Minimum gone, Reply All paused, Chargebacks, Comebacks, and more...
Family Meal - Friday, February 26, 2021
Hello Friday,
Tuesday’s paid Family Meal is copy/pasted at bottom as usual. I’m still trying to keep everything basically free because the vast majority of you are in the industry, and it’s not easy to be in the industry right now! BUT, if you have the means, want to support, and want to get Tuesdays’ on Tuesdays, by all means…
Let’s get to it…
The Minimum – Big news last night: “Democrats cannot include a $15 per hour minimum wage in their $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, a Senate official ruled Thursday, derailing for now a party priority and a raise for millions of Americans.” If you’re reading through bad takes on Twitter and thinking, “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” reminder: The Senate is still split 50/50, and per Jacob Pramuk on CNBC: “Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona both opposed a $15 per hour minimum wage. Manchin said he backed $11 per hour instead.”
FWIW: The tip credit is rarely mentioned in the articles I’ve been reading about the $15 minimum, and something tells me it’s rarely mentioned in congressional negotiations too…
The Media – Welp. As many expected, instead of Chapter 3 of the Reply All podcast’s look at what happened at Bon Appetit last year, co-host Alex Goldman took over the feed last night to say: “We now understand that we should never have published this story as reported, and the fact that we did was a systemic editorial failure. We are not going to be continuing the series, and [hosts PJ Vogt and Sruthi Pinnamaneni] have both decided to leave the Reply All team... We’re sorry.” If you need background on all that, Katie Robertson and Jenny Gross have it in the NYT, where they also report, “A spokesman for Spotify, which acquired Gimlet Media in February 2019, said Mr. Vogt and Ms. Pinnamaneni would remain at Gimlet, even though they were off the podcast”
I understand and take seriously the various sensitivities around airing the final two chapters of the series, but I am also dead serious when I say: Please leak them to me, Gimlet staff. We can figure this out!
The Scourge – “Spoon by H, Yoonjin Hwang’s celebrated Korean restaurant in [LA], is closing. Business had been slow since the start of the pandemic, but last summer, Hwang said, she started to notice more people disputing charges and claiming missing items through delivery apps.” LA Times writer Jenn Harris reports that in a growing trend during the pandemic, “Scammers are taking advantage of restaurants that have prioritized safety over in-person security measures… Some people are scamming restaurateurs with fraudulent credit cards, while others request refunds, claiming they never received part or all of an order.”
In the case of Spoon by H, one particularly egregious $729 chargeback occurred on an order processed through Tock, and some seemed to think the app bore responsibility. Tock founder Nick Kokonas pushed back on that notion on Twitter, but in a sign of an app battle that might actually be good for restaurants, ChowNow CEO Chris Webb made sure to message Expedite’s Kristen Hawley to let her know that “ChowNow covers all instances of fraud and chargebacks on behalf of its restaurant customers.” Your move, apps!
Epilogue / Prologue: Per Eater’s Farley Elliott, friends of the restaurant started a successful GoFundMe, and Hwang now says of the $60k and counting in donations: “The raised funds will go towards a new beginning for Spoon By H.”
The Profile Treatment – Is this the first of a new redemption(ish) genre? Headline in the NYT: “Under Fire, a Portland Chef Tries to Build a Fairer Workplace. Gregory Gourdet has revamped his plans for a Haitian kitchen, after being caught up in a citywide furor over the treatment of restaurant workers.” An Instagram callout campaign in Portland, OR last year leveled “anonymous accusations that Mr. Gourdet hadn’t done enough to stop harassment and discrimination at both [of the Departure restaurants that he at least nominally led], and that he didn’t properly credit a pastry chef for her ideas.” Gourdet initially declined to comment on the accusations (also telling the Oregonian at the time: “If everyone is supporting Black Lives Matter right now, this should have been done in a more constructive way”), but now tells Brett Anderson, “He has ‘listened to every single one of them,’ reached out to many of those workers, and wants to help change the power dynamics in an industry that has mistreated workers for too long.”
His plan: “Seven of his newly hired nine-member kitchen staff are people of color; six are women and one is nonbinary. To address concerns over pay imbalances in restaurants, all employees other than managers receive the same salary, and tips are split evenly between the dining room and kitchen staffs.”
The money quote: “‘I don’t want to say my job is more important than others,’ [said one of the employees], ‘but sometimes, when I’m pulling more of my own weight than others, it doesn’t seem totally fair.’”
The Breakup – In Boston, “The four businessmen behind Eastern Standard and other restaurants — including some of the biggest food brands in the Boston area — are splitting up. After a decade together, the four — Garrett Harker, Skip Bennett, Jeremy Sewall and Shore Gregory — said they’re going their separate ways. Bennett founded Island Creek Oysters in 1995, while Harker founded Eastern Standard 15 years ago.” Details via Gintautas Dumcius in the Business Journal.
That Ghost $$$ – Wanna partner on a project with Mariah Carey? You know she hawks cookies now, right? “You’ve Heard of Ghost Kitchens. Meet the Ghost Franchises.” Per Marissa Conrad in the NYT, “In December, Virtual Dining Concepts, the company behind [the YouTube celeb backed] MrBeast Burger, announced similar ventures with the TV personality Mario Lopez and the ‘Jersey Shore’ alumnus Pauly D… We seem to be entering a period in which every ‘Bachelorette’ contestant from the last 18 years will have a virtual deli.”
Re the economics: One restaurateur, who operates 12 different “Nextbite” ghost franchises (including a Wiz Khalifa one) out of just one kitchen, tells Conrad, “Nextbite takes a 45 percent cut of sales, but handles all delivery-app fees, which would be… as high as 30 percent per order. In his best month so far, he cleared $20,000 across the 12 brands.”
For the Somm – With the caveats that A) This is basically a press release, and B) Wine writer Jon Bonné says it’s mostly the result of vaccination priority systems… I do think it sounds like a huge success story that “Nearly 70% of Sonoma County’s Estimated 12,500 Ag and Production Workers Have Been Vaccinated.” Right?
And last but not least: The Accuracy – After what feels like years of article after article of anti-delivery app screeds from food media, restaurateurs, labor activists, sometimes me, and everyone else, I had to chuckle and grudgingly appreciate this week’s perfect headline from Chris Crowley in GrubStreet: “Big Delivery Is Winning — Even If Everyone Hates It.”
Alternate option: “Big Delivery, the Ted Cruz of Restaurant Tech.”
And that’s it for today. I’ll see paying subscribers back here Tuesday for next Family Meal, and everyone else in one week. If you’re on Clubhouse, don’t forget to join Kristen Hawley and I on Monday at 10:30 ET / 7:30 PT to talk through all the restaurant, food media, and restaurant tech news we’re following to start the week. (If you need an invite to Clubhouse, lmk.)
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or $60k and counting in donations 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!
Here begins the copy/paste of the Family Meal that went out Tuesday, February 23rd, to paying subscribers. If you’d also like to get Tuesdays’ on Tuesdays…
Grant numbers, PPP rules, Minimum mins, Mirror talk, and more...
Hello Tuesday,
And hello to paying subscribers only!
Let’s get to it…
The Relief – Sure seems like no matter the final total on the next federal COVID stimulus package, $25B of it will definitely be earmarked for restaurants. After touting the $25B tally upstate last week, Senator Chuck Schumer held a press conference with Amanda Cohen at Dirt Candy on Sunday, in which he said that number has plenty of bipartisan support, and since the editorial boards at both the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe seem to agree, fair bet he’s right. Schumer says the maximum grant will be $5M for individual restaurants and $10M for chains with less than 20 locations. Over 20 locations: “You can’t get it. We didn’t want the Red Lobsters and the Olive Gardens to push out Amanda, so they’re not competing.”
The Relief Too – On the PPP2 front, Politico’s Zachary Warmbrodt reports there’s a temporary rule change starting tomorrow: “From Wednesday morning to the evening of March 9, only businesses with fewer than 20 employees will be able to apply for aid through the massive Paycheck Protection Program.” Warmbrodt says the move is about focusing banker attention on the underserved and not a zero-sum panic: “Less than half of the PPP's more than $284 billion in current funding has been used since it relaunched Jan. 11, with little concern that it would be exhausted.”
NB: “In addition, the SBA will eliminate restrictions on business owners with non-fraud felony convictions and those delinquent on their federal student loans. The agency will also clarify that business owners who are non-citizen, U.S. residents can use Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers to apply for relief.” Good luck, all!
The Minimizing – Meanwhile, the One Fair Wage goal of a $15 federal minimum wage may be coming up against congressional understanding of state-by-state variation in the value of a dollar (that other PPP: Purchasing Power Parity)… Headline in Politico: “Democrats plot their Plan B to save minimum wage hike.” Details from Caitlin Emma and Aaron Lorenzo: “‘$11 is the right place to be,’ [WV Dem. Senator Joe Manchin] said. ‘Throwing $15 out there right now just makes it very difficult in rural America.’”
The Maximizing – Per Cara Lombardo and Maureen Farrell in the WSJ: “Toast Inc. is planning an initial public offering that could value the restaurant-software provider at around $20 billion, people familiar with the matter said… The Boston company was valued at around $4.9 billion in a $400 million fundraising round roughly a year ago.”
The Accusations – Oof. What a month for the man in the mirror. First, the Reply All podcast launched a deep dive on toxic work culture at Bon Appétit, only to be accused of having toxic work culture itself (leading to the “stepping away” of two hosts of the show). Then last week, an editor falsely accused a popular food writer of pretending to be POC, forcing the writer to publicly “prove” her racial background / identity (leading to the firing of the editor). And then, Clarence Kwan, author of the Chinese Protest Recipes zine that’s been featured all over the place (including the LA Times this week), took it upon himself to criticize the PR effort behind a new Chinese-American food concept from restaurateur Hanson Li and chef Eric Ehler in San Francisco, prompting a look / backlash at other interactions people have had with Kwan (loosely collected in Joe Rosenthal’s Instagram stories), and questions about who speaks for whom in questions of race and “authenticity.”
Those are questions that I, your pithy, white-guy narrator, am not prepared to answer here, but am happy to read and share more about should you see a good take.
But on the other hand – I just left a hipster coffee shop packed with Condé Nast staffers, and they were all whispering agreement with “Woke Me When It’s Over,” the latest Op-Ed from Bret Stephens in the NYT. Stevens, who once cc’d someone’s boss to complain about a minor Twitter insult, is concerned that Bon Appétit going back to edit its recipe archive shows that: “No transgression of sensitivities is so trivial that it will not invite a moralizing rebuke on social media. No cultural tradition is so innocuous that it needn’t be protected from the slightest criticism, at least if the critic has the wrong ethnic pedigree…. And no charge of cultural insensitivity is so far-fetched that it won’t force a magazine into self-abasing self-expurgation.”
There is a real argument to be made for more nuance, more second chances, and more forgiveness in some situations in restaurants and food media of late! Unfortunately, Stephens leaves all those things out of his own essay and winds up in one of the more tragic human situations: Self-abasing without ever self-expurgating.
Also, he misses a real chance for a much better dig at the star PC policeperson of his piece, which is that after successfully haranguing BA into editing an old hamantaschen recipe, they celebrated their woke victory by asking people to subscribe to their newsletter. Ridiculous.
And that’s it for today!
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 the Red Lobsters and the Olive Gardens 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!