Hello Friday,
Before we get started: Remember a few weeks ago when I floated changing up Family Meal’s schedule to focus a little more on paid subscriptions? Welp. Enough of you wrote back either encouraging me to go ahead, or throwing up your hands in blessed resignation, that I’ve decided to go through with it.
A note on how that’s all going to work is at bottom, but first…
Let’s get to it…
Beard Season – Yesterday, “the James Beard Foundation announced that its annual Awards program will not present winners in the remaining categories at the upcoming ceremony on Friday, September 25, an unprecedented decision in the Awards’ 30-year history.” The official announcement says an online ceremony that day “will instead celebrate previously announced honorees in categories such as America’s Classics, Lifetime Achievement, Humanitarian of the Year, Design Icon, and Leadership Awards.”
The 2021 awards (honoring work done in 2020) will also be cancelled, but if the awards resume in 2022, “eligibility rules will be expanded to include any relevant work that would have been eligible for a 2021 award.”
Also in the announcement: JBF will be using the time it normally spends on judging to partner with “an outside social justice agency to overhaul the policies and procedures for the Awards” with an eye on removing systemic bias, increasing “the diversity of the pool of candidates,” and “maintaining relevance.” They have also added trustee Tanya Holland to the Awards Committee.
NB: Two small curveballs here. First, underneath a Pete Wells thread decrying a lack of transparency here (“The Beard Foundation… knows who won the awards, but isn’t going to tell us”) reporter Todd A. Price noted on Twitter that this year’s finalists list seems to have been edited lately: “At least three finalists have been removed that I noticed… Kinch, Coquette and Koslow… Also removed: Paul Bartolotta (restaurateur) and Rich Landau (Mid-Atlantic).” Kinch withdrew his own name last week, but no official word on the others as of yet.
And second, I think the Foundation may be underestimating the daunting task that will be putting together their proposed 2021 “celebration of the independent restaurant community who have shown leadership during this crisis and honoring those who have made a significant impact on the industry and in their communities.” Guessing the foundation will spend a fair amount of time celebrating itself via its partnership with the Independent Restaurant Coalition (IRC)? But good luck coming to a consensus definition on “leadership” and “significant community impact” right now.
To choose just one of many strange moments in the discourse these days, here’s JBF Chief Strategy Officer Mitchell Davis posting his support for chef Eric Rivera and his Addo restaurant in Seattle a few weeks ago. And here’s Rivera earlier in July, presumably commenting on members of the IRC team (which JBF supports) who closed their restaurants and laid off staff during the pandemic: “Blindly propping up white male chefs/restaurateurs for their failures is like wanting to keep confederate statues.” And the JBF celebratory video highlight goes to…
The Lists – Meanwhile, taking a totally different tack, critic Besha Rodell’s editors went ahead and published “the second annual World’s Best Restaurants from Travel + Leisure and Food & Wine” yesterday. Congrats in the US to: Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Tarrytown; Jose Enrique, San Juan; N/Naka, LA; Swan Oyster Depot, SF; and The Grey in Savannah. **Correction (August 25): While these US restaurants remain “World’s Best” according to this list, they are not among the 2020 additions. The pandemic cut Rodell’s travels short, and she couldn’t visit the US for this year’s cut.
The Profiteers – “Founders of restaurant brands ranging from Ruby Tuesday to &Pizza are partnering in a blank-check acquisition company to raise as much as $200 million to buy into unidentified hospitality and restaurant businesses, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.” NRN’s Ron Ruggless reports the group behind “FAST Acquisitions Corp.” includes a couple ex-NFL players, SevenRooms co-founder Allison Page, &Pizza CEO Michael Lastoria, and more. “The chief strategy officer is Kimberly Grant, who served as CEO of chef José Andrés’ ThinkFoodGroup… from January 2014 to April 2020.”
To get a sense of where the big money’s headed these days, here’s a statement from the group: “Although the current COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the restaurant ecosystem, many limited-service concepts, particularly those with strong delivery components, continue to record same-store sales levels at or above those of one year prior. We believe this level of performance in the midst of industry disruption can be used to clearly evaluate concepts that will be poised for future growth… Additionally, we believe there is a strong real estate opportunity, with many underperforming concepts shuttering units, and landlords providing flexibility on lease terms. We believe that now is the best time to apply a lifetime of learning to this opportunity.”
This opportunity.
The Media: End of an Era – In a note to members of the Association of Food Journalists on Wednesday, president Hanna Raskin announced that 46 years after its founding, AFJ “will cease operations on Dec. 31, 2020.” Raskin says the media landscape has changed dramatically since 1974 and, “as a result, the need for AFJ has arguably never been greater. Unfortunately, another result of the upheaval is AFJ no longer has the financial resources to function.”
The Media Too – Thursday headline in Eater LA: “LA Times Shakes Up Food Section Today Following Peter Meehan Internal Investigation… ‘Managers failed to prevent or report behavior they knew or should have known was inappropriate,’ an internal memo reads.” Per Farley Elliott, “Chief human resources officer Nancy Antoniou and executive editor Norman Pearlstine announced that Alice Short ‘will continue to serve as acting food editor,’ and that deputy editor Andrea Chang has been reassigned.”
The Accusations – Eater SF gave Lazy Bear chef Selasie Dotse an article’s worth of space to make direct accusations of racism against chefs and restaurants across the Bay Area. Dotse doesn’t always name names, but does detail a number of experiences at Lazy Bear, Bird Dog, Avery, and SPQR, with management responses featured in an “Editor’s Note” box off to one side. The article is worth a read for its content, but I’m also struck by the way a single voice was given this opportunity to publish allegations in Eater. It feels like a new, on-the-record side of the spectrum of first person accusations being lobbed across Twitter and Instagram accounts like the Welps and others (Austin, Albany, Houston, El Paso, Philly, etc.). Thoughts?
The Deliverables – Headline in Eater NY: “DoorDash Has Completely Bungled Its Caviar Takeover, NYC Restaurateurs Say.” Story from Erika Adams: “One Michelin-starred restaurant team that uses Caviar to facilitate delivery at the group’s more casual restaurant said orders dropped by 75 percent after the delivery service started its migration on August 10. After the front-facing consumer app updated this week, the restaurant saw zero orders on Tuesday and one or two orders on Wednesday.” Thoughts and prayers to the product team.
And last and least: The Critics – Critics around the country have written about how they’re not going to write negative reviews while COVID rages on, but Eater NY’s Ryan Sutton has apparently decided negative postmortems are just fine. Benu chef Corey Lee called Sutton’s piece on NYC’s TAK Room closing this week — “Thomas Keller’s TAK Room Has Closed, but It Shouldn’t Have Opened in the First Place” — “an asshole move,” and chefs near and far seemed to agree in the comments on his Instagram (Claire Smyth called it “worthless journalism” from London). TAK owner Thomas Keller chimed in with this to say of the critic: “As for Mr. Sutton, I did not realize that he was still writing, most likely because I have been hard at work daily supporting my teams, colleagues and our profession.”
Sure sounds like Mr. Keller is angling for a spot in the 2021 JBF not-Awards-ceremony ceremony!
And that’s it for today. Please stay tuned below the jump for subscription info going forward.
I’ll see you here Tuesday for next Family Meal.
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or many limited-service concepts, particularly those with strong delivery components to andrew@thisfamilymeal.com. If you like Family Meal and want to keep it going, please chip in here. If you got this as a forward, sign up for yourself!
OK. Still here?
Friends, so-and-sos, nemeses,
There comes a time in every niche little newsletter’s life when it has to spread its wings and become financially self-sustaining. Family Meal turns four years old(!) next month, and I think its time has come.
Starting September 1st, Family Meal will begin charging for regular service.
The vast majority of you are in (or very closely connected to) the restaurant industry, and I know the timing could not be worse to ask you for money. With that in mind, I’ve tried to come up with an elegant solution.
Here’s the basic publishing schedule starting next month:
Paid plan: Family Meal delivered Tuesdays and Fridays as usual.
Free plan: Family Meal delivered Fridays only, with Tuesday’s edition copy/pasted at bottom.
In other words, if you don’t pay, you won’t miss anything; you’ll just be on a delay.
The paid plan will remain as it is now: $50/year or $5 monthly.
There will also be a third option, which is to become a Friend of Andrew’s by subscribing at any amount over $50/year, up to $500 for hardcore supporters.
Friends of Andrew’s can expect all kinds of special treatment. For example: If you, as a top-level Friend of Andrew’s, are the subject of a scathing expose in food media, I will go out of my way to pepper my write-up of your scandal with distracting whattaboutisms and pointed questions of the author’s integrity. (‘Yes, murder is bad. We all agree! But so was Leningrad, and last time I saw this “reporter” anywhere interesting, they were swilling a comped bottle of Mascarello at what my staff buddy calls “the San Pellegrino table” at EMP [big wink].’)
SO, if you like Family Meal, want to keep it going, and are in a position to do so, please…
And that’s it. For now. Any questions or comments, please be in touch: andrew@thisfamilymeal.com.
And thanks so much to all of you for reading! I try every week to make Family Meal informative and fun for each and every one of you. And I never, ever fail, which is pretty cool.