More Horses, Less Unions, B2B B, and more...

Family Meal - Friday, May 26, 2022

Hello Friday,

And hello from beautiful Berawa, Bali, where work took me this week before I head home tomorrow. If you’ve got a cocktail recommendation in the neighborhood, it’s my last night here and I’m headed out to find one as soon as I hit send, so… please send.

Let’s get to it…

The Horses – Here’s how the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner describes this first article on Twitter: “The big Grub Street piece about the horrifying LA chef is SO well-written and rigorously reported, also I truly can’t recommend that anyone actually read it unless you really really have to — the violence it describes (against both humans and animals) is intense and relentless.”

So… you decide if you want to read it! The gist of that update from Ezra Marcus isn’t far from the original LAT story that broke the news on Horses and its chefs, but it does get more into both sides and adds a lot of detail. Skipping past some of the more macabre stuff, my favorite part was the PR plan:

“Now, [Liz] Johnson seems to be trying to position herself as the solo face of Horses, though [Will] Aghajanian is still technically on the payroll. She texted the restaurant’s press representative to suggest they go ‘full court press on Liz Johnson’ — including booking an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon; the host enjoyed Horses when he dined there, she wrote in a text message.”

First, that’s definitely not going to work now. And second, uh, Crisis PR 101: Don’t let text messages with clients get into NY Mag?

The Unions – In DC, in the same location Kwame Onwuachi said he left (at least in part) because he wanted to own his own place, “Acclaimed chef Kevin Tien’s modern Vietnamese restaurant, Moon Rabbit, is closing on the Wharf at the end of service on Monday, a sudden and surprising move that local union officials say was engineered by the [Intercontinental Hotel] that houses the restaurant to kill efforts to unionize hospitality workers there.” Tim Carman has the details in the Washington Post.

The (B2B) Media – If you understand the following quote, you’re fine. If you don’t understand it, you’re fine too. But if you think B2B restaurant media should probably not be one giant company that also sells events and services to the restaurants and companies it covers, you’re… frustrated? “Informa, the international B2B Markets, and Digital Services, and Academic Markets Group and parent company to Restaurant Hospitality, Nation’s Restaurant News and CREATE, today announced the acquisition of Winsight, the B2B information, event, and market intelligence company that owns Restaurant Business as well as the National Restaurant Association Show, Restaurant Leadership Conference, FSTEC, Technomic, and more.” Details — where else? — Restaurant Hospitality (Byline: RH Staff.)

And last but not least: The Scanners – Headline in NYT: “The QR-Code Menu Is Being Shown the Door.”

Counterpoint:

And that’s it for today!

I’ll see you all back here Friday for next Family Meal.

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