a holiday break. The restaurant remains closed as of July 19.
“Diversity and inclusivity are core values that I hold and have held throughout my personal and professional life and are priorities in opening my restaurant and staffing my business,” Callaghan wrote in her statement to the INDY. “My intention is to provide a safe and inclusive environment for my employees and guests.
“Following the unfortunate manner in which I communicated my discomfort with the music, I apologized sincerely, held team meetings, took time away from the restaurant to give the team space to work without my presence, and have been open with my new staff about what transpired,” Callaghan continued. “I take full responsibility for my words, my response, and my continued commitment to a safe and inclusive space for all who walk through our doors.”
A Charlotte native who spent decades working for a luxury stainless steel cookware company in New York City, Callaghan moved from Brooklyn to Durham in 2017. She opened Plum three years later.
Callaghan views her restaurant as “a mash-up of my dreams and desires from a life of eating in restaurants,” per a biographical statement that was removed from Plum’s website recently.
Restaurants run in the family. Callaghan’s brother, Kevin Callaghan, has owned Carrboro’s Acme Food & Beverage Co., also an upscale restaurant serving Southern fare, since 1998. His tenure at the Carrboro restaurant has also had turbulence: As the INDY reported, in 2022, nearly the entire Acme staff went on a months-long strike to protest allegations of sexual harassment against him. The strike ended three months in, when demands were not met, and striking staff uniformly quit.
Callaghan brought Shank, the executive chef, on board at the very beginning. He helped to build Plum’s management team, including recruiting his wife, Emma Shank, to be pastry chef (and later, the events manager) and his friend Nick Grady to be chef de cuisine, per more blurbs that have been scrubbed from the site. The three attended culinary school together.
Former employees say the Shanks played a vital role in building Plum’s reputation as a destination for exceptional Southern food and a hot spot for baby showers, wedding receptions, and other events.
Former employees also give the Shanks credit for cultivating Plum’s day-to-day work environment, which they describe as phenomenal. Every former employee who spoke with the INDY, including several who have spent a decade or more in the restaurant industry, said that prior to the racial incident, Plum was the best place they had ever worked.
“All of the staff got along really, really well,” says the former bartender. “I’ve always felt othered in service industry jobs. Plum, at least at first, felt like a really safe and comfortable space for me to be in.”
Callaghan was in the restaurant almost every day, and for the most part, they got along with her.
“There was never, like, racial tension,” says the former bartender.
The incident in May came as a shock.
It was the week of the Kendrick-Drake beef. Kendrick had just released the song “Euphoria” and employees were listening to it as they prepped for dinner service.
Upon hearing the song, employees say, Callaghan appeared upset. “I am so sick of hearing n—r this, n—r that, n—r, n—r, n—r,” she said, according to multiple employees present during the shift.
The former bartender said she switched off the music and the restaurant fell silent. A server asked Callaghan if she’d just said the N-word, to which Callaghan replied, “Yes, I did; that’s what they said [in the song],” according to several employees. (Ironically, one of the best-known bars of “Euphoria,” a song in which Kendrick blasts Drake for co-opting Black American culture, is, “I even hate when you say the word n—a.”)
The bartender told the INDY that she told Callaghan that it wasn’t okay for her to use that word, but that they could “unpack this later” as the restaurant was about to open.
Several minutes before opening, though, Callaghan started pestering her with questions about why she couldn’t say the slur, even repeating it at one point. She said that Callaghan confronted her behind the bar, making it impossible for her to exit the conversation, which made her especially uncomfortable.
The bartender said Callaghan asked why it was “only okay if one of you says it?’”
“When you say ‘one of you,’ do you mean n—rs?’” the bartender responded. “And she said, ‘Well, yes, I guess so.’”
“At that point, I was just like, ‘Listen, I think that it is a good idea for you to not speak to me at all right now.’”
The bartender asked Trent Shank how to proceed. Together with the rest of the employees on the shift, the two of them decided that they should ask Callaghan to take some time away from the restaurant, an account Shank and others confirmed.
“My reality is that I need income,” the bartender says. “It’s not really a fair compromise, because I still have to be in the space where I got traumatized, but if I don’t have to be around her, that makes things a little better.”
Callaghan told staff that she understood, and agreed to take two weeks away from the restaurant.
When Callaghan returned two weeks later, things remained tense, the former employees say. One describes the change in the workplace dynamic as a “polar shift.” The former bartender described experiencing microaggressions from Callaghan, like moving her belongings and nitpicking about her work.
“She went out of her way to “other me” to a point where other people noticed,” she says. “It was just a hellish month.”
The only other Black person employed at Plum at the time, a host who also asked to remain anonymous because of fears that it will affect his future employment, says he also felt like Callaghan singled him out when she returned. She would approach him at the host stand and frequently bring up the racial incident, he says.
Nonetheless, all the former staffers say that they were hopeful that things could be smoothed over.
But a few weeks later, it became clear the situation had become untenable. On June 24, Emma Shank gave Callaghan notice that she was resigning.
“I no longer felt comfortable as an employee in that building and working for her,” she tells the INDY.
She informed Callaghan that she was willing to stay on for another week or so to help with the transition, but Callaghan told her that that wouldn’t be necessary.
Later that night, Callaghan fired the bartender, and shortly after, Trent Shank.
Numerous staff members say they were outraged both about the initial racial incident and the firings, and felt that they did not want to work at Plum without the Shanks’ leadership. Most employees wanted to leave immediately, but Trent Shank encouraged them to stay a few more days to work an event because he didn’t want the people who booked the event to be left out to dry. Staff obliged, and he worked the event for free.
Then, after the event, just about everyone left, former employees say. The host says that Callaghan offered him $1,000 to stay through the transition. He declined.
“The inner turmoil that I have had over the last weeks has caused me to have stress and to have anxiety about coming to work and while at work,” he wrote in a resignation email obtained by the INDY to Callaghan dated July 1. “I was afraid that it would happen to me next or that I would be fired for standing up for myself. I chose to not talk about it because I live in this skin.”
Two other employees also told the INDY that Callaghan offered them money to stay, and that they declined.
In conversations with the INDY, multiple former employees use the word “heartbroken” to describe how they feel about leaving Plum, and said they wish Callaghan had taken the situation as an opportunity for growth.
Trent Shank declined to comment on the record, but provided a statement that he requested be published in full: “I started this restaurant with one goal that I believed in: creating a restaurant where our team feels safe and confident. I had other dreams and aspirations but I knew that if we could create the right culture, we would be able to provide the best hospitality and ‘taste the love’ in the cooking.
“Our team had created something that you don’t see often and people could tell that Plum was different and I am proud of that. My deepest sympathy goes out to my Plum family, both team members and our regulars that were part of our community. I thank you, appreciate you, and love you all.”
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