Expansive Italian food complex Eataly has found great success in Toronto, opening its second location in the city at the beginning of the month at Sherway Gardens, with a third slated to arrive at Shops at Don Mills sometime next year.

Since its debut across multiple floors near Bloor and Yonge Streets in 2019, the brand has become synonymous with high-quality groceries — among them, imported products that are hard to find elsewhere — ready-to-eat food, cooking classes, dine-in experiences and more, much like it has in cities all around the globe.

But, despite the fanfare for the brand, there is one thing that customers have had a pretty big issue with.

As people lined up in droves to try out Eataly's new 25,000-square-foot Sherway outpost on November 2, others were checking out sneak peeks of the space online — but were quite disappointed with one series of photos shared on Eataly Toronto's official Instagram page.

'The wait is finally over! Our doors are officially open at Eataly Sherway Gardens," begins the caption of the post from the much-anticipated Sherway opening, which shows what appears to be a group of the emporium's executives cutting the ribbon to formally welcome patrons into the space.

"We can't wait to welcome you to the newest Eataly in Toronto. We are your one-stop-shop where we can Eat, Shop, and Learn together!"

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A post shared by Eataly Toronto (@eatalytoronto)

Unfortunately, the team clearly didn't realize the poor optics of the photoset, with all high-level individuals pictured being well-dressed men and not a person of colour or woman in sight — something hundreds of the account's more than 101k followers were quick to jump to the comments section to criticize.

"Have they heard of diversity?'" reads one top comment. "Why are there no executive women? Wow!" reads another. And yet another: "Nice job on the diversity. Good grief. Do only men shop at this mall?"

Others questioned what year it is, or simply wondered where all the nonnas were.

"Interesting how in Italian culture we women do most of the cooking but they didn't feel the need to be included in an Italian restaurant and market," one chimed, tongue in cheek.

In the wake of Sherway's opening, the Eataly Toronto Instagram has been populated with quite a few posts, and it is doubtful that this single problematic one will have an impact on such a large, otherwise well-loved global chain with 45 locations worldwide.

The food hall did notably cut all ties with Mario Batali in 2019 following sexual misconduct allegations against the celebrity chef, who had owned a minority stake in the company.

No one from Eataly responded to blogTO's multiple requests for comment on the topic of the executive photos.