CA AB-626, McNally numbers, English renderings, and more...
Family Meal - Friday, September 4th, 2020
Hello Friday,
Quick housekeeping notes:
ATTN paying subscribers: There is a better than average chance that there will be no Family Meal on Tuesday on account of the usual dearth of restaurant news over holiday weekends. Please blame: The Media.
ATTN non-paying subscribers: This past Tuesday’s Family Meal is copy/pasted at bottom, as promised (including a brief Q&A about the Beard Awards with the JBF’s Mitchell Davis at the very, very end). If you want to get Tuesdays on Tuesdays…
Let’s get to it…
The Regulators – Headline in Eater LA: “Newly Legal Home Restaurants Look to Revolutionize California’s Food Scene. How California’s new AB-626 could unleash a completely new kind of marketplace of home-cooked meals.” Per Farley Elliott, “The newly implemented regulation allows anyone to run a licensed restaurant out of their home kitchen and dining room. No commercial space, no food truck, no ghost kitchen, and no staff is needed — just pull some local permits to get certified by the… county public health office.”
Saw a bunch of people on Twitter celebrating this as a potential nationwide game-changer, but if you’re at all concerned about traditional restaurants(!) and/or gentrification issues, I foresee some unintended consequences worth bringing up before laws are passed…
And important to note the current limitations in CA too: “The law specifically calls for ‘no more than one full-time equivalent food employee’ per permit… [and] AB-626 also caps the money made at ‘no more than $50,000 in verifiable gross annual sales.’” Elliott says Riverside is the only county fully implementing the law so far.
The Jobs Report – National unemployment numbers should come out at 8:30AM EST this morning, but for some specifics, Eater NY’s Ryan Sutton had group by group numbers in NYC on Tuesday, with a wave of state filings by Momofuku, Thomas Keller, Keith McNally, USHG, and more. Sample stats: Sutton reports McNally has informed the government that furloughs will probably continue (and may become permanent layoffs) for 22 employees at his management company, 93 at Minetta Tavern, 106 at Morandi, and 266 at Balthazar. Meanwhile, Sutton’s colleague Ashok Selvam reports from Chicago: “Boka Restaurant Group filed notice with the state that it intended to lay off 516 workers, giving the government the required 60-day notice before a company plans a mass layoff. The layoffs include more than 200 workers at celebrity chef Stephanie Izard’s four restaurants.”
Everything is awful. But shout out to McNally for keeping his furloughed staff in the loop on his memoir writing in Martha’s Vineyard.
The Media — In Cincinnati, food media veteran Keith Pandolfi announced Wednesday that he’s “the new Food & Dining writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer. He takes over for longtime Enquirer Food writer / critic Polly Campbell, who retired earlier this summer.
And in looking around to see where departing Bon App staff might be landing lately, I was told I missed some news buried in this bigger NYT piece last month: Jesse Sparks is in as a new Cities Editor at Eater.
The Work – Both Tim Carman in the Washington Post and Kim Severson in the NYT have updates on the situation with embattled director John T. Edge and the Southern Foodways Alliance. Pick your poison. The gist (I think): The SFA has committed to both make “a cluster of new hires” to improve diversity, and bring in an outside agency to help it figure out its future leadership / diversity plans (sound familiar?). Still no concrete plan on JTE’s departure, though in Severson’s piece I learned that his name will forever be attached to his future old job via a salary fund titled: “The John T. Edge Southern Foodways Alliance Director Endowment.”
Some Sad News – In Chicago, “After Jill Dedinsky returned to Chicago from dropping her son off at Jacksonville University in Florida, she texted her close friend and longtime colleague, restaurateur Ina Pinkney. She told Pinkney that she had safely made it back home, and that she had never been so happy. Less than two days later, The Goddess and Grocer executive chef was rushed to the hospital after suffering a brain aneurysm early Aug. 23. A week passed, and on Friday , she died.” Dedinsky was 49. Grace Wong has a full obit in the Tribune.
For Design Fans –Eater Las Vegas has official renderings from the new Night + Market, Todd English Olives, Kassi Beach Club and Commons Club at the upcoming Virgin Hotels resort taking over the former Hard Rock Hotel space. Two points: First, I’m no purist, but it’s always a bit sad to see the big casinos license the rights to fun-and-funky (in this case, Night + Market) and then throw it aside in favor of mass market sleekness. And second, zoom in on that Olives image real quick. Yes, those bulges in the bar with the fruit pedestals on them make for some awkward still life sketch stations(?), but more importantly: Does Todd English have his own 3D-rendered character? Is that him in the black chef’s shirt? Hard to tell without the smirk, but… wow, that guy doesn’t age!
And that’s it for today. Stick around below the jump for Tuesday’s content if you missed it.
And note again that because of Labor Day, I’ll (probably) see you here Friday for next Family Meal.
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or no more than $50,000 in verifiable gross annual sales 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!
Still here? Below is an exact copy/paste of Tuesday’s Family Meal, which was sent to paying subscribers on… Tuesday. If you’d like to get Tuesdays’ Family Meals on Tuesdays too:
Hello Tuesday,
And hello paying subscribers! Now that it’s just us this morning, I feel like we can get reeeeaaaal bogged down in what some people might consider somewhat “frivolous” awards details. Not us, of course, but SOME people.
Let’s get to it…
Beard Season – Maybe it was just me, but after last week’s big NYT piece on the cancellation of the 2020 James Beard Foundation Awards came out, there seemed to still be some confusion about what actually happened, and one question in particular bugged me: Were winners chosen? In his article, Pete Wells says that “A foundation staff member who had seen the final voting results raised a… concern: No Black people had won in any of the 23 categories on the ballot.”
So, winners had been chosen, right? But then I saw an email that JBF Chief Strategy Officer Mitchell Davis was sending around to voters, seeming to somewhat dispute that and say JBF leadership did not in fact have a list of winners (and were therefor in no position to decide not to share it). So… I emailed Davis, and here’s what he said in a nutshell:
The Foundation did go through all normal rounds of voting, thereby compiling what in any other year would have been a final list of winners. Two internal staff members and the accounting firm they use to vet the Awards have seen that list (and therefore know who would have won this year in normal circumstances). But with so many nominees being removed after the fact, the Foundation decided those winners could not be the winners, and a revote was needed. Yada Sqirl yada… no revote, no winners, awards cancelled.
In my pedantic book, that still means the James Beard Foundation has a list of 2020 James Beard Award winners that they have decided not to share. Fine.
Side note: If you’re curious, Davis also told me that the “outside social justice agency” they’ve contracted to audit the Awards is Rally, which bills itself as “an issue-driven communications firm” on its website. You can check out the diversity of that team here, and meet Luca Servodio, the man who “works with the James Beard Foundation to advance racial equity in the restaurant industry,” here. (NB: There may be others working on this, but his was the only bio I could find mentioning JBF.)
Anyway, my entire Q&A with Davis is copy/pasted at bottom for reference, so moving on…
The Accountability – Per Eater Chicago’s Ashok Selvam: “For the past three months, a group of Chicago industry workers have been developing a campaign to hold restaurant owners accountable, to ensure public statements supporting Black Lives Matter are more than a public relations ploy. The effort’s called CHAAD (Chicago Hospitality Accountable Actions Database),” and the spreadsheet they’re putting together is an impressive list of (so far) 104 Chicago restaurants, each called out column by column for what they’ve done (or haven’t done) on everything from “Redistribution” (of funds) to the date of their “last related social media statements of solidarity.” Feet, meet long-term fire?
The Rent – Very interested to hear what you all are seeing around the country, but glad to finally be reading articles with at least quasi-solid numbers on rent reductions (for new leases) some places. In LA, commercial realtor Lorena Tomb told Eater’s Oren Peleg, “I would say the same operators that we’re looking at a space pre-COVID are looking at the same space rents that are maybe 20 percent lower than they were before.” Reports Peleg, “Most brokers interviewed for this story agreed that the current rent dip in the market is roughly 20 percent down from February, and may even go lower. However, most cautioned against applying that figure too broadly.” (However, re that last sentence: Some brokers’ incentives may not exactly be aligned with a 20% decrease in rent…)
The Profile Treatment – The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner was out with a profile of Nina Compton on Friday, and you will forgive me (or not) for not knowing more about the chef’s unique childhood: “Compton was an infant when St. Lucia declared independence from Britain, on February 22, 1979, after centuries of colonial rule. That day, her father, already the island’s leader, was sworn in as its first Prime Minister. John Compton… was a charismatic speaker with a flair for dramatic gestures—early in his career, he’d made his name by drawing a gun on a white sugar-factory owner who had refused to recognize an employee union. By the time he came to govern the island… he was the face of the conservative establishment, which he headed until his death, in 2007. For almost all of Compton’s upbringing, she was a First Daughter of a young nation.” Celebrity chefs, they’re just like us!
And last but not least: The Relief – Highly recommend those of you still holding out hope (and banging the drum) for restaurant-specific federal relief read this weekend’s big NYT piece on Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. It has a fair amount of personal history — you can skim past the section titled “A Custom-Upholstered Porsche” if pressed for time — but functions mainly as a rundown of everything leading up to the government’s first big relief package, including the Paycheck Protection Program. One fun fact I learned: TV’s Mad Money guy appears to be the reason we got PPP at all. Per reporters James B. Stewart and Alan Rappeport, “Something needed to be done for small businesses. Mr. Mnuchin spoke regularly to the CNBC host Jim Cramer. Mr. Cramer seemed positioned to understand the plight of small companies because he owned a Mexican and an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. When Mr. Mnuchin called in to his show, Mr. Cramer said small businesses needed money but couldn’t afford to go deeper into debt. Mr. Mnuchin unveiled a forgivable-loan program.”
And the rest, as they say, is still a never-ending nightmare.
And that’s it for today (except my emailed Q&A with Mitchell Davis below, of course.)
I’ll see you here Friday for next Family Meal.
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or a custom-upholstered Porsche 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!
Emailed Q&A with James Beard Foundation Chief Strategy Officer Mitchell Davis:
Family Meal: Am I correct that in terms of what would have been normal procedures, the final ballots were cast this year? (ie, not including the foundation's idea to run a third ballot, by any other year's standards the voting process had been completed).
Mitchell Davis: Yes, but as you are inferring, this year was anything but normal. A process usually completed in a matter of four weeks stretched out to four months. Since the ballot was cast in May, a number of nominees withdrew themselves or were removed for eligibility reasons. As we explored these allegations and many of them played out publicly with those involved, we realized that with multiple withdrawals, a revote would be necessary—reason being, the votes previously cast were based on that nominee pool, and with a handful or more of nominees removed, a revote would be the only way to have a fair result.
As we were moving ahead with the revote, we looked around at an industry continuing to reel from COVID-19; an industry reckoning with its role in perpetuating racial inequities; and an industry wrought with current and former restaurant workers speaking out about hostile working conditions. Compounded, it felt less and less appropriate to celebrate or hand out awards to fewer than two dozen people when so many are facing hardship and inequity.
The Foundation’s leadership and the committee chairs agreed. As a result, the planned revote never happened and the final winners were never selected.
Family Meal: Did anyone see the results of that "final" ballot (I think in foundation terms that was the second ballot for voters, from May)? If so, who saw them?
Mitchell Davis: Yes, two internal staff members and our accounting firm saw the results.
Family Meal: Pete Wells said none of the winners in any of the 23 categories were black. Is this true? (NB: I suppose this could be true either because A) Someone saw the final results, or B) Someone saw that after initial rounds, all black nominees had been eliminated.)
Mitchell Davis: I can’t say for sure. I don’t know the winners (and no one besides those staff ever does). We don’t have complete demographic data on nominees. What I can say is if we had moved forward with handing out awards, the final winners would have been decided in that revote, verified by the accounting firm, and the results would have been accepted unequivocally.
Family Meal: Has the JBF decided on what social justice org they will be using to audit / consult on the awards process going forward? If so, which org (or orgs) has been chosen?
Mitchell Davis: We have been working with Rally on an audit of our internal and external practices, this will include the James Beard Awards: https://wearerally.com/
Family Meal: Jordana Rothman implied on Instagram that the restaurants committee is a tense battleground between radicals and moderates. How would you characterize the working relationships on that committee right now?
Mitchell Davis: The procedures we have in place for the Awards include the committees and we couldn’t do the work without them. They volunteer their time. They oversee judging. We at the Foundation do not vote. As we move into this next phase of the Awards and we begin this audit, we hope to find solutions to issues that they might have with the process and really create a system that they and we can all feel good about.
As our CEO Clare Reichenbach said to Pete Wells—whose article the Times updated to note he served on the committee—we know that there is work to do in adapting our Awards policies to have a more fair and equitable playing field. We also know that a more transparent and clear process is being demanded of us in this time, a call which we want to answer. We are fully prepared to change the way things have been done in the past and make those changes with the goal of upholding the integrity of the Awards and ensuring their continued positive impact on the industry.
End end.