London restaurant recruiting naked waiters

A pop-up restaurant in London has started recruiting naked waiters to serve thousands of naked customers.

The Bunyadi will be the capital’s first naked restaurant, where customers will experience a ‘Pangea-like world’ free from phones, electric lights and clothes (if they wish).

This is the latest project from Lollipop, the company behind ABQ London - the Breaking Bad-style cocktail van where customers can ‘cook’ their cocktails like the popular TV show’s protagonist Walter White.

While some might question the popularity of a naked restaurant in London, there are already over 32,000 people on the waiting list for tickets. Sebastian Lyall, Founder of Lollipop, predicts that during the three-to-four months the pop-up is open they will serve approximately 120 people per day – totalling only half of the waiting list.

Interestingly, finding staff that are happy to be naked on-the-job has also not been difficult. “Given the response that we have had, a lot of people are more open to it than I initially thought,” Lyall tells HR Grapevine.

“It is quite easy actually, because there is a big naturist community in the UK and this is a dream come true to them – working while naked.” He also gives the example of life drawing models showing an interest in working at The Bunyadi.

But will all of the restaurant’s staff be naked? Lyall answers: “Not the chefs, the kitchen is not in the main restaurant, it is in the garden - because we are using wood fire - so the kitchen staff won’t be naked, but the waiters yes.”

However, he went on to say that the waiters will be wearing some coverings for health and safety reasons.

The recruitment process starts this week and will be headed by the newly appointed restaurant manager.

Lyall confirms that candidates won’t be required to get naked in the interview: “I don’t think we need to ask them to take their clothes off and trial them, the interview process is more about how they manage the kitchen and the ordering.”

What’s more, he goes on to say that the real challenge isn’t finding people comfortable with being naked but actually finding people to commit to a short-term position. He says: “For the pop-up industry it is quite hard to get staff that will remain there for three-to-six months. It is always a challenge in hospitality and then in a temporary set-up it is going to be even more of a challenge, unless they buy-in to the bigger picture.”

Furthermore, because of the customers’ expectations of the ‘experience’, Lyall explains that he cannot afford to have people leave and be replaced half-way through; “if someone leaves in the middle we can’t really have a ‘trial day’ for someone new - it’s a full experience and everybody expects the best, so we can’t trail anyone while the restaurant is running.”

Lollipop plans to open the restaurant to the public in June 2016.