Labor
LA Program Pairs Understaffed Restaurants With Job Placement Non-Profit to Feed the Needy
Eater LA 4/19
A new restaurant grant program in greater Los Angeles is aimed at helping to solve several different problems at once. The new initiative, engineered by Kitchen Culture Recruiting, will pay restaurants to provide meals to a particular group of in-need locals — anyone from first responders to the elderly to out of work hospitality employees — and give them the staff to do so, as part of a partnership with non-profit job placement and retention program Chrysalis.
Bay Area restaurants want to reopen. A nationwide staffing crisis is halting plans
San Francisco Chronicle 4/19
The Bay Area restaurant industry is in the middle of its biggest staffing crisis yet. The labor market was already tight pre-pandemic because of San Francisco’s notoriously high cost of living and relatively low wages. Then, the first shelter-in-place order hit and restaurants laid off workers, who have left the region en masse, started their own small businesses or found jobs in other industries. Although California just passed a law guaranteeing laid-off hospitality workers their old jobs, few actually want them, owners say.
Food Industry Policy
America’s minimum wage debate is at a tipping point. Here’s what’s at stake
San Francisco Chronicle 4/19
Tipped employees, like servers and bartenders, can be paid as low as $2.13 per hour in some states. Democrats tried to eliminate the subminimum wage as part of the Raise the Wage Act, but the plan was dropped from the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill after failing to pass the Senate. Still, the “Fight for $15” movement continues and will likely be revisited during the Biden administration’s term. Recently, Olive Garden’s parent company Darden Restaurants was sued over its tipping policy.
Garcetti’s big plans for L.A. restaurants and food carts
Los Angeles Times 4/19
Mayor Eric Garcetti is proposing millions of dollars in restaurant aid and new programs to help street vendors and other struggling chefs and restaurateurs to avert fees, red tape and other logistical hurdles in the wake of COVID-19.
On the Side
A poetically written lawsuit says restaurants being forced to pay for permits during the pandemic was unfair.
Monterey County Now 4/20
At the behest of the California Restaurant Association, Kabateck is filing lawsuits all over the state, against various counties, county health departments and the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, because as the restaurant industry was being hammered by the pandemic, counties and health departments and the ABC still wanted the permit fees restaurants pay to operate.
SoCal Taco Fest announces October return date at Waterfront Park
KUSI 4/19
SoCal Taco Fest will return to Waterfront Park in downtown San Diego on Oct. 23, following a year without the popular food and drink event due to COVID-19 closures, the organizers announced Monday.
