An Alabama restaurant franchisee is the target of a federal lawsuit filed Monday, alleging the company failed to protect young female employees from sexual harassment at an Applebee’s.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Quality Restaurant Concepts, LLC, which operates the Applebee’s restaurant in Chelsea, in federal court in Birmingham.

“Given the prevalence of the misconduct, management at the Chelsea restaurant should have known about the sexual harassment of female employees and failed to take prompt or corrective action to prevent or remedy the hostile environment it created,” the complaint reads.

Quality Restaurant Concepts has not yet responded to the complaint in court records. Birmingham attorney Rachel Barlotta released a statement to AL.com on Tuesday.

“Because this matter is in pending litigation, QRC is not in a position to provide detailed commentary,” Barlotta said in an email. “However, QRC strenuously denies the allegations and looks forward to presenting its defense in court.”

A spokesperson for Applebee’s did not respond to a request for comment.

In the lawsuit, the EEOC argues that the sexually hostile work environment violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“Many of the female employees in this case are teenagers who were new to the workplace and unfamiliar with their rights,” said Marsha Rucker, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Birmingham district. “A priority of the EEOC is defending the civil rights of vulnerable young people such as the teenage employees in this case. The EEOC will continue to hold employers accountable when they fail to protect their workers from a sexually hostile work environment.”

The Birmingham-based Quality Restaurant Concepts operates 60 Applebee’s locations in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as a few other restaurants, per the company’s website and LinkedIn page.

The Applebee’s restaurant in Chelsea is located at 89 Chesser Plantation Lane, just off Highway 280.

The EEOC’s Birmingham office said in a statement that since last year, the male general manager, other male employees and customers at the restaurant harassed at least six female employees with sexual comments, offensive conduct, unwanted advances and sexual contact.

And when the Applebee’s franchisee received multiple complaints about the general manager, the company allowed him to keep working with the employees he harassed and didn’t take action, per the EEOC.

The male general manager had a prior history of sexually harassing a 16-year-old female employee and another female employee at another Applebee’s restaurant owned by the franchisee in Pelham, according to the lawsuit. He was reprimanded for that by the franchisee company in 2022, the lawsuit says.

But then, in April of 2023, he was promoted to general manager of the Chelsea restaurant, according to the EEOC.

The lawsuit says the manager made sexual comments to multiple female employees, including telling one employee to “take it all off” while offering dollar bills when her shirt got wet. The suit also says that the manager called employees, including a minor, “sluts,” and once told workers he wanted to hire a woman so he could “stare at her breasts all day.”

The lawsuit alleges a male bartender flirted with a minor female employee, repeatedly asked her out and cornered and physically restrained her.

A male cook, according to the lawsuit, made comments about a female employee’s body. And, an additional male employee touched her buttocks multiple times and made sexual jokes to her, per the complaint.

Male customers groped minor female employees and made other comments about having sex with them, per the complaint.

Two of the female workers quit because of the toxic work environment, the lawsuit says. A minor female employee resigned after she complained about sexual harassment and got removed from her server shifts, according to the suit.

The EEOC said it filed the lawsuit after an attempt to reach a settlement failed.

“Young workers are particularly vulnerable to harassment and other forms of workplace discrimination because they have less work experience, are less likely to know when someone crosses a boundary, and may be afraid to report an older or more powerful harasser,” said Karla Gilbride, general counsel for the EEOC, in a statement.