The Walker Art Center on Thursday cut ties with Cardamom, the restaurant housed inside its ground floor, exactly a week after restaurant management announced staff layoffs in favor of a QR-code service model.
The restaurant is set to close within 90 days.
“We were caught by surprise by the changes at Cardamom and, after careful consideration, have decided to part ways,” Walker executive director Mary Ceruti said in an emailed statement. “The reduced-service model, which favors automated efficiencies over a human-centered approach, does not align with our core values.”
Cardamom owner DDP Restaurant Group, started by chef Daniel Del Prado, has owned and managed the restaurant since 2021. Last week, a company spokesperson cited rising costs and varying traffic levels as factors to moving away from full-service dining.
In an emailed statement Thursday, DDP Restaurant Group said Cardamom was never profitable.
“Our innovation was designed to preserve jobs and a restaurant at the Walker, just as dozens of other restaurants in Minneapolis have done to achieve financial survival,” DDP said in the statement.
A Hospitality Minnesota report released last week showed the state’s industry is “on the brink of no return” following the surge in federal immigration enforcement in recent months. Businesses are also still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and navigate pressures from tariffs and mounting regulations, according to the report.
Former Cardamom workers said at a worker press conference outside Cardamom on Thursday afternoon QR codes are not the solution.
“Hospitality is human,” said Hazel Nelson, who had worked at Cardamom for about a year.
DDP terminated 16 Cardamom employees, according to CTUL, a workers’ rights nonprofit supporting Cardamom workers in organizing. A spokesperson said most do not have another source of income.
Most of those employees declined to re-apply for Cardamom’s new role food-running and bussing and would receive severance pay, according to restaurant management.
Former employees picketed after the press conference and plan to again on Sunday to advocate for workers at other DDP Restaurant Group businesses, which include Porzana and Flora Room. They’re demanding the company give its employees at least two weeks’ notice of termination in the future, allow labor organizing without fear of retaliation and sign onto the “86 ICE” campaign to support workers amid federal immigration operations.
