Labor
Restaurants Race for Employees as Recovery Heats Up
QSR Magazine 4/6
In the Department of Labor’s most recent job report, released last Friday, restaurants added 175,800 jobs in March. While lower than February’s 309,000 rate, it signals continued mobility and the fact restaurants across the country are getting back to business. Restaurants have added roughly 4.2 million jobs since April 2020 (a month where 5.5 million jobs vanished alone).
How this Napa entrepreneur is piloting 2 restaurants through the pandemic
North Bay Business Journal 4/5
Sometimes living in the present isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially if you’re a restaurant owner trying to keep your business alive in a pandemic. Just ask Chuck Meyer, a Bay Area native and owner of two businesses in downtown Napa.
Food Industry Policy
After the pandemic ends, will the Bay Area get to keep to-go cocktails?
SFGATE 4/6
When the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) issued its first Notice of Regulatory Relief last year, it allowed bars and restaurants to sell boozy drinks in outdoor spaces to help ease the economic blow from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Microchips With Your Salsa?: Robots Recharging the Restaurant and Hotel Industries
JD Supra 4/5
Imagine this: COVID-19 restrictions on indoor dining have lifted, you walk in to your favorite restaurant, and instead of seeing bussers patrolling tables, you see a three-foot tall robot scooting around the floor. No, you are not hallucinating after quarantining for too long. You are, however, seeing the hospitality industry embrace an increasingly widespread trend to adapt to a world where less human-to-human contact is desired instead of discouraged.
On the Side
Oakland’s Vegan Barbecue Sensation Is Already Blowing Up in SF
KQED 4/6
Ever since it exploded onto the local dining scene in 2019, Vegan Mob has been one of the most popular restaurants in Oakland—a bright-green, graffiti-bedecked retro barbecue joint known for its rib tips, brisket-stuffed burritos and garlic noodles. Naturally, everything on the menu is vegan.
In a Bay Area underground oven, chefs are making smoky, earthy pork just like it’s done in the Yucatán
San Francisco Chronicle 4/5
Arcadio Cach takes a hoe and starts scraping dirt in a back corner of his Richmond yard, behind a big green lawn studded with raised beds for growing cilantro and tomatoes. Slowly, he reveals a square scrap of metal lying underground. He lifts it up, and rows of uniform brick appear below: an underground oven, just like his grandpa built in his native Yucatán in Mexico.
