Relief confuses, Uber Eats balloons, BA implodes, CF&W surrenders, and more...
Family Meal - Tuesday, August 11th, 2020
Hello Tuesday,
Bit of a media / politics / tech heavy one for you today.
Let’s get to it…
The Relief – “President Trump took executive action on Saturday to circumvent Congress and try to extend an array of federal pandemic relief, resorting to a legally dubious set of edicts whose impact was unclear.” Welp. That’s Maggie Haberman, Emily Cochrane, and Jim Tankersley summing things up in the NYT this weekend. You may think that by Tuesday morning we would’ve gotten past “legally dubious” and “unclear impact” and figured out what it all meant, but at time of writing the latest two headlines in the NYT re the relief are: “Trump’s plan to bolster unemployment pay has states bewildered.” and “Employers are confused about how to handle the ‘payroll tax holiday.’” So….
Meanwhile, Eater NY’s restaurant-critic-turned-COVID-relief-wonk Ryan Sutton wrapped up his restaurant-specific take on the weekend’s legislating thusly: “To summarize: What Trump did on Saturday appears to be a whole lot of nothing.”
That Delivery $$$ – On Friday, I excerpted Kristen Hawley’s excellent Expedite newsletter to talk about Grubhub’s big numbers during the pandemic. Hawley wrote back to say, “Wait till you hear the Uber Eats numbers!” and because I can’t wait for anything, she kindly offered to share this preview of tomorrow’s Expedite here: “Uber Eats is bigger than Uber’s rides business right now, with ‘massive acceleration’ in April, May, and June, according to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Gross bookings are up 113 percent year over year (that is: the total amount customers spent on delivery more than doubled), reaching nearly $7 billion in the second quarter. Delivery revenue doubled, too…. ‘We’ve essentially built a second Uber in under three years,’ Khosrowshahi said. (The company is still not profitable.)”
Re that last parenthetical, two things: First, even as they take big cuts from restaurants in the midst of this wild, pandemic demand for delivery, delivery apps still can’t turn a profit, and NY Mag’s Josh Barro has the obvious question: “If Uber’s Food-Delivery Business Isn’t Profitable Now, When Can It Be?”
And Second, important to remember that a huge chunk of the gig economy business model is in the crosshairs of the state with the biggest economy in the country. Headline in Bloomberg yesterday afternoon: “California Wins Preliminary Injunction Against Uber, Lyft.” Per Clare Roth, Lizette Chapman, and Josh Eidelson, “Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. were ordered to convert their California drivers from independent contractors to employees with benefits, an early loss in a court battle the gig industry can’t afford to lose.” Luckily for Uber and Lyft, they can afford to appeal…
The Media – Bon Appétit continues to hemorrhage talent. Per the NYT’s Edmund Lee, “The only two Black editorial staff members at Bon Appétit quit Friday as the magazine grapples with criticism from its own staff over racial inequality… The two staff members, Ryan Walker-Hartshorn and Jesse Sparks, gave notice weeks ago.” Sparks laid out his reasoning in a long Twitter thread ending with this analogy: “Swear to god working at Condé is like being on the opposite sports team in an Airbud movie. Like logically there’s no way to fuck up a situation that bad that you lose to a fucking DOG but they always find a way to fumble the bag.”
[Exasperated Condé Nast exec sees the next avoidable PR disaster driving down the court. Shouts from the sidelines: “CAN SOMEONE COVER THAT DOG?!”]
Nope.
A weekend update to last week’s Sonia Rao piece in the Washington Post about previous BA video departures: “On Friday, senior food editor Molly Baz announced in an Instagram post that she would no longer appear on Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel out of solidarity with her colleagues… Later Friday afternoon, Test Kitchen manager Gaby Melian announced her own departure over unsuccessful negotiations.”
The Media (Opportunities) – FYI, if you’re quittin’ somewhere, The Counter is looking for a Senior Editor and a Senior Staff Writer.
The Festival Circuit – Missed this late last week, but Charleston Food & Wine has finally “made the difficult decision to cancel the 2021 festival previously scheduled to be held March 3rd – 7th.” The official statement says they’re working on “a combination of strategic community partnerships, digital content, live-streamed conversations + events,” to fill the gap left from the festival. Food pros, if you aren’t already positioning yourself as an EZ-Key-OL ™, no time to waste! (Electronic/Zoom Key Opinion Leader – pronounced: Ezekiel. “That guy’s on every Zoom panel lately! Damn, he’s a real EZ-Key-OL.”)
Some sad news – “Barbara Costikyan, New York Magazine Food Columnist, Dies at 91.” The cause was complications from COVID-19. Obituary from Emma Goldberg in the NYT, including this detail from another time (for some): “She was loath to give a bad review and often reached out to restaurant owners to offer advice.”
And last but not least – Don’t usually mention product launches here, but the team behind Yardbird Hong Kong emailed this morning to say the whisky they’ve been working on for over five years is finally out and about. Good for them! But what stood out to me is this wild disclaimer on the website: “Sunday's Whisky, as well as numerous other products produced at Sasanokawa, have all tested negative for radiation. The earth, water, and surrounding areas are tested regularly and documentation guaranteeing safety is issued.” Obviously, the whisky is produced in Fukushima, prefecture of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011.
My own disclaimer: I don’t have any personal or business connection to the Yardbird or Sunday’s teams. And I have not done any deep reporting on the way they work. And I’m sure Japanese businesses and agricultural producers have been doing other amazing things in the region in the years since the disaster.
But something about right now really has me looking forward to pouring a glass of this stuff. A drink that says: Remember that disaster a few years back? When horrible things happened and everything felt contaminated and it seemed like this place would never be the same? They’re making whisky from the water there. There’s hope.
And that’s it for today.
Please don’t send me updates on Fukushima that in any way negate my beautiful, boozy metaphor. As always, if I wanted to be told otherwise, I would’ve googled more.
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 no way to fuck up a situation that bad that you lose to a fucking DOG 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!