In reading The Guardian’s piece on Momofuku sending cease-and-desist letters to small businesses that use the term “Chile Crunch” or “Chili Crunch”. All of which is happening because Momofuku owns the to trademark to “Chile Crunch”. It was astounding to me, so I felt motivated to learn more about the subject and dive deep into why this trademark even exists.

Thank you for the continued paid subscribers—I used the dollars to be able to access certain documents for this particular newsletter edition.

Many wrongs don’t make a right

The original “Chile Crunch” trademark (Serial No. 86474975) should never have been granted.

If we take a look at this trademark’s history, the examining attorney originally refused registration of the trademark in part because the mark was “merely descriptive”. For reference and clarity, the 2015 correspondence states: “A mark is merely descriptive if it describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of an applicant’s goods and/or services.”

That same “merely descriptive” logic was applied to Fly By Jing’s 2019 application for Sichuan Chili Crisp (Serial No. 88455809). However, it is worth noting that Fly By Jing’s application received an added level of scrutiny due to the product category’s growth in subsequent years. The examining attorney attached evidence highlighting that “chili crisp” is a common term amongst Chinese condiments and that Sichuan province incorporates chilis in much of its cuisine, making it more descriptive than a unique signifier. This application was subsequently abandoned per the USPTO records; although, Fly By Jing has filed a new application “Sichuan Chili Crisp” (Application Serial No. 98482467) as of last week.

Chile Colonial LLC, the company who originally held the trademark to “Chile Crunch”, filed complaints against Trader Joe’s (Case #: 1:20-cv-02281) and Momofuku’s affiliates, Momo Orchard LLC and Momo Orchard Holdings, Inc (Case #: 1:22-cv-02243) for trademark infringement in 2020 and 2023, respectively. It’s key to note here that the condiment that Chile Colonial sought to protect was a sauce that was rooted in Mexican cuisine, especially when we look to the case against Momofuku.

Trader Joe’s (Case #: 1:20-cv-02281)

The complaint against Trader Joe’s concerns the grocer’s Chili Onion Crunch product, whereby Chile Colonial alleges they were were in talks to sell the condiment to Trader Joe’s; however, after negotiations, the grocer decided not to purchase the condiment due to cost. Chile Colonial alleges that shortly thereafter, Trader Joe’s began to sell a copycat product at its stores. (This practice of Trader Joe’s approaching small businesses only to make a copycat product has been a recurring discussion point).

In response to the initial complaint, Trader Joe’s filed counterclaims against Chile Colonial, contesting the trademark’s validity, noting that none of the following were ever submitted to demonstrate the distinctiveness of this condiment: sales or advertising expenditures; arguments against the descriptive nature of “Chile Crunch”; or affidavits or declarations asserting said company’s iteration of “chile crunch” as a source indicator. In fact, Trader Joe’s counsel compiled a list of 100+ products via Corsearch that used “chili crunch” or “chile crunch” in product name and/or description that were in-market during the time of filing. And yet, no other recorded complaints were lodged in this time period.

What was asked for in the counterclaim was simple: cancellation of the trademark on the basis of it being only descriptive—providing characteristic details of a product—and it being generic—not identifying a source indicator for what the trademark should be protecting.

Let’s not kid ourselves, though: Trader Joe’s was by no means altruistic in its ask to cancel the trademark and allow for a free market and open competition. The case ended up with a settlement that presumably let Trader Joe’s to continue on marketing its product as-is and let Chile Colonial maintain its hold over a wobbly trademark.

Momofuku (Case #: 1:22-cv-02243)

In reading Chile Colonial’s complaint against Momofuku, it’s alleged that Momofuku tried to pass off its condiment as Chile Colonial’s in part because of the nearly identical ingredients of “garlic, salt, a variety of an onion [sic] and chilis” is a disservice to immigrant cultures. While there may have been a stronger argument for the likeness Trader Joe’s Chili Onion Crunch had to Chile Colonia’s product, this same argument applied to this context is overreaching in its attempt to broaden and retrofit the scope into Chile Colonial’s needs. Not to mention, this line of reasoning, while attempting to capture the entire swath of chili and chile crunch sauces, is an offensive reduction of all minorities into a monolith.

The egregiousness truly comes to light when Chile Colonial asserts a “common law” status, meaning that Chile Colonial believes its condiment has a strong enough association with the term “Chile Crunch”, that when someone brings up “Chile Crunch” in a conversation that it would be considered to be synonymous with Chile Colonial’s product. It’s truly appalling to think that one’s company so highly in a growing space that their product not only speaks for Mexican condiments, but also for every culture’s version of such.

The case was dismissed upon reaching a settlemnt in which the trademark for “Chile Crunch” was transferred from Chile Colonial to Momofuku.

OK, but wait: can we cancel a trademark?

Yes, it can be done. Generally, under the paragraph 3 of the Lanham Act (15 U.S. Code § 1064), if a registered trademark becomes a generic name for good or services, it can be petitioned for cancellation. While “Chile Crunch” and its sibling “Chili Crunch” may not been in the daily vernacular of most grocery aisles at the time of trademark application—but the category has grown considerably in the last decade.

As a side note, Yun Hai’s newsletter has a great explanation of how the translations for Chili Crisp have come to be in the North American market, and therefore also underscores how problematic it is to have a descriptive term curb cross-cultural exchange and development.

And also off-topic, I just wanted to share that someone did attempt to trademark “Podcast” in 2005 (Serial No. 78564869), but it was ultimately rejected because it was descriptive and generic. But can you imagine if it was indeed granted? Wowzers.

The most recent example of a trademark cancellation comes from no other than Taco Bell. “Taco Tuesday” was trademarked in 1989 by Taco John’s (in all states except New Jersey). Taco Bell filed a petition with the USPTO last year to have it reversed on the basis of the trademark having become a common phrase. Taco John’s abandoned the trademark in July of that year, followed by Gregory’s Restaurant and Bar, who held the New Jersey rights to the trademark, in October.

Similar to Trader Joe’s, we can’t pretend that Taco Bell had “Taco Tuesday” released into the ether to spread the love of tacos. The motive to be able to use the term freely without any legal risk was key to Taco Bell’s decision to challenge the trademark holders. But it’s demonstrative that there is more benefit in allowing for growth and change in how America consumes and talks about food, as opposed to confining them to an outdated framework.

So when Momofuku acquired the “Chile Crisp” trademark, it should have dismantled it in its entirety. The company would’ve garnered a lot more respect from its peers instead of what it did next.

What is the end goal?

At the end of March, MomoIP LLC filed to trademark “Chili Crunch” (Serial No. 98475401), which would complement its possession of the “chile crunch” trademark. And yes, this application cross-references the existing trademark under the “Related Properties Information” tab.

While the application awaits further correspondence and instruction from the examining attorney, Momofuku can still achieve its goal of squeezing out competition by way of placing a forceful phantom hand on the shoulders of small businesses. From what I’ve read in The Guardian piece, it appears that Momofuku has taken notes from the two complaints brought forth by Chile Colonial and applied the wrong learnings. For Momofuku’s cease-and-desist letter to recognize itself as having developed common law rights to the applied-for “Chili Crunch” trademark is a slap in the face and an attempt to reduce a whole continent to the ethnic aisle that David Chang, himself, despised.

In terms of whether or not to fight the good fight, for businesses that are nowhere near the size of Momofuku or Trader Joe’s, it’s a large gamble to continue to hold and sell a product that may potentially be racking up a damages complaint. Whether or not “chili crunch” is also granted status, it doesn’t matter—the damage will already have been dealt to the companies that have to spend significant dollars on legal consults, new packaging, and marketing and advertising to recoup lost sales. This tactic is one that not only strong-arms smaller businesses into Momofuku’s desired result of gaining and leveraging its now-solidified keyword dominance, but also into common law status by having its competitors fold out of fear of possible legal action, thereby only leaving Momofuku Chili Crunch on physical and virtual shelves.

Trademark or not, the desired outcome is the same: monopolization. And you know what? Homogeneity is not how we make progress in culture or food—it’s such a god damn travesty for a company whose figurehead supposedly championed difference and diversity.

Even though both Uber and DoorDash’s new advertising solutions cater to CPG brands, the paths by which we get there are different for the two companies. In my last post, I posited that Uber’s overarching business is one that focuses on the selling of movement (i.e. movement of people to places or of food and items to places). However, I can’t say that DoorDash sells quite the same thing.

Who are you, DoorDash?

In a recent episode of Allison Schiff’s “AdExchanger Talks” podcast, DoorDash’s VP of Ads, Toby Espinosa, works quick to dispel the public’s notion that DoorDash’s core mission is to simply be a restaurant delivery company. Instead, Espinosa zooms out and suggests, as I paraphrase, that the company’s focus is to connect local (both small and large) businesses with customers.

This idea of bridging businesses and consumers is accomplished by the selling of convenience for goods, as Espinosa rattles off a list physical goods as examples. In other words: DoorDash isn’t in the business of movement like Uber; instead, it is in the business of selling “tangible convenience”.

DoorDash’s canopy: layers within an ecosystem

Up until Q3 of 2020, DoorDash earned their bread and butter through the delivering of food from independent eateries, as well as from restaurant and fast food chains. Diversification in revenue sources came in August 2020 when the company added on-demand grocery delivery. This inclusion of groceries in the portfolio of deliverable commerce gave way to chances for additional and recurring weekly purchases on DoorDash’s platform. Creating another way for consumers to spend effectually realizes a possibility for growth by increasing convenience and decreasing friction.

Let’s use Espinosa’s comparison of DoorDash to an ecosystem—it’s a pretty apt one. Using a concentric circle model, we can place the north star of tangible convenience in the centre. From there, we’re able to add the layer of DoorDash’s first revenue driver—restaurant food delivery—followed by another one that encapsulates vertical expansion (groceries, retail, and pets) at the local delivery level.

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Next, we have the nationwide iteration of food shipments and convenience shopping. The former is an evolution of the local restaurant food delivery, sending the convenience of food as nourishment and as gift (retail) across the country. As for the latter, DashMart served as DoorDash’s entry into their partnered vendor and merchant model by becoming its own operator of such a business, selling grocery and convenience items.

And on the outermost layer, we have the growing ads business. I suggest that this organization sits atop the rest because of the leveraging of data and purchasing behaviour from everything downstream:

• DoorDash’s owned-and-operated retail stores (DashMart)

• Partnered large retail (i.e. grocers and big box), and restaurant and fast food chains

• Unique merchants (such as independent restaurants who have only one location)

There are other DoorDash products in existence, including their financing arm, that I haven’t mentioned here. The picture that I’m trying illustrate is one that focuses directly on how I see DoorDash leveraging its core mission into a revenue stream that stands to grow considerably within the next several years. Ancillary products and services will continue to be developed, for sure, but they will most likely be done to complement the outlined skeleton of this ecosystem, as opposed to supplant it.

What do these components all amount to?

As the company continues to evolve, so have their ad offerings. Prior to the launch of the grocery and retail verticals, the ceiling for ad revenue not an incredibly high one. DoorDash’s foray into the space had restaurant and fast food stores compete against one another in sponsored listings and with performance-driven (e.g. buy one, get one) incentives. In an industry that is notorious for its slim margins, the amount of spend and the number of small- and medium-sized businesses ready to participate most certainly wouldn’t create a runaway revenue hit. However, the launch of such a product served more as a proof of concept than anything else. It demonstrate that conversion didn’t only happen from Google’s search ads, but also on DoorDash’s platform itself.

Restaurants and fast food chains using ads for visibility and customers make sense, but what about in the retail sector? Sure, a CVS and bid for dollars against a Walgreens, but there’s a far more lucrative option if we consider one level down: the companies who have products sold at these major retailers and grocers.

Espinosa refers to these instances as the brands within a brand. With a 45% marketshare in the convenience-market delivery sector, aided by 25 DashMart locations in US and Canada, it’s not a surprise that brands, such as Clorox and PepsiCo, are willing to tap into spending for eyeballs at DoorDash’s digital shelves. It’s nothing new to these large brands who have been playing the “slotting fees” game since the ‘80s. After all, paying for physical prominence is just another form of advertising.

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Getting in early with DoorDash’s CPG ad offerings also provides the opportunity for brands to regain control over their own visibility. Over the last few years, grocers, such as Kroger, have been using proprietary research to decide what products to stock and where they should go. If I didn’t think that there was a high ceiling in terms of ad revenue from restaurants, what about this use case for CPG brand? Well, HNGRY’s Matt Newberg estimates (at around the 45’ mark) that this money traditionally spent with offline grocers could translate to a $250B potential that’s up for grabs in the digital retail advertising space.

It’s not to say that DoorDash should shelve the small-and medium-sized business (SMB) ad products. Revenue from small businesses spending ad dollars can provide a great incremental. However, the current dominance in convenience-market delivery sector marketshare is something to take advantage of right now. It presents a compelling case that can rival Uber’s ability to advertise across different mediums and environments, and negate Instacart’s first-to-market (or is it grocer?) advantage.

Further reading

• Eater: “How Keefer Court became the Twin Cities' most beloved Chinese bakery”

• KCUR: “Missouri's immigrants created the St. Paul sandwich 80 years ago. Now it defines St. Louis cuisine”

• CityNews: “The Real McCoy, beloved Scarborough restaurant, forced to close after 53 years”1

I’ve had this post mostly written since mid-October, but it’s only been the last few days that I’ve finally had the time to finish it up. I’ll most likely be working on the draft to this post’s follow-up on my flight back to New York (in my attempts to feign the look of ~*~international business man~*~).

New advertising offerings from key delivery players

Almost in tandem, both DoorDash and Uber () announced their ambitions for larger advertising dollars in October. Where DoorDash expanded their ad offerings by way of third-party integrations and self-serve ads for consumer product goods (CPG), Uber declared cross-channel usage of its data by providing CPG marketers the opportunity to advertise on the ride hailing app (and not just on its food delivery platform) via Journey Ads.

The end goal for both companies are seemingly the same: compete with the platforms who currently occupy a space in digital retail advertising. By launching new advertising solutions, DoorDash and Uber are looking to build for themselves viable pathways to go up against the likes of Instacart, Walmart, Kroger, and Target.

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As mentioned above, we’re going to break this post up into two parts—one post on each company. For this edition, I want to talk about the company whose potential is heightened by having similar, yet different lines, of businesses: Uber.

On not just being a rideshare company

During Uber’s Q3 earnings call last month, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi conceded that while customers are not taking as many trips as they did pre-pandemic, the boom in ridership is promising. The numbers convey back up the claim: monthly active users reached a new high (125M) and the number of people taking rideshare trips increasing by 22% in Q3.

To look at how much this increase in ridership has improved the bottom line, let’s look at the last two years. From the height of the pandemic (Q2 of 2020) through now, the delivery division outperformed the mobility division (i.e. rideshares) in terms of sheer revenue. As of last quarter, though, the two divisions finally reached parity—each bringing in $13.7B for the quarter.

If we view it by percentages, Uber’s mobility business saw a lift of 38% from this time last year, whereas delivery only saw a 7% year-over-year gain from October 2021. Bloomberg anticipates that Uber’s rideshare bookings will surpass delivery this quarter, as takeout demand and growth steadies itself. It’s not to say that Uber Eats will be left to the wayside as growth in the online food ordering space wanes. The division now accounts for 33% of the company’s total revenue.

The pandemic delivered a reckoning for businesses reliant on single revenue streams. Restaurants put all their eggs (pardon the pun) in one basket providing a service that relied on customers coming to them. Similarly, Uber and Lyft found themselves in similar predicaments when stay-at-home directives were issued—there was no longer anyone to transport. While Lyft remained dormant amidst driver and rider shortages, Uber leaned into an identity of being in the business of transportation and movement, as opposed to one being just about rideshares. And by focusing on the movement of food from point A to point B, the company was able to mitigate some of its heavy losses during the height of the pandemic.

The question now, though, is how else to generate revenue, and preferably one that does not need as much infrastructure or startup costs (i.e. Uber Freight). Looking inward at current programs to expand, the fledgling advertising division one makes the most sense. After all, Uber has been collecting data on its customers for years—and it’s valuable information at that. Consumer behaviour, informed by the rides you’ve taken and the meals you’ve ordered, has been documented without pause, which, in turn, have given Uber a leg up against Lyft and DoorDash.

If we look at Lyft and DoorDash, we come to realize that both share the similarity of being singularly focused, which have affected the two in different ways. Lyft only provides rides to and from places, which works well when there are places to go, but when there are stay-at-home orders in place, the opportunity for data collection dries up. As for DoorDash, even though the expansion into grocery and home goods has delivered a rounded out profile of consumer habits in recent years, the platform still remains limited in relevant inventory and opportunity for potential advertisers.

So, does Uber have a shot?

Khosrowashahi’s declared his ambition to deliver $1B of advertising revenue by 2024. During the earnings call, the CEO highlighted that the business reached $350M in run-rate revenue during the previous quarter. And I think it’s entirely possible.

Spending money in the contemporary “walled garden” that is Google, Facebook, and Amazon over the years has become contentious for many advertisers who have advocated for more transparency, ease to work with, and control. While Uber’s key advertising competitors have built protective walls around their consumer data, the key difference between them and the tri-opoly is the open ad tech ecosystem that runs underneath, hopefully allowing for increased ease of use. Even though Uber hasn’t announced any third-party integrations as of yet, I speculate that they’ll soon be quick to follow, especially given that DoorDash announced their partnerships with PacVue and Flywheel.

Despite budget sizes, large brands (think: CPG and large restaurant chains) and small- and medium-sized brands (think: indie restaurants and regional restaurant groups) all look for ways to best spread their messaging. Spending dollars that only contribute toward one avenue of advertising isn’t effective. For example, sponsored listings on just the homepage may contribute to a conversion, but the path is far slower than a multi-channel approach that makes use of different types of ads (such as digital billboards, and email placements). It’s kind of like when you enter a contest, and you’re looking for a way to maximize your chance to win, and there’s always mention of “more ways to play”. That’s what advertisers want to capitalize on—more opportunities to win.

And Uber knows that. Before their October announcement, the company was already slowly building its omnichannel and cross-business line approach. The release of Journey Ads solidified their comittment to becoming a player, as opposed to just signifying their ambitions.

Further reading

• Vox: “Where do restaurant ‘service fees’ really go?”

• The Toronto Star: “Congee Queen has been serving Toronto suburbs for two decades. It’s finally come downtown.”

• Vox: “New York seems to have a weed store on every corner. None of them are legal.”

Similarly, I’m stoked when recommendations lead folks of all backgrounds to try different regional Chinese cuisines. Having spent much of my life in Toronto and New York, I can tell you that that these two cities, especially over the last decade, go far beyond “just Chinese cooking”—serving up, instead, the nuances from various provinces and populations.

What purpose is there to keep joints a “secret” from others, thereby closing off the open mindedness that we have asked for? It’s almost as if we want to preserve a nostalgia of sorts, but I venture to say that these memories are also the remnants of cultural trauma—as Chef Jon Kung notes in the video below—when it was us against the world, and more specifically, when our food was considered to be “smelly” or "lesser”.

I want to divorce us from the tired narratives and expected performances of who’s cooking what. That’s not to say that I don’t think we should be lending a platform to underrepresented voices (because we should). Rather, I want us to broaden our ideas about who we think of cooking this food, what they bring to the able, and finally, check the prejudices that society has weaved into our thinking for so long.

A recent episode of “Spilled Milk” (a podcast suggested to me by my friend Chihiro a few months back) touches on the topic of cooking outside our culture. Only last week did I finally carve out time time to listen to it (and to go through the transcript), and I have thoughts.

Hosts Matthew Amster-Burton and Molly Wizenberg share a listener’s question about what factors come into play when purchasing a cookbook—or as Wizenberg redirects to a more broad use case, looking for recipes online. The listener highlights the publishing industry’s longstanding reliance on white men as culinary authority figures, and asks the ways in which Amster-Burton and Wizenberg commit to a more culturally conscious consumption of food media.

Both Amster-Burton and Wizenberg admit their blindspots with regards to having looked to mainstream media as their go-to for years. But it’s Wizenberg’s quote below that got me thinking, particularly the last few words (emphasis added by me):

And in the past, you know, to be perfectly frank, it would have never occurred to me that I needed to to step outside of the box of white cookbook authors and actually go to the source

I understand what Wizenberg is trying to say: it hadn’t occurred to her before to look beyond the optimized search results and to consider a set of experts that weren’t championed by Big Media. This mention of the “source”, though, is something that I want to dig into a little more and reflect on who we consider to be the actual arbiters of “truth” when we talk about global cuisines.

British food writer Fuchsia Dunlop is brought up as having been a resource on Chinese food for Wizenberg—a valuable one, but also one where “I think that I can do better.” I don’t know if it’s fair to dismiss someone that has spent their life not only learning a language and relevant dialects, but also educating themselves on regional cooking and culture. I think Dunlop perhaps wasn’t the best example to use; granted, it can be challenging when commenting on the fly for a podcast. An example that might be more appropriate in terms of someone who’s viewed as a go-to because of their mainstream status, but lacks any regard for the cultures they capitalize upon is Jamie Oliver. His takes on international dishes are consistently devoid of any respect and fail to acknowledge his ignorance.

With that said, in my opinion, Dunlop’s a perfectly valid source on Chinese cuisine. But admittedly, in a recent visit to Toronto, I was disappointed to see the Chinese cooking section at Indigo to only be comprised of her texts. I wasn’t upset with Dunlop’s commanding presence; but rather, I was disappointed with a national bookstore chain for not having sought out any of the emerging voices that have been published in recent years, such as Kristina Cho’s Mooncakes and Milk Bread (which prides itself on accessibility, instead of “authenticity”).

So, if I were to add nuance to what I think our hosts are trying to say: we shouldn’t settle and be content with the progress made in how we talk about global cuisines; instead, we should continue the effort to make more space for folks who have a lifetime’s worth of stories and perspectives to share. After all, the headnotes that I relate to most are the ones that recall experiences similar to my own childhood. Sure, the history lessons and beaten path adventures are always going to have their draw, but it’s the diversity in voices where each person can find their own shared connection that has always made the subject of food so intimate.

And these narratives aren’t all the same. My strong aversion to the remark about going to “the source” stems from the consideration that the use of “the” insinuates a singularity. By reducing populations into a monolith, we end up simplifying the nuance of present-day global and multicultural existences into a singular half for the mere purpose of neatly fitting this binary of whiteness as authority vs. the real. And this dichotomy lives in the past, assuming “the real” is still a certain ethnicity who still has a certain story and still is reliable for a finite set of viewpoints.

We have moved so far beyond that point in time. It’s not a binary anymore, nor is there only one story to tell. Sure, immigration is still happening and we have those familiar narratives, but we also have the opportunity to acknowledge a multitude of experiences:

• Second- and third-generation kids who may not even know about their grandparents’ food because of assimilation;

• Children who revel in the coexistence of family and community cultures;

• Interracial couples and children who learn about their family members through the intimate exchange of culturally diverse childhood and family meals; and

• Transracial adoptees who grew up steeped in American culture and are using food as a way to understand their biological parents’ heritage.

If you want to cook this food (or any other’s), go for it. Just don’t be lazy. Skip out on recognizable, yet uninformed, voices. Opt to hear from someone who has anecdotes to share and who is no longer interested in performing “authenticity” for misguided audiences. Food is more than just slapping ingredients together for a flavour profile. Food is an evolving expression of culture, and it shouldn’t be stymied because people can’t let go and move past their predisposed ideas of what was.

Further reading

• NYT: “Food is identity. For Korean chefs who were adopted, it’s complicated”

• Eater: “The unlimited potential of meat-free Asian cookbooks”

• SF Gate: “SF’s Hang Ah Tea Room is America’s first dim sum restaurant, with 102 years of stories to tell”

• Eater: “‘Jiro’ and the impossible dream of authenticity”

• The Special Sauce Podcast: “Kristina Cho: sweet and savory recipes inspired by Chinese bakeries”

Where toxic kitchen culture, labour practices, and management personalities come to the fore to mar the pristine images put forth by Eleven Madison Park and Blue Hill, Shake Shack finds its ambitious and overarching ethics code at odds with the private political donations by and views of the Martin family. Yes, we’re talking about the Martin family that owns and operates Martin’s Famous Pastry Shoppe (maker of the popular potato rolls), and who support GOP Senator Doug Mastriano in his bid for Pennsylvania governorship.

I’ve spent much of July considering what I want to add to the conversation. Many have been quick to point to Shake Shack’s values page, but I need to underscore the fact that the commodification and packaging of ethics has always been just that—the tangible community good being a byproduct. The economic equation has always remained paramount, even when it comes into direct conflict with the values that Shake Shack espouses in its marketing.

So, let’s talk about it.

Why the uproar in the first place?

Along with all the burgers and milkshakes that Shake Shack sells on a daily basis, the New York-based company has also made sure to consistently sell its ethos of “doing good”. The association of Shake Shack’s brand positioning with the warm fuzzies has ramped up in recent years with press communications and annual reports, creating an intertwined connection between “good” and the company itself.

The causes that Shake Shack supports includes: the LGBTQ community; animal welfare practices; racial diversity; environmental initiatives; and other underserved populations.

To purchase a burger, or even one of the charity-driven items, is to implicitly buy into the idea of being good. And these ingestible culture bites have been a long time in the making. Even Shake Shack’s early years, the company went so far as to register the service mark for Stand for Something Good® with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The company prides itself on its connections to their suppliers, so much so, that they strive to highlight a different purveyor in each annual Stand for Something Good report. In addition to the once-a-year summary, Shake Shack also notes the below on its website:

As we grew into a global business, our mission to Stand For Something Good expanded to include taking care of our team, sourcing premium ingredients from like-minded partners, designing our Shacks responsibly, supporting our communities through donations, events, and volunteering—and much more.

As the company has grown considerably over the last two decades, so, too, have its vendors, particularly Martin’s. As Eater pointed out a few years ago, Martin’s is the exclusive global bread supplier and is estimated to be providing tens of millions buns annually—a pleasant surprise for a purveyor who could never have predicted the explosion of Shake Shack’s popularity. So as intertwined as Shake Shack is with its outlined values of “goodness”, its burger has also become synonymous with the Martin’s potato roll product.

But with multiple members of the Martin’s family personally supporting a candidate who supports outlawing abortion with no exceptions, touts conspiracy theories, proposes rolling back the legalization of gay marriage, seeks to ban transgender kids’ right to play in sports, and advocates banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools, it’s not a surprise that folks have been wanting Shake Shack to confront one of its closest partners on their politics that run counter to the inclusiveness and diversity that Shake Shack proudly touts.

Instead, for a company whose values slogan has such a strong call-to-action, the response has been meek in comparison:

“In regards to the actions of individuals associated with the Martin’s company and their personal political donations — those are the choices of those individuals and do not express the values of Shake Shack. We continue to be in active conversations with Martin’s to express our concern,” said a company statement provided by brand and communications director Kristyn Clark.” (Billy Penn)

The corporate statement carries an air of hoping to sweep the situation under the rug and hope that the public’s memory quickly fades. To ruffle the feathers of such an integral part of Shake Shack’s success appears to be a move that the company doesn’t want to broach. After all, you have to remember: Shake Shack is an international brand. To weigh the pros and cons of being mired in just one, albeit the largest, market becomes a factor, as opposed to absolute need.

The consideration that Shake Shack’s ethics have always been a selling point, as opposed to a guiding post, has been key in informing how I understand and see Shake Shack as having always served its bottom line first. And only when a decision greatly affects the consumer attitudes toward the brand has the company ever relented. The instance that comes to mind, for me, is the company-wide move almost a decade ago with a misguided attempt to replace a beloved product, which resulted in an unwavering stream of complaints and sales falling off a cliff.

When Shake Shack admitted it was wrong about the fries

If you’ve been a longtime customer, you might remember the time where the company decided to try something a bit different, starting with the Upper East Side store in August 2013. The fan favourite frozen crinkle cut fries were ditched for fries hand cut from fresh russet potatoes. Replacing the beloved side was not due to a slump in sales, but rather, as a way for Shake Shack to bolster its natural ingredient ethos.

Unfortunately, not only did customers prefer the old fries, but also logistical issues arose, including retraining staff, increased labour, and produce reliability. Half a year into the switch, customers were still not embracing the change and had no intentions to do so either. As Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti told Fast Company: “It took six months before I would admit that I made a mistake.”

The impending return of crinkle fries was announced a year after its launch, targeting a Fall 2014 return. From Garutti’s admission about realizing a mistake had been made with the menu by February 2014 (deduced as six months after the UES launch per the Fast Co quote), we can see how much time was needed to reset the workflow and supply chain. Granted, Shake Shack was also working with its manufacturer to remove artificial ingredients and preservatives from the fries, which might’ve added time to the timeline on account of R&D. However, the crinkle cut replacement project continued on through May 2014 where Boston had begun seeing its own rollout of the hand cut fries.

This reset (and improvement) took almost nine months when Shake Shack only had 31 domestically operated stores in 2014. Never mind the international outposts for a moment. The significance is that the backlash from customers was so apparent that a tipping point was reached where the company was losing more than it stood to gain, and subsequently had to do whatever it took to overhaul the program and bring back the crinkle fries.

However, the above situation was almost ten years ago at a fraction of the current store count and before a period of having to answer publicly to investors (Shake Shack went public in January 2015). I cannot even begin to fathom that Shake Shack would be able to so quickly commit to changing its bun supplier to one that can: address scale; and reasonable rollout when they boast over 240 locations in the U.S. alone (as of 2021). The tipping point from customer complaints is a much farther reach now than it was in 2013.

Further, it’s enough of a challenge for other restaurants, who are not at Shake Shack’s scale, to find a purveyor who can quickly meet demand. Further, these restaurants likely do not have operations outside of the U.S. to also factor into their decision making. 30% of Shake Shack’s stores are outside of the U.S., which brings up the considerations of: how much does Shake Shack:

1. Want to disrupt its supply chain;

2. Consider its domestic market to be considerably politically mindful;

3. Feel that its international customer base cares about U.S. politics; and

4. Believe that both its domestic and international audiences care to hold the company accountable to its Stand for Something Good® ethos.

And unfortunately, I feel that Shake Shack does not believe that items 2, 3, and 4 are going to cause a ripple large enough that warrants item 1. Anecdotally, I’ve talked with a few American friends over the course of a few weeks who both: know of Martin’s potato rolls but not the current issue on hand, and have little to no awareness about the upcoming 2022 midterm candidates or elections. Therefore, it comes as no surprise to me that Shake Shack is willing to bet on the “let it blow over” tactic and to cut their losses this segment of customers, whose actions are not large enough to create a tipping point in the company’s bottom line.

Dollars, first; ethics, second

Of the 369 stores open at the end of 2021, slightly over a third are located outside of the U.S. The international locations, as CNN notes, employ local licensing companies to run the operations. And according to SEC filings, over the last three calendar years (2019–2021), revenue from licensing (sales-based royalties and initial territory and opening fees from the 126 international and 25 domestic licensed stores) has hovered at slightly above 3% of Shake Shack’s total annual revenue.

It seems a lot of weight and consideration to be giving to a revenue stream that delivers no more than 3.5% in a given year. However, it needs to be underscored that this revenue requires no financial input from Shake Shack. Instead, the calculated gamble lends name and reputation as operating capital in exchange for considerable audience growth by way of global brand awareness.

Even Shake Shack admitted so themselves in the prospectus filed in 2014: “[Licensing] historically has been a low-cost, high-return method of growing our brand awareness and provides an increasing source of cash flow."

With this expense-less cash flow in mind, it’s important to point out that one of the key things that the company champions in its Stand for Something Good® annual summary is its alignment with the LGBTQ community. On the 2021 summary slides that outline social impact milestones and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, Shake Shack highlights:

• Its “100% score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index for our support of LGBTQ+ team members in the workplace”

• Raising $50 000 for The Trevor Project

• Year-round internal support with the HEROIQ+ Employee Resource Group

While Shake Shack has no direct oversight with its internationally franchised locations, the decision to strike licensing deals in certain regions remains the company’s prerogative. So, to knowingly open locations that run counter to these promoted set of values is telling in what tips the scales.

It’s not so much the fact that gay marriage isn’t legal in some of these places of operation, but rather, that even act of self-expression and choice that Shake Shack encourages is against the law. The company has 36 franchised stores (according to the company’s website) in the Middle East whose nations are well known for their stance on same-sex relations.

Here are notes from various outlets on each country’s position:

• United Arab Emirates (14 stores): “Homosexuality is criminalized in the UAE and can be punished by fines and prison time.” (CNBC)

• Oman (1 stores): “The maximum penalty for homosexuality in Oman is three years in prison” (BBC)

• Kuwait (12 stores): “According to the Gulf state's penal code, men who have same-sex relations can be punished by up to seven years in prison.” (BBC)

• KSA (5 stores): “Homosexuality is a capital offence in Saudi Arabia” (The Guardian)

• Qatar (4 stores): “Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar and there are strict anti-LGBTQ+ laws.” (BBC)

So, no, Shake Shack choosing to ignore the potato roll fiasco doesn’t come as a surprise when you look at previous decisions, such as this one in particular, where the company agrees to licensing deals in environments that are antithetical to what is preached. At least with other companies—including McDonald’s, Papa John’s, and Starbucks—that are investing in CSR initiatives for LGBTQ communities and have operations in the Middle East, they don’t: a) service mark their efforts; b) neatly package them; and c) sell a whole “culture” around it.

Conveniently an ally

Shake Shack, you made me want to root for you. Unfortunately, the Stand for Something Good® brand is just that—a brand. Its application and deployment is situational, tangibly benefitting its U.S. base, which happen to include its company-run stores, while enjoying a halo effect from its vow to “do good” internationally without having any direct impact on its licensed stores.

Where other companies with global operations haven’t pledged allegiances to a set of beliefs or values, Shake Shack bobs and weaves. The company is quick to lay claim to being an ally to a list of causes when convenient, but equally hasty to avoid the difficult conversations where it may have to rock the profit boat.

Really, it’s a case of pretending to be more than it can ever be. Perhaps folks wouldn’t have felt so betrayed by the brand if Stand for Something Good® platform wasn’t so synonymous with its parent brand. So maybe, Shake Shack might want to consider cutting its losses on an identity that doesn’t suit them so much anymore.

Further reading

• LA Times: “How queer Asian American rom-com ‘Fire Island’ became summer’s sexist breakout hit”

• The Toronto Star: “West Queen West has changed a lot. This 40-year-old restaurant is one of its remaining fixtures”

• The New Yorker: “‘The Bear’ is a gritty fairy tale of cooking and grief”

• Way Too Complicated: “Social justice is about people”

Launching with restaurants in three markets—New York, Los Angeles, and Miami—customers can order natively from the Uber Eats platform. Orders are fulfilled by the restaurant, and subsequently tendered to FedEx to handle the last leg of the trip over the course of five to seven business days. The logistics are far from novel: DoorDash and Goldbelly operate similarly, serving as platforms that provide both a potential audience and a place to facilitate transactions.

However, in shipping with DoorDash and Goldbelly, frozen goods—such as ice cream or frozen dumplings—are offered for delivery, all the while staying mindful of dry ice’s sublimation rate. However, it looks like Uber is playing it safe in only opting in for items that do not require staying frozen upon arrival.

I suppose my curiosity isn’t so much about why Uber is bothering to extend into this line of business, but rather, if they are to get into the shipping game this late, why not at least have the infrastructure in place to actually scale and compete?

Uber’s slow start, marred by first-to-market competitors

Even by their own admission, Uber knows that they are late to the game. Take the quote below, which acknowledges that 2020 and 2021 marked the accelerated demand and growth for delivery of perishable food products.

Over the last few years (especially during two years of lockdowns with decreased travel), consumers have shared their desire to bring specialty food items straight to their home. 

But this isn’t just something consumers have asked for. We’ve heard loud and clear merchants’ desire to diversify their offerings and reach new consumers.

By not being first (or even second) to market, Uber has lost out considerably on its debut roster. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the restaurants shipping nationwide have already been swept up under exclusivity contracts by DoorDash and Goldbelly. Such agreements make sense as a protective measure to ward off brand dilution, maintaining cachet for the eCommerce sites. After all, what value do these platforms possess if the frequently touted eateries can be so readily found elsewhere?

The space of transforming restaurants into potential CPG experiences is still a rather nascent one, and for good reason. Shipping logistics are a harder nut to crack than the framework on which local delivery operates. Think about it: shipping encompasses a whole slew of partners and vendors; whereas local delivery relies on a far smaller ecosystem comprised of gig economy workers and apps. It makes sense to not only protect the platform from losing its unique selling proposition of being able to deliver high-value brands, but also to protect the sizable investments made in knowledge and operations for as long as possible. For better or worse, the ante is thereby upped with each new platform trying their hand at it, all the while having a dwindling pool of brands until a tipping point is reached.

Where Uber could’ve boldly gone

Sure, I could go on about how I would’ve liked to see Uber Eats glean from DoorDash and Goldbelly’s merchant pages and find a way to better fold in shipping information, and storage and cooking instructions.

But I much prefer to have seen a vastly different approach that would provide an opportunity to establish a real unique selling proposition to meet their “merchants’ desire to diversify their offerings and reach new consumers.”

Let me just spitball here.

Instead of placing the burden (and subsequent YMMV experience) on restaurants to produce, pack, and ship, why not remove that impediment and invest in something that would be alluring: a third-party logistics (3PL) service that lets the restaurant do what they do best—provide the food—and let everything else be handled by Uber. In other words, divert the resources spent on this losing an arms race into something that could be considered the next phase of restaurants engaging in CPG.

Granted, there are hurdles to cross what with being able to operate as a 3PL provider, such as buildout, SQF (Safe Quality Food) certification, and food safety processes and personnel to name a few (from my admittedly limited knowledge here).

And on the Uber-meets-merchant side of things, key obstacles include getting restaurants to decide upon offerings that make sense to scale and distribute, and execute said products in a way that meets food safety regulations. What this partnership may very well entail is a far more selective onboarding, resulting in closely handholding chosen restaurants through finding and vetting co-packers. Or an even further interesting move would be the investment of direct dollars into building out or buying costly—albeit compliant—facilities that can not only solve for production, but also generate revenue for Uber as said co-packing partners.

Whatever route Uber is headed down is going to be an expensive one that may very well never yield any profits. While they might as well make a go of it in a sector that they’ve admittedly spent the last two years observing, they should perhaps go after it in a way that looks forward—where restaurants want to head (but haven’t due to a lack of readily available resources)—instead of chasing where they’ve already gone.

Elsewhere

Somehow we let me have a platform beyond your inbox?

Anywho, here are two quick clips from the last few weeks.

• QuickBooks: “Small business tour: Nom Wah”

• Expedite: “I spent several hundred dollars on food-themed NFTs and here’s what I learned”

Further reading

• Eater: “The doughnut kids are all right”

• The Globe and Mail: “Fake meat was touted as the ‘future of food.’ Why did it fail to deliver?”

• Toronto Star: “Meet the people behind the rise of ‘80s and ‘90s Hong Kong culture in the GTA”

Grubhub’s drawn my ire before, as was the case when I went toe-to-toe on arguing that their 24-hour dispute policies were not applicable (on account of them not being posted or communicated), and won. I mentioned the 24-hour window in a few tweets on Tuesday, but corrected myself a bit later when I looked through my notes and recalled that the window had since been expanded to 7 days, as of October 2020.

I originally wasn’t planning to write on the snafu, but I thought about it more and wanted to add a few points that may not have been articulated when Grubhub found itself trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.

And yes, I chose “This is Us” for this newsletter’s GIF theme because I love the show and the series finale airs on Tuesday night.

Where communication was really needed: restaurants

The promotion came off as a surprise. Sometimes I receive the pertinent updates from Grubhub, other times I don’t (I’m still not sure why; I asked to be made as the primary contact at one point, but the ask hasn’t seemed to have gone through).

Anyway, I didn’t receive the one communicating the free promo, but Ms. Julie did. However, it took a few tries to find the email, especially since the official memo looked more like a consumer-facing promotion.

The subject line read: “The big day is almost here”, which doesn’t really signal to any restaurant partner that this message is important and will affect business. Previous important notes from Grubhub had subject lines along the lines of:

• "Do you sell beer, wine, or cocktails? Let's add to your Grubhub/Seamless listing!”

• “Your restaurant will be closed on 1/01”

• “Alert: We're suspending delivery”

• “Our updated order refund process”

It’s suffice to say that when Grubhub wanted our attention, they communicated in a clear and succinct manner.

No hours of duration, discount dollars of percentage, and usage terms of the promotion are mentioned, which doesn’t help if this message was the only advance notice and had to base scheduling employees off of that. Not to mention, nowhere can you click for more information. The only clickable part of this email is to learn about how to implement a Loyalty program, which is a misdirect on Grubhub’s part of what the focus of the email should be addressing.

And to add to the amount of food made and not picked up, another thing to consider is that not all third-party platform commissions are equal. Some restaurants may have struck a better deal with DoorDash or Uber Eats; however, because of the deluge of orders, Grubhub made it impossible for anyone to even put in an order on the other two platforms as restaurants were already dealing with sheer volume from Grubhub. In other words, even if restaurants recoup the funds for all undelivered orders from Grubhub, they could have easily lost a few percentage points off total revenue if their preferred partner had a lower commission rate.

The folks who don’t win at all: delivery workers

Remember when I tried to pick up some Uber Eats deliveries? It was a pretty short-lived thing, especially after a few days in when I was quickly discouraged by the fact that my tiered status would be reset every month.

In my experience, the compensation per delivery is based on a base fee, distance, and estimated time. The algorithm doesn’t seem to account for paid time if a delivery order isn’t ready or time spent trying to locate an order amidst a large waiting crowd. Waiting a few minutes for to pickup an order isn’t unheard of and is one of many factors that goes into whether or not someone opts in for the gig (i.e. if you know a restaurant takes a longer time to prep than estimated, you can skip accepting that job); however, in an incident that is so far off the rails, it’s hard to gauge which trips to take at that point.

There wasn’t much of a way to circumvent the mess with regards to Tuesday’s events; even if you hop onto another delivery app, the wait time for prep is still going to be considerable. Likewise, moving to a different platform, such as DoorDash or Uber Eats, to pick up gigs doesn’t change the fact that restaurants were inundated with delivery and pickup orders form Grubhub.

How consumer demand could’ve been better managed

If anyone is wondering, I did redeem my $15, but I was deliberate in my choice of where to spend it. I picked out the bubble tea shop near my house, specifically for the reason that I’ve never seen it particularly busy during lunchtime. And when I arrived to pick up my order, closer to 2PM, there was a small rush, but only 2–3 persons waiting with me and my order was promptly ready, which got me thinking: was some of this influx based on disproportionate demand?

After all, there are certain places—such as sandwiches and salads—that cater more to the lunch crowd, which is where I was seeing a lot of the anecdotes about long lines (but also for fried chicken!). To mitigate the spiral that the promotion became, there could’ve been a few preemptive measures in place, which may have included:

• Load management. Implementing restrictions on how many order a restaurant could take and accept the promo code at certain points in time, as well as instituting an all-time limit for the entire campaign’s duration would’ve helped tremendously.

• Minimum spend. Paying only taxes was no doubt a huge draw for many of the customers; therefore, including a minimum spend of at least $25 before the promotion could be redeemed would be a way to mitigate some of the traffic. For instance, back in the early 2010s of Seamless, there would be a promo code guaranteeing a percentage or dollar amount off if a minimum amount was spent.

• Longer redemption window. The three-hour window from 11AM–2PM is an incredibly short one, which meant a lot of compression of orders. If it were a little more spread out, at least there’d be a tad of balance added to the equation.

• Eat the delivery fees. The reason why we saw many anecdotes about an uptick in pickup orders was because customers wanted a “free lunch”, which wasn’t possible when ordering delivery and facing the associated fees, instead of only paying the taxes on the food. Some of the ways that restaurants handle orders is by determining which orders are pickup and dine-in (i.e. the customers is here right now) vs. delivery (waiting until the driver is here), but if the balance is tipped way too over to one side, the process becomes difficult to manage. Grubhub should’ve been quick to realize that people would’ve wanted to skirt fees, especially with the nice weather, and elected to remove them and just call it all a marketing expense.

And the aftermath of it all

Two days after the promotion, Grubhub sent out an email at 3:20PM ET titled “Our free lunch promotion: what we learned”. Presumably, the poor Social team who had been listening in on all the complaints compiled a chief list of gripes, which were addressed in the memo below.

On Tuesday, we offered diners in your area a Grubhub-funded promo for free lunch and the customer response was remarkable. We saw much higher redemptions than we anticipated when we communicated with you in advance of the event.

While we're always looking for ways to drive more business to your restaurant, we know that the significant surge in orders may have impacted your service, and we're committed to making it right. That’s why we’re:

• Ensuring that no restaurant is charged for a cancellation that was due to Grubhub drivers being unavailable to deliver orders

• Removing all customer ratings of 3 or fewer stars for promotion eligible restaurants

• Encouraging any customer who experienced service-related issues to order again by sending them a $15 credit funded by Grubhub

• Taking your feedback seriously and incorporating it into our promotion communication plans for future large order-driving events

Thank you for your continued partnership. We value your feedback and look forward to continuing to find new ways to drive new customers and orders to your restaurant in sustainable ways.

Please reach out to your dedicated Account Advisor if you have any questions or additional feedback you’d like to share to help make the next promotion even more effective.

While Grubhub states that no restaurant shall be charged for a cancellation due to drivers being unavailable, I would suggest that restaurants still take the time to double check that the payout is posted correctly. After all, some orders may not have been coded with the proper error, and therefore not subject to the receiving compensation, and will therefore still require a dispute. Anyway, the window is closing very soon, so it’s best that restaurant folks take a look now at their posted orders.

Conspicuously absent, though, is the mention of anything related to the delivery drivers. I wish they were included in the actionable items noted above; without delivery drivers, a chunk of the business model of these third-party platforms goes out the window. They deserve to be treated better, recognized as essential partners, and compensated likewise for this kerfuffle.

Another snag for The Restaurant Revitalization Fund hits

Not that anyone expected this news to come as a surprise, but last week, senators blocked the advancement of the $48B aid package. This bill would include dollars for not only restaurants, but also other small businesses who haven’t yet received any COVID-related funding.

It’s unlikely that we will see further movement here unless the cost of the package comes down enough to become palatable for the objecting senators.

If you’d like the know the details on what resulted in the 52-43 vote, I’ve found Roll Call’s Lindsey McPherson’s reporting to be quite helpful, click here.

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Further reading

• Epicurious: “Chinese food is a celebration of time and place”

• TASTE: “The Korean immigrant and Michigan farm boy who taught Americans how to cook chow mein”

• Eater: “The ultimate guide to Chinese soy sauce”

• Food & Wine: “Tacos should cost more, here’s why”

• POLITICO: “The FDA’s food failure”

Drawing on a reading from college, I want to revisit anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr.’s Real Black to get a slightly philosophical discussion of what it means for the diminishing presence of dim sum chefs in Chinese American kitchens and the connection to and questioning the taboo around machine-made dumplings.

Defining the theoretical framework

When we talk about scripts, we refer to cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah’s idea that collective identities serve as the foundation of the narratives that people use in shaping their lives and in telling their stories.

Unfortunately, these constructs can, at times, be so tightly scripted whereby social differences appear absolute and natural. As an example, Jackson employs the script of American patriotism, positing that if we were to follow the stringency of the script, someone wearing a burka would not be accepted as it deviates away from script. In following a script so closely, there is no leeway or flexibility to one’s thinking, and instead, it serves as a framework for stereotypes and typecasting.

To build off of the above, let’s also add Jackson’s discussion of sincerity vs. authenticity into the mix. I previously mulled over authenticity in relation to sociologist Erving Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy. However, I want to revisit authenticity, but this time, through the lens of objectification.

Where sincerity establishes a connection between two subjects, authenticity instead assumes a relationship between subject (validator) and object (inanimate). In essence, this idea of authenticity reduces what is being examined to the status of object. The subjectivity that sincerity accommodates is inadvertently muted.

Similarly, where in the previous essay I’ve described the audience’s expectations of what has been and assumption of how it should continue to exist, there is a faulty logic that permeates through this notion of authenticity. Those who conform to the script are deemed authentic; whereas those who do not instead face rejection and are dubbed inauthentic. Both Goffman and Jackson’s viewpoints here demonstrate the trappings of these syllogisms—a fencing off of other realities by way of prejudice, if you will.

And to take it one step further, as Jackson does, adding the notion of race wherein racial authenticity lends itself to a subject reducing people to “little more than objects of racial discourse, [and] characters in racial scripts”. Considering such leads me to ask at what point do certain scripts retire from the vernacular, or are they only in continued existence because of the expectations set forth by racial authenticity?

Retiring an age-old script: Chinese American dim sum chef

Cooking hasn’t been a glorious profession for many Chinese Americans, especially given that it was one that was foisted upon Chinese immigrants who fell victim to the late 19th and early 20th century’s racist immigration policies. Immigration to the U.S. continued during the 1960s and 1970s on account of China’s Cultural Revolution, which motivated many to leave Asia. And with few English language skills equipped upon leaving China, restaurant life made sense as a straightforward path to earn a living. Both the business of food and cooking as a skill were things that could be taught within an infrastructure that had been established close to a century prior due to the the Chinese Exclusion’s Act’s racist laws.

But in the decades since then, Chinese restaurants are closing, and it’s not due to a lack of interest in the cuisine. As former NYT journalist Jennifer 8. Lee pointed out: “It’s a success that these restaurants are closing… These people came to cook so their children wouldn’t have to, and now their children don’t have to.”

Sure, there are still bound to be new immigrants arriving from China who may take over the restaurants of those who came decades prior (as the NYT piece duly noted), or a revamping of the narrative of the Chinese American restaurant all together, but the scripts of the first-generation Chinese American restaurant owner or cooks are ones that are no longer as pervasive as they once were.

In particular, the dim sum chefs that I’ve seen throughout my childhood in Toronto and during my twenties in New York have aged with no clear heir to their stations. And frankly, they don’t need to have someone waiting in the wings for them. This expectation that there will always be “traditional” dim sum chefs is a signifier of the comfort that we have in scripts and racial authenticity.

To be able to see the middle-aged or elderly man crafting pork buns and dumplings with such ease, or to see him misanthropically standing with a cigarette dangling form his mouth are the trappings that our society has bestowed upon him. We—as subjects—have collectively expected these chefs follow the tropes—the script—that allow us to comfortably contextualize and ascribe them—reducing them to objects—as markers of what fits our fantasy of the Chinese dim sum restaurant.

And where time has caught up to them, our perceptions of expertise and value frankly haven’t. I’ve addressed before how we undervalue the skill, labour, and time of dumplings. It makes sense that few want to entertain a narrative that not only yields so little reward of both pay and respect, but also carries such strong typecasting when they don’t have to. It’s a tedious career that has never paid enough and also finds itself limiting when it comes to the self.

Running counter to racial authenticity is racial sincerity. The latter is similar to Goffman’s backstage where the actor is able to shed the guise that they have put on for both audience and front stage.

To build on that, Jackson highlights how racial authenticity or the expectation of such can be undermined by two common mistakes:

• Mistake #1: rejecting someone as inauthentic, but they are sincere and true about themselves

• Mistake #2: accepting someone as authentic who performs the script insincerely (i.e. playing a role)

In addition to what we’ve talked about thus far on why we see fewer and fewer dim sum chefs, let us dive in a bit deeper into both common mistakes.

Starting with Mistake #2, not only is it tiring but it is also doing ourselves a disservice by catering to a script for a head nod of being racially authentic. We need to move beyond these rigid boundaries to have a more honest talk about how the collective narrative can change and evolve.

After all, it is, for me, the elder dim sum chefs who are helping to build the “inauthentic” bridge to machine-made dumplings. They are brutally honest that the skillset that takes decades to master and its accompanying workforce are becoming harder to find. And because of this diminishing set of folks, the current chefs are also on board to figure out how to mechanize the process and to take advantage of tools that can scale their experience.

Their commitment is very much sincere, yet they aren’t following the script that we are so accustomed to, so are we to consider them inauthentic? And if we consider them as inauthentic all because of a machine, why does that equation of machine = inauthentic only apply to the dim sum chef and not to the pasta maker who, too, uses an extruding device to hasten and increase volume of their gigli? The latter doesn’t seem as subject to criticism; it’s not even as front of mind as the Yelp reviews that complain of our machine-aided bites.

If we take the time to check ourselves and question the collective narratives, then we can see that these dim sum chefs are merely doing what their sifus have done—pass on their teachings, all the while making use of the tools that exist. It’s not cheating; it’s making use of what is available. And what’s available has been modernized.

“Inauthentic”, yet sincere

We can talk about how certain things don’t taste the same, such as har gow (shrimp dumplings) whose skins are far more delicate and fickle when handmade. To work with that crystal skin is such a marvel; I remember growing up that we’d count the pleats and holding it under the lighting to see how thin and translucent the skin could be.

Now, when making shrimp dumplings with a machine, the skin is thicker, yet sturdier. The pleats aren’t as much of a marvel, since it’s a mould that consistently leaves the same shape. Perhaps it’s not to the liking of those that are focused solely on nostalgia. They are perceiving the information of this dumpling on what should be out of habit, instead of trying to give the dumpling their rapt attention, and evaluate it on its own merits. And that’s where we entrap ourselves with Mistake #1: citing inauthenticity, without recognizing sincerity.

To be able to go beyond the script of the dim sum chef and his repertoire of the handmade is in its own right a sincerity to appreciate. To be able to operate these machines is akin to learning how to fold all over again. The decades spent getting to know the doughs, fillings, and their interactions with one another are a necessary foundation. And it is with greying hairs and callused fingers that these men approach these tools with such youthful curiosity and eagerness.

Outright dismissing these dumplings on account of not aligning with one’s nostalgia is in its own way reinforcing racial authenticity, a reducing of the chef and his product of work to an object that fails to fit within unnecessary boundaries.

Is there room for improvement? Of course. There are always opportunities to iterate, and I hope that the machines can one day manipulate a thinner crystal wrapper. But by no means are we to call these dumplings any lesser in the interim. Nor are we to maintain such a strong hold on collective narratives to ensure that we never leave our comfort zones.

Instead, we should be appreciating and celebrating the interiority of these chefs who are as willing to colour outside the lines with the second-generation Chinese kids who, more often than not, also fall in the crosshairs of Mistake #1. With one foot steeped in their first-generation parents’ culture and the other in the hegemonic Western culture for all of our lives, it’s not as daunting for us, per se, to buck authenticity and opt for sincerity. It’s a certain level of trust that these elder dim sum chefs have in us that our intuition and sincerity can surpass a century-and-a-half of typecasting and rigid identities. And you know what? That in itself is commendable.

Further reading

• Eater: “How the prop master for ‘Pachinko’ crafted perfect-looking comfort Korean food”

• Chicago Tribune: “In search of Mrs. Hering: a food critic’s quest to find the woman behind Chicago’s historic chicken pot pie”

• Resy: “We knew it was over”

• L.A. Times: “The quest to save Cantonese in a world dominated by Mandarin”

• Politico: “This cheeseburger explains your bigger grocery bill”

The proposed bills that I reviewed this weekend cover the following:

• Small business pandemic aid relief, which includes additional dollars for the Restaurant Revitalization Fund

• Introducing a new visa class, which can be used by restaurants

Let’s get started, shall we?

Another crack at the Restaurant Revitalization Fund

Released on Friday afternoon, the House is expected to vote this coming week on a relief package targeted at small businesses. Per Roll Coll, the Rules Committee will meet on Tuesday afternoon, which means that we should hear an answer fairly soon.

The bill proposes earmarking $42B for the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, supplementing the original $28.6B. In terms of how the number was derived, we can look at the Independent Restaurant Coalition’s remark that over $75B was requested for 370 000+ applicants. The total number from this potential round and the original disbursement brings us up to $70B in funding for the program and the remaining 265 000 businesses who didn’t receive anything from the initial round.

Not all of the $42B will be for restaurants and similar food businesses, though. Carveouts have been made totaling $442.5M for program dues, which include but are not limited to: administrative expenses; the Inspector General; investigative and prosecutorial activities related to fraud and abuse; and audits of grants. Still, $41.5B is a much bigger chunk of change that we could’ve anticipated to be proposed at such a late point in the game.

The way the bill is written makes an assumption that this will be the second and final round of funding for the program—who will not be accepting new applicants at this point in time. There is a provision in the bill that in the event there is not enough funding to provide applicant their requested amount, the Small Business Administration (SBA) will have to pursue one of the following solutions:

1. Reduce the grant of each eligible business by an equal percentage;

2. Establish a maximum amount for a grant, ensuring that all smaller asks have been fulfilled in their entirety; or

3. Provide all rewards in full below a certain threshold, and reduce grants about said threshold by an equal percentage

In addition to the measures above, the SBA may also provide partial rewards to start to ensure that all eligible applicants can be funded before they can, available dollars permitting, start distributing remaining dollars.

For those that receive a denial, there is now an opportunity for applicants to have their application reconsidered. Further, denials will receive a brief explanation identifying the reason as to why the SBA could not provide the requested funding.

Given that it’s been quite some time since businesses applied for the Fund and some may have unfortunately gone out of business, applicants who are in line for this round of funding will have to attest that they are either still operating, or intend to reopen within six months of submitting said attestation.

And for the FOIA-happy folks, like myself, there will be mandated reporting by the SBA on both a biweekly and weekly basis.

• Biweekly

  • Number of applications received, reviewed or in the process of reviewing, and received decisions

  • Number of grants and dollar amounts that have been awarded and disbursed

• Weekly

  • Details of those that have received grants: name of business; address; amount of grant; and business category

Let’s remember, though, that even if the bill passes the House, we still have the Senate to contend with. So, we will see what comes of it all over the coming week.

Proposal for a new visa class: H-2C

Introduced by Rep Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) last week, H.R. 7239 seeks to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act by adding the H-2C nonimmigrant classification with the intent that this visa class will help with the current labour shortage. The Act has been dubbed as the “Essential Workers for Economic Advancement Act” (EWEA).

Apart from coverage that includes the National Restaurant Association’s (NRA) fervent support (see examples 1, 2, and 3), I haven’t seen a lot written about this proposed program. So, I figured I’d take a dive into the literature and weigh in.

This visa caters to employers whose industries “have comparatively low sales per employee” (i.e. industries that rank in the lowest ten when dividing number of sales by number of employees in the census’ dataset). I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to replicate the data, so I will have to take the NRA’s word here that the restaurant industry is included as a participating industry.

In order to be a “registered employer” in the program, the business must be registered and approved by the Secretary of Homeland Security. Each potential employer must estimate how many H-2C nonimmigrants the employer will seek to employ annually. Also, the county or metropolitan area from which the employer is based must have an unemployment rate of ≤7.9% during the fiscal quarter they submit an application; this requirement is otherwise known as “full employment area”. If approved, all eligible H-2C positions are to be made available on a website maintained by the Secretary of Labor and with the workforce agency of the state where the position is located.

The eligible non-agricultural occupations are designated by the Occupational Information Network Database (O*NET), and are categorized by “Zones”, referring to levels of preparation (i.e. education, experience, training) needed for such a position. The H-2C will only be available for positions that fall under Zones 1–3, which for the restaurant industry include the following examples:

• Zone 1 (little or no preparation): barista; fast food cook; dishwasher; food preparation worker

• Zone 2 (some preparation): bartender, cashier, institution and cafeteria cooks, restaurant cooks, short order cooks, first-line supervisors of food preparation and serving workers, food cooking machine operators, batch makers, food service managers, hosts and hostesses

• Zone 3 (medium preparation): chefs, head cooks, private chefs

While the above positions may not need a college education, it is important to note that any occupation that is listed in the Occupational Outlook Handbook (published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) as requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education is not an eligible occupation for this visa.

The duration of the initial granted visa is three years. The status can be renewed for up to two more additional consecutive periods of three years at a time.

Portability (i.e. changing positions within the same visa class) is permitted so long as the H-2C holder has been with the initial sponsoring employer for one year. If the H-2C nonimmigrant is unemployed, they are allowed up to 45 consecutive days of presence within the United States to either obtain new employment or to prepare for departure.

The program’s current capacity allows for 65 00 persons during its first fiscal year, with the number going up as high as 85 000 or as low as 45 000 annually in subsequent years. The calculations on how this program scales up or down its allotment involves a demand-based calculation that can be easily followed. I’ll spare everyone the list of scenarios in which the numbers go up and down.

For the most part, this program sounds fine in terms of what it seeks to accomplish: providing a workforce for industries that are facing low profit margins and labour shortages. However, what confounds me about this program, though, are two things:

• Does not allow for dependents to be brought with the H-2C worker

• Does not appear to be dual intent

Normally, in order to bring over a dependent, paperwork must reflect that the sponsored worker is able to cover the dependents financially. And if wages for Zones 1–3 were not necessarily conducive to financial coverage, the dependents’ applications would speak for themselves and be denied by USCIS thereafter. There is no need to outright explicitly prohibit family members and dependents from joining program participants. The H-class (H-2A and H-2B) has traditionally not had dependent visas because of their seasonal nature. However, I would contest that the H-2C is markedly different with its initial three-year term, and its lack of dependency on season or pattern for employment.

Not surprisingly, since dependents are not allowed to be brought over under H-2C status, there will be no eligibility for child tax credits. However, the bill goes out of its way to stipulate that if there is a joint return, comprised of two H-2C nonimmigrants, the spouses still would not be eligible.

Single intent and dual intent are terms that refer to how long a non-U.S. international intends to stay in the U.S. I use the term nonimmigrant a lot in reference to the H-2C, in part because it is literally written in the bill, and also because it expresses the single intent. In other words, “nonimmigrant intent” means that the foreign national has no intention on staying in the U.S. in the longterm and will return to their home country after their status expires. Dual intent visas can carry the nonimmigrant intent, as well as the intent to one day start the immigration process for permanent residency. The H-1B, for example, is a dual intent visa, permitting employers to start the process for employer-sponsored green cards.

So, by coupling the outright prohibition of dependents with having a visa status that carries both a nonimmigrant intent and working term of up to nine years is untenable. Yes, folks on an H-2C visa can be promoted and see upward mobility in their jobs, but that’s not the point. By not offering a straightforward pathway to employment-based immigration, we are pushing these folks to: return to their home country after almost a decade of labour; hoping they find love and marry a U.S. citizen; or pushing them to another visa program that does carry dual intent. Unfortunately, with the H-1B still having caps that are more often than not shuttle its applicants into a lottery system, it is not such an easy fix. By setting up such a program where opportunity is compromised at the outset, and continues to be hampered by an outdated immigration system, we are not setting up anyone for success here. Immigrants are not to be used and tossed out; they should be invested in, especially given how much they’ve invested their lives here in the U.S.

Further reading and watching

• New England Today: “The chow mein sandwich of Fall River, Massachusetts”

• The New York Times: “$87.50 for 3 minutes: inside the hot market for videos of idling trucks”

• “Today Food: Family Style”: “Al Roker explores America’s changing Chinatowns”

I talked about Popchew in Part 1 of my look at the ghost kitchen model. For Part 2, though, I want to look at the other ways in which the aforementioned exists.

It’s hard to have a singular opinion on a term that encapsulates a number of forms. Immediate permutations that come to mind of what may be defined as ghost kitchen—which does not offer indoor seating/dining for guests—include the following:

• One of many private kitchens within a larger facility for small businesses to test drive ventures, while only offering delivery or limited takeout

• Restaurant chains re-packaging components of their menu into a zippier and more youthful virtual-only brand

• Companies in the business of creating dedicated kitchens that will cook up these virtual brands for delivery-only orders (and may offer some walk-in opportunities for takeout)

Even then, the possibility of crossover between these variations. For instance, CloudKitchens is in the business of building commercial kitchens for virtual-only brands and scaling national chains (such as Burger King, Chick fil-A, and Wendy’s). However, they are also creating opportunities for those that cannot afford their own brick-and-mortar location by way of renting out one of forty private kitchen spaces at Sunnyside Eats, as is the case for Sandra Mathis and her business, Black-Eyed Peas and Collard Greens.

Opportunities for small business owners to try their hand at an idea with lower hard costs and (presumably) brokered delivery commission deals don’t bother me. In fact, I’m all for it—you do what works for you to start your entrepreneurial path. That aspect of ghost kitchens is not something that I find to be unnerving. After all, incubator programs and commissary kitchens have been around for ages (albeit without the availability an online ordering and delivery component, which marks the distinction of what makes a ghost kitchen a ghost kitchen).

What I find troublesome about ghost kitchens, though, are the recurring themes of a lack of transparency and regulation enforcement when we move outside the conversation of helping the solo business operation.

Missing disclosures and deceptive marketing

Hop on to the delivery platforms and search for MrBeast Burger, would you? Depending on which platform you’re using, there may or may not be a disclaimer advising you that this restaurant chain is a virtual one.

Out of the big three delivery platforms, only DoorDash has a banner disclosing MrBeast Burger’s status as a virtual brand. But if there are other promotions at play (such as BOGO), you’ll have to click through the carousel to get your disclaimer.

Conversely, with both Uber Eats and Seamless/Grubhub, neither platform acknowledges that MrBeast Burger is a virtual concept on their respective store pages. For unsuspecting users, it’s easy to mistake MrBeast Burger for your local brick-and-mortar restaurant in the city.

And while DoorDash’s labeling in this instance is extremely clear, the company does experiment with levels of transparency and consumer knowledge by varying language on its banners, depending on whose ghost kitchen concept it is.

Take Lucky Dragon Fried Rice for instance. Yes, it is a virtual brand, but it receives a slightly different banner treatment: “A concept by Nextbite”.

Similarly, It’s Just Wings and Tender Shack carry banners that simply tout “A concept by Brinker International” and “Off-menu favorites from Bloomin’ Brands” respectively. And to be candid, the last two disclaimers were only added this week, as I hadn’t noticed them two weeks ago when I started working on this newsletter.

And then there’s Wow Bao who goes one step further with their banner saying “Wow Bao partners with neighborhood restaurants to offer a virtual Wow Bao and give you even more delicious options.”

These descriptions sound innocent enough, but they do not provide the full context of the businesses behind these food ventures. Of the examples mentioned, let me break it down for you:

• Nextbite is a company that specializes in virtual restaurant concepts, so it doesn’t make sense why they have a special label instead of the good ol’ “This is a virtual brand” banner

• It’s Just Wings is a slimmed down and re-branded menu offering from Chili’s—but saying the parent company name doesn’t ring as many bells as, well, Chili’s

• To compete with Brinker, The Outback Steakhouse’s parent company launched a similar initiative: Tender Shack

• Wow Bao is a national chain that has a whole page on its website dedicated to its dark kitchen model where other ghost kitchens and local restaurants can earn additional dollars by moonlighting as a steamed bun and dumpling shop

If you want to buy from a ghost kitchen, that’s cool—again, I say you do you. But I feel that consumers should be well informed about who they are supporting, whether it be ghost kitchen, franchisee, chain restaurant, or independent business. Scaling language up and down, depending on the leverage the preferred partner has not only furthers an imbalanced marketplace, but also preys on uninformed consumers.

At least with all other ad units (such as higher ranked listings and placements), they are marked as sponsored. These banners, with their flowery language, do not, and are in turn highlighting DoorDash’s biases toward and possible partnerships with certain companies.

And when we talk about the re-branding and -packaging of legacy brands, such as Chili’s, into slimmer menus that hone in on a certain type of food, it becomes apparent that part of this strategy is not only to make the parent company relevant again, but also to own more digital real estate on the third-party delivery platforms. After all, more brands and more listings mean more chances to be found. As Kristen Hawley’s 2020 (yet still very relevant) Eater article highlights: “[i]nstead of a huge menu where some items might get lost, those items can be broken out and highlighted as brands of their own, a benefit for existing restaurants looking to make more money.”

In some ways, this form of competition is not unlike the “ghost restaurants” of 2015 where multiple listings were created for restaurants to game the system in search and opportunity. Except in this case, the ones inflating their chances for business are the companies who have the fiscal and human capital resources to invest into branding materials and completing the necessary paperwork.

Compliance with local health regulations

In mid-March, Insider released an article that detailed how Reef, known for its modular kitchens, had flouted regulations by operating without proper insurance, licenses, and permits. Even though the article looks at operations in Miami and Houston, it is still cause for concern when large-scale city operations like those fail to adhere to the laws and guidelines set forth by their respective cities.

In addition, it was noted that many customers had complained of raw or undercooked food. Not to mention, Reef insiders highlighted a series of safety issues, such as a lack of potable water and “fireball-emitting propane stoves.”

The lack of quality control and assurance has gone so far that Fuku, who didn’t outright say why the partnership ended, dropped Reef as its national growth partner. Instead of relying on a company to oversee all operations, Fuku has teamed up with Kitchen United, whose approach relies on making restaurant brands responsible for food preparation and merely rents out the infrastructure.

Taking a look at New York’s ghost kitchens, the only one with glaring infractions was located at 69 Clinton St. in the Lower East Side. Covered in DJ Khaled’s Just Another Wing-branded window decals, this address is home to a Reef kitchen, according to the NYC Department of Health (DOH). Now, even though I’ve been with Nom Wah for a decade, I still have yet to obtain my Food Handlers card, so I had Ms. Julie (as I call her) help me with my homework in deciphering the violations.

September 15, 2021: Failure to comply with an Order of the Board of Health, Commissioner, or Department.

Julie said that this was the first time she’s ever seen a violation like this one. It is normal (and within reason) to let the inspector know that you are not the manager and are therefore not permitted to give them the tour, but will grab the on-site manager to conduct the inspection. Unfortunately, this violation was not the case. What “failure to comply” means in this instance is that the on-site employee declined to even let the inspector in. It’s not a great look to say the least with regards to compliance for local regulations and transparency for customers.

September 8, 2021: Personal cleanliness inadequate. Outer garment soiled with possible contaminant. Effective hair restraint not worn in an area where food is prepared.

When I placed a pickup order from a Reef kitchen a few weeks ago, I was able to take a quick glimpse inside when my order came out. The entirety of the ground floor of 69 Clinton is retrofitted to be a kitchen upon entry—kitchen equipment on the right and shelves of goods on the left. There isn’t a receiving room in the front, nor is there any space for delivery folks to wait inside. It was also on that day that I noticed there was only one person working, which may not always be the case, although it may explain the lack of accountability on personal cleanliness, as noted in this violation. Julie also commented that she would consider this lack of personal hygiene to be a huge red flag in the kitchen, as it may also be an indicator of other kitchen and cooking processes not meeting standards that may not have been apparent during an inspection.

And let’s also not forget that Reef closed its New York kitchen vessels in Q4 of last year due to the city stating that it found numerous rules and requirements were not followed.

Other ghost kitchen outfits either have not yet been inspected due to the newness or are currently operating out of a smoothly-run restaurants, as is the case of Nextbite’s Lucky Dragon Fried Rice, which shares its address and DOH permit with L’Entrée at 293 Church St. It’s not a surprise that the ghost kitchen operations by those who already have experience by operating an actual restaurant are less likely to have violations than those who are completely new to both the business of food and operating a food business under stringent regulations.

Growing the business of food with ghost kitchens

Scaling without oversight into the kitchen operations poses a significant challenge. As we saw, Fuku pulled the plug on letting the ghost kitchen operator be in the driver’s seat. Other large scale chain operations, such as Brinker International and Bloomin’ Brands, operate out of their already established ecosystem to introduce new virtual brands. Even the “simple” items, such as burgers and wings, require a standard, which isn’t something that a ghost kitchen company is necessarily equipped to handle or enforce.

For example, in tasting the two MrBeast Burger meals that I ordered from two different ghost kitchens, the amount of seasoning or squish on the smash patties were inconsistent. Fries received a similar treatment in which there was inconsistency in the amount of seasoning that should be applied in each box. Offerings, too, were inconsistent—different brands of bottled water; it’s not something that you would see at this scale of business where it’s agreed upon at the national level (or at least regional) what condiments or beverages to dispense. MrBeast Burger may very well be a brand, but it doesn’t have a process for executing its brand. And that’s something a ghost kitchen setup can’t easily address when they don’t actually work for said brand specifically and are cooking up several other virtual ones.

Overall, like ordering from anywhere, your mileage may vary depending on which ghost kitchen operation is making your food. As another example, I found C3’s Krispy Rice branding and food to be solid, even if I could only sample from one location (but I opted for a few items to test out the consistency). But again, the DOH notes that they aren’t in a Reef kitchen, churning out multiple brands, but rather, their own (shared with Proper Food).

Look, I don’t think I’d go out of my way to order from a ghost kitchen, but I certainly would like to have the agency to decide where I am doing so or not. Even though delivery platforms so integral to the success of ghost kitchens, they are also a must in the case of many independent restaurants. The delivery platform needs to have some accountability in who they showcase, especially so much of their sales talk is about helping the little guy. By labeling the virtual brands explicitly and consistently, we can at least level the playing field a little bit and let the consumer make their own informed choices. No need to tell us who your favourite child is, DoorDash.

Further reading

• Engadget: “Instacart will offer its own tech to help grocery retailers speed up deliveries”

• Eater: “Why the food in Pixar’s ‘Turning Red’ looks so good”

• Eater: “This Southeast Asian artist uses iconic pink doughnut boxes as a canvas for storytelling”

It all started with a Twitter thread from Joe Sweeny (see below for one of the tweets) that the NYC-based company recently raised $3.6MM in seed funding from a variety of investors, including, but not limited to: Long Journey Ventures, Anti Fund, Flybridge, WndrCo, and the Uber Alumni Syndicate. Whereas other virtual food brands look to ghost kitchens—facilities whose sole purpose is to only put together delivery-only/takeout meals—to execute meal preparation, Popchew’s creator brands make use of existing restaurants who still continue their regular operations while also fulfilling Popchew orders.

Instead of tackling everything in one go, I’d like to address these two topics in a two-part series. For this first part, I’d like to examine the implications of Popchew’s model and its effect on the idea of the virtual brand; and for the second, I’d like to talk more broadly about virtual brands—for which I bought the burgers, fries, and water—and their constraints.

P.S.: I also considered how this post might’ve benefited from some video commentary of the actual taste and look of the food , but hey, I don’t have enough money to rework part of my apartment into a recording area, hence my having applied to Substack’s Food Intensive. Yes, that was a not-so-low-key “wink wink nudge nudge” to any judges out there.

What exactly is Popchew?

To hear from Popchew cofounder Nick Sopchak in the initial spiel, the company serves as the connector between content creators and restaurants. The goal is to provide influencers a way get into the business of food by launching their own brand, similar to MrBeast Burger. However, instead of investing upstart capital for nationwide infrastructure (i.e. ghost kitchens), Popchew opts to partner with local restaurants by white labeling their food as the creator’s brand. But as we’ll see, there are some conflicting mentions of how Popchew envisions the restaurant executing the food component.

In some ways, we could say that Popchew is a marketplace of sorts. It wants to eventually develop its own community by way of a loyalty program that connects its network of creator brands, which isn’t so different from third-party delivery platforms who encompass a roster of restaurants from which to order. But as I continue to reconsider what Popchew’s unique selling prop later on in this newsletter, the unique selling proposition here is that the creator and their fandom is first and foremost, as opposed to the food brand on just another delivery platform.

Another part of Popchew’s charm to investors is its low overhead and operating costs. Without investing in the building and maintaining of ghost kitchens, a lot of capital is freed up. White labeling food products—as mentioned on “The Pomp Podcast” at the 2:46 mark—when sold with branded packaging is a far lower cost when compared to real estate. The company can, in actuality, rely on the marketing engine that is the creators themselves, who most likely command large followings that are readily to convert when given something to buy.

By ordering and tasting three pizzas, I’m left with a few thoughts about: a) consistency; b) direct vs. third-party platforms; and c) the notion of the virtual brand in relation to Popchew.

Note: While I would’ve preferred to have a larger sample by purchasing more pizzas from various white labeled restaurants, my credit card can only take so many hits take for this experiment of mine.

Consistency: menu offerings and packaging

Popchew’s first creator brand—which is the term they opt for, as opposed to “virtual brand”—is Anthony Pompliano’s Bitcoin Pizza. If you order directly from Bitcoin Pizza’s page, you can even pay in Bitcoin if you are so inclined. There are five pizzas that make up the virtual brand, ranging from a plain cheese pie to the equivalent of a Hawaiian pie.

Most recently, during the “Just Raised” podcast interview, which was released earlier this month, host Jason Sweeny touts at the 9:25 mark that the products are Popchew and/or creator-branded with Parikh going on to articulate the following:

“We have partnerships with the food distributors… whether you’re ordering in LA or New York, you get the exact same ingredients, the exact same food, the exact same packaging delivered to your door.”

What’s being suggested by the above is that the restaurants are provided with ingredients to assemble these pies, which may or may not be different than what they already have. In any case, this method of carving out space in the walk-in (i.e. the jumbo fridge in restaurants) and trying to forecast the potential demand for this second business presents a huge issue, especially for restaurants who are strapped for space in metropolitan areas.

But let’s recall: in “The Pomp Podcast”, which aired more than a half year earlier than Sweeny’s, the assertion is that Popchew is white labeling the restaurant’s food—in other words, rebranding a local joint’s pizzas whose combos will reflect Bitcoin Pizza’s offerings.

The approach of taking over a restaurant’s supply chain with one for the virtual brand is one that will assure the most consistency nationwide, but it is also a significant challenge to interrupt an existing and ongoing business’ workflow. However, letting the restaurant mimic the virtual brand’s offerings with their own ingredients exposes a vulnerability in consistency for the virtual brand.

These are two conundrums that Popchew themselves are may be trying to figure out, judging from the competing operational methods expressed in the two interviews. Or, and also very likely, Parikh actually meant that the composition of each product will have, in essence, the same toppings and sauces (even if the way the food is made may be different) and packaged in the same branded boxes.

In any case, I only bore witness to the white labeling of a restaurant’s menu in my trials of Popchew’s offerings. Of the two brands available—Pompliano’s Bitcoin Pizza and Zias’ Wing SZN—I opted for the pies, because I was just in the mood for a good ol’ New York slice(s).

Ordering and receiving Bitcoin Pizza

When you look for locations of Bitcoin Pizza on the direct order page, you can see quite a few spots in New York. And while the partner restaurants name doesn’t get a shoutout, a quick Google search can reveal who is actually making your pie.

174 Avenue B is home to both Bitcoin Pizza and Eleven B. I scheduled an order for a Capital Greens pie (which curiously omits the inclusion of black olives on its direct and DoorDash listings), slice of cheesecake, and Caesar salad via DoorDash, and a control order of a similar pie (I added peppers, onions, and mushrooms to a cheese pie, since the Seamless page only lists a cheese pie as your starter), same dessert, and same salad.

Discrepancies are apparent between what’s proposed on the overarching Bitcoin Pizza website vs. the local Bitcoin Pizza before the orders even arrive. For instance, this location of Bitcoin Pizza curiously omits the inclusion of black olives on its direct and DoorDash listings. Not only are the black olives featured in the stock photo, but they’re also touted on the virtual brand’s website. Other New York locations tout olives on the pie, so it may very well have to do with what the local restaurant uses themselves.

Upon the arrival of the control and virtual brand pies, it’s clear that the creator-branded boxes aren’t always provided, as I received two identical 11B Express boxes. Similarly, all the items from the Bitcoin Pizza order were packaged exactly the same as its control.

And yes, my Capital Greens pie arrived with actual greens. I assume my pie maker disagreed with the original Bitcoin Pizza description, which lacked any greens whatsoever, and added his own touch of spinach for a little “health is wealth” ethos.

From appearance alone, the food follows Popchew’s originally proposed model of letting restaurants do their own thing and the virtual brand white labeling the menu items as their own. If looks weren’t convincing enough, the taste test did demonstrate that the salads and desserts were the exact same. The pies, while the toppings differed slightly, were also identical in terms of the dough’s chew and the taste of like toppings (mushrooms, onions, peppers, cheese, and sauce).

On a side note, the pizzas are very enjoyable.

What was perplexing, though, was the lack of promised branding. I ordered a third pie, but this time through the direct ordering website (I couldn’t bear to have more cheesecake and salad in my fridge, so I skipped on those items). And sure enough, the branded pizza box appeared at my doorstep, and I have a few theories on why the “correct” packaging was used for the direct order and not the DoorDash one.

But to first close out on the discussion of consistency: by relying on the restaurant’s food to deliver the end item, it’s hard to declare Popchew as building “food brands” for creators. While menu offerings may vary ever so slightly (a common practice that takes into account different markets’ preferences), the virtual food brand’s actual final items can heavily differ within one market—never mind nationwide—with each restaurant abiding by their own ingredient sourcing and cook methods. If we’re selling more so the idea of certain combinations of ingredients vs. a final food product, are we really selling a food brand?

Direct vs. third-party platforms

Let’s take a peek under Popchew’s hood. Poking around, we’ll see that the two currently operational creator brands—Bitcoin Pizza and Wing SZN—use different direct online ordering systems.

Bitcoin Pizza makes use of Captain, the company who made a splash last year with the headline that more than half of its staff had worked at Grubhub at some point during their careers. On the other hand, Wing SZN uses the Dublin-based company Flipdish for its direct online ordering.

Look, there’s no one right partner to work with; it comes down to needs, vibe, and pricing. And while Popchew is in its early stages, it’s still jarring to have them experiment with different online systems if they are looking ahead to create an ecosystem that connects its users, thereby introducing them to more content and creators. The large disconnect that I see here is that by having accounts and logins that are already separate from the main website, not only customer profiles are going to be a challenge to pull and reward for one brand, but also for the multitude of brands that Popchew aims to launch.

If I wanted to be a part of the Popchew ecosystem in the future, why would I have to make two separate accounts now for both Wing SZN and Bitcoin Pizza? And having to sign up again on Popchew’s main website? I won’t be surprised to see a complete overhaul that either commands a lot of handling (and potential mishandling) of personally identifiable information (PII) as they synthesize their databases, or a complete ditching of the data amassed from online orders and subsequent reliance on the main website’s signups.

And let’s quickly talk about revenue from these online food sales

Now, even though Popchew doesn’t have the same overhead expenses as others who are venturing in the virtual brand space, the current revenue schemes may still not be enough. According to ARLnow, Bitcoin Pizza takes in approximately 20% of the revenue generated from pizza sales.

To rephrase, Popchew is speculatively (I say speculatively because that article is from several months ago and things change quickly!) taking a 20% cut from the restaurants who are making the pies. However, I would imagine that this sizable ding would be coming from the direct ordering page, and a lesser cut would be taken from third-party delivery platforms. Otherwise, it would be defeating Popchew’s narrative of empowering the local restaurant to make more money than they currently are making on the likes of DoorDash. Now, 20% doesn’t necessarily go a long way, especially when you have to factor in the creator’s undisclosed cut, platform fees (e.g. Flipdish takes a 7% cut on all orders, although I’m sure this can be negotiated to some extent), all the subsidized packaging and development, and the company’s day-to-day expenses.

What they, in conjunction with the partnered restaurants, pay as a cut to the third-party platforms is also a mystery. There isn’t quite yet a strong enough proof of concept to leverage a heavily discounted commission rate, nor is there a large number of sales that show steady year-over-year growth to point to. Sure, there is volume in the number of outposts opened thus far, but the delivery giants’ arms aren’t being bent terribly far behind their backs.

So, let’s get to the final part of this newsletter—the virtual food brand and how it probably feeds into Popchew’s end goal.

What’s in a brand?

I frequently come back to the question in my mind that if the creator brands are selling more of an idea of the food they enjoy vs. the actual consistent product, what are they selling and what am I buying?

And if the economics of food businesses are not yielding a tremendous profit for the delivery giants, why would it be any different for Popchew in the end?

The food isn’t the point. Rather, Popchew’s real moneymaker is going to come from the notion of fandom itself. The idea of being rewarded for being part of this creator’s community is the narrative that Popchew should be driving, although the narrative of food is a pretty easy and attractive one to espouse. Sweeny hit the nail on the head when he articulated that what the company is delivering is adult Happy Meals. Remember when you were a kid? The nuggets or the burgers were never the point—the toys were. That said, of course, consistency in food product and packaging are still helpful, and that is something that the company will have to address sooner than later.

Anyway, it’s to say that Popchew is setting up a holistic platform for influencers and content creators to sell themselves. The virtual food brand is a vehicle within an ecosystem that brings together what other platforms have created separately and made it the job of creators to figure out how to tie it back to their individual brand.

Take personalized messages through Cameo and merchandise from Teespring, for instance. To have to juggle the promotion of these revenue streams and facets of a content creator’s business is difficult when all you have, for example, is a YouTube channel to drop links or a bio link tool like Linktree. What Popchew proposes, though, is a way to tap into all of these ways to experience the a creator’s brand through incentives (i.e. prizes) all in one place. It’s an added marketing and sales component, but it’s one that should, in theory, be able to seamlessly overlap and integrate with all the other components.

The ghost kitchens and traditional food brands stop at just the celebrity affiliation and endorsement. For them, selling food is the end goal; whereas, for Popchew, selling potential access to a creator and their ethos is the end goal.

Lastly…

Special thanks to my anonymous co-taste tester who assisted me so that I didn’t have to eat all the food by myself.

As for the second part of this newsletter, I’ll drop it next week.

On the back burner: Restaurant Revitalization Fund

Any hope on the Restaurant Revitalization Fund being included in the upcoming omnibus spending bill has been squashed. Per Lindsey McPherson of Roll Call, Senate Small Business Chair Ben Cardin cited objection from GOP leadership. Even though the hope is to revive the Fund through a separate bill, it is unlikely to go through with the current Senate’s composition.

Further reading

• LA Times: “Thunderbolt almost closed during COVID. Then it was named one of the world’s best bars”

• VinePair: “The bold premise and false promise of copyrighted crypto cocktails”

• NYT: “Manhattan’s Chinese street signs are disappearing”

So, I suppose that’s where the charm of on-demand grocery apps comes in. There’s no waiting or need to consider I’m doing a few hours ahead, never mind a whole week. Instead, everything comes rather quickly—no later than after brewing and sipping my first coffee of the day that the whole week’s worth of goods arrive.

But does this type of business actually benefit anyone, apart from the consumers who are lavished with discount codes, involved? Not really.

Let’s explore how the startups themselves, on-site employees, and delivery giants are working in an ecosystem that is far from beneficial to any of one of these groups.

Is it even profitable?

While, consumers seem to be the winners at the moment with numerous promotions, companies are dispensing heavy acquisition dollars and running up the losses. Per the Wall Street Journal, some of the players in the game—who include the likes of Gorillas, Jokr, Fridge No More, Getir, and Buyk—average a loss of at least $20 per order, which isn’t surprising when you factor in the amount spent on advertising.

Let’s take this example that the WSJ brings up when these startups were heavily courting users earlier this summer:

After paying for the products, the people packaging them, delivery riders, waste and other expenses related to storage, it lost $3.30 on every order. That doesn’t include marketing costs. Fridge No More spent $70 on advertising to win the average customer, an investment that resulted in a $78 loss for every customer that stayed in the 10 months through September, according to the presentation.

Advertising has scaled back considerably since—coupons via postcards or social media ads are not as aplenty, and neither are the digital out-of-home ads around the city. Even if the ad spend is no longer burning a hole through pockets, the larger question is whether or not these pockets are being filled with returning customers. IF If investors are not seeing customer retention rates to their liking, we might very well see more ad campaigns take flight, which won’t be cheap in such a competitive space.

Rent is another financial hurdle to contend with. The multiple “dark stores”, which act as mini warehouses, served as an answer to retail vacancies in an uncertain economy. However, with more optimistic outlooks, the question of whether or not landlords will want to continue to host these dark stores when the space could be used more prominently is one that will have to be answered. Perhaps by the time these leases run out, there will already have been consolidation or the idea will have been kiboshed entirely.

In the interim, Berlin-based Gorillas, for one, is removing the large opaque vinyls that cover its windows at its brick-and-mortar shops to better promote its pickup option.

And the workers?

While the startups are quick to say that they offer protection for their workers by way of guaranteed full- or part-time employment and possible benefits, the promise to deliver within such a timeframe (in most cases, 15 minutes) creates an undue burden on the employees.

I’ve already mentioned in a previous post about the time I saw a Fridge No More courier heading down the wrong way on a one-way and almost crash into another cyclist. When the clock is ticking on a delivery, going down a one-way that you shouldn’t be heading down can save a minute or two of circling around the block. Unfortunately, it’s a risky move that comes with a lot of liability, especially when these companies are keeping these workers as full- and part-time workers, as opposed to independent contracts (which absolves them for all liability).

If we want to see the ramifications of promised hastened delivery at scale, we can refer to The Verge’s piece covering traffic accidents with India’s instant delivery counterpart, Swiggy.

To combat the dangers from such advertising, NYC Councilman Christopher Marte announced that he would be introducing a bill to ban on-demand grocery apps from advertising 15-minutes or less delivery times. The rationale for this bill stems from a multitude of related accidents and fatalities linked to e-bikes in the city. Marte also stated to the New York Post that he would be pushing for legislation that would provide more worker protections and better health benefits, although the details surrounding these two issues remain vague.

Ahead of the bill’s introduction, Gorillas changed its marketing message from 10-minute delivery to "delivery within minutes”.

Frenemies and copycat models

This week, Grubhub announced that it would be teaming up with Buyk, the startup that snagged Nathan’s Famous Exec James Walker as CEO last quarter. With this partnership, Buyk will be able to offer grocery and convenience items on Grubhub’s marketplace. And while sometimes there can be a wait for delivery for regular food delivery, the selling point is that Buyk would still assure delivery within 15 minutes by way of its 30 locations across New York and Chicago. The win seems pretty big for Buyk, considering they are able to tap right into Grubhub’s large user base in two metropolitan cities.

And by having Buyk on the platform, Grubhub side steps the logistics needed to set up its own version of on-demand hyperlocal delivery. Gopuff, founded in 2013, has been available on Uber Eats since May 2021, so the notion of frenemies working together is not exclusive to Grubhub.

Instead of partnering with an existing company, DoorDash dedicated internal resources to launch its own version, dubbing it DashMart, in New York almost three months ago. To remain competitive with other hyperlocal players in the space, DoorDash was sure to state that those working at DashMart would be considered full-time and part-time workers and be eligible for a set wage and benefits. Such a move is in stark contrast to its usual employment of gig workers.

In a similar vein, Instacart’s plans for 15-minute delivery were leaked in December. Although with the advent of Councilman Marte’s bill, it’s unclear whether Instacart will proceed.

So, does it make sense for the meal delivery giants to be here? Yes and no.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve seen the perception of delivery offerings expand from the night-in meals and scheduled-ahead grocery drops to include nationwide and hyperlocal opportunities. And with user bases that have been cultivated for over a decade, the delivery giants already know its customers crave and consume a certain kind of convenience. To offer an expansion of such options, especially when private equity and VC firms are dolling out money for new, yet similar, businesses, seems worth a try, even if it doesn’t generate profitability. At the very least, they are staking the ground in hopes that others’ resources peter out sooner, rather than later.

However, as we’ve seen, this hyperlocal strategy of delivery within minutes has not shown to be profitable in the least. It might be too early for the delivery giants to consider acquisition, while the leases are fresh and the startups are running hot, but in the mean time, partnerships and copycat models with little effort are ways for them to not only force competition, but to also check and validate hypotheses about their audiences’ actual appetites.

And about financial relief for restaurants…

We are still waiting on the FY22 appropriations package to see what the House has in store for the Restaurant Revitalization Bill. Provided that there are no more continuing resolutions passed (I’m not sure how many more can be passed), the House has until March 11th to complete their work.

With a source stating that there would not be a huge stimulus in the works, it is unlikely that restaurants will see a huge wave of aid in the package next month. The most likely scenario, per Roll Call’s interview with Senators Benjamin L. Cardin and Roger Wicker, is that the aid would be shared amongst restaurants and businesses that were not included in initial government stimulus programs.

In other words, relief for restaurants is not guaranteed, as successful funding is going to be competitive with the newly added qualified applicants.

In immigration news…

The House-passed “America COMPETES Act of 2022” was officially received in the Senate; however, the Senate’s version is 1200 pages shorter than its original form, and missing the introduction of the W visa program.

Under Sec 80301 of the House’s bill, the U.S. would introduce a new visa class—the W class—geared toward hiring for startup businesses. While we normally associate startups with STEM, the language is broad enough to cover a variety of job functions, so long as the sponsored worker has ownership interest or an executive/managerial position. The initial term of the visa is three years with opportunity to renew in increments.

For the subsection of sponsees that fall under essential (i.e. executive/managerial), there are limitations to how many W visas can be issued to a startup. The limit depends on how many total employees there are in the U.S., with a max of 5 such persons for a business with 70+ employees.

Key to note is that this visa class would’ve allowed for dual intent—meaning that the person could also seek lawful permanent resident status while holding and renewing the W class. Nonimmigrant spouses would also be authorized to engage in employment with this visa class.

Unfortunately, it’s unclear if there will be any reconciliation between the House’s and Senate’s version, but given that a lot of proposed immigration plans have fallen to the wayside, I wouldn’t hold my breath. But at least we got our hopes up for two weeks?

Further reading

• AP: “Food delivery workers, ride-share drivers demand more rights”

• The Washington Post Magazine: “Into the Fire”

• The Verge: “Behind Pornhub's decade-old moderation problems”

• Sixth Tone: “China’s “anti-sissy” campaign unleashes a wave of online transphobia”

Part of what makes nascent companies particularly interesting is the various directions that it can take, with the roadmap staying flexible and nimble, all the while staying true to the “big idea”.

For Kittch, this big idea plugs into the lack of niche representation and discoverability on the two big current streaming platforms: YouTube and Twitch. With the former, you’re competing against the multitude of uploaded static content, for which it is primarily known for. And with the latter, the IRL categories leave cooking relegated to the catch-all bucket of “Just Chatting”. Suffice to say, exposure is a challenge within the current parameters of streaming.

But does that mean food content creators and chefs need their own platform?

Revenue: the wheel isn’t being reinvented

In November 2021, Kittch CEO Brian Bedol told HNGRY (paywalled) that the platform’s goal is to one day allow chefs to sell “everything from cookbooks to dinner reservations once it can amass a large enough audience.” And there’s a reason why Bedol is quick to point to other ways for talent to monetize on the platform: streaming pays very little.

If you recall Twitch’s massive data leak in October, journalists who combed the data were quick to point out that less than 0.1% (only the top 3000 Twitch streamers) earn more than the average American household’s $67 000 a year. For the most part, streaming is not lucrative; in fact, you’ll find that the majority do not even make minimum wage.

At the moment, content creators can only receive tips via “clams”, which serves as the Kittch ecosystem’s currency. From reading Kittch’s privacy policy, it appears that transactions are processed by the likes of Stripe. It should be noted, though, that the language states payment processors “such as Stripe”, not outright naming it as the sole or definitive payment processor. In any case, the infrastructure exists for scaling, at least from the transactions perspective.

And speaking of infrastructure, the pathways to revenue, benefiting both platform and creators, borrow from already working models. Future Party and Fast Company list a few ways that the platform has posited as ways to generate dollars:

• Paywalling content: a common practice for publishers (such as The New York Times) and currently being tested on Instagram and TikTok

• Tips via in-platform currency: similar to Twitch’s bits and YouTube’s Super Thanks

• VIP private viewings via “The Chef’s Table”: a riff on a function commonly seen on cam sites

• Brand partnership: a go-to for brands in the last decade to gain visibility beyond traditional banner ad placements

• Revenue splits on promoted items in an online marketplace: similar to affiliate links from our favourite influencers, as well as the promoted item carousel available on monetized YouTube channels

While the above can certainly bring the collective dollars necessary to sustain and grow Kittch, I doubt that most creators on the platform will be self-sufficient from Kittch and its proposed add-ons. Made In’s Jake Kalick (whose cookware brand is also backed by KarpReilly) is most apt when he says that Kittch brings the possibility of brand awareness to the table—and that is its major selling point to creators. Granted, only time will tell on how big the pool of exposure actually is.

Growing pains of a start-up

During my observation time, I’ve seen several areas that should be addressed in the near future so as to avoid significant roadblocks. For now, I’ll address the use of copyrighted music, accessibility challenges, and the need for education.

Copyrighted music

When Twitch was in its early stages, its streamers flew under the radar when using copyrighted music on streams and clips (i.e. recorded parts of the stream made available for on-demand viewing). However, by mid-2020, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) reared its head, resulting in thousands of takedown notices of copyrighted material. Many streamers saw their archives disappear overnight due to having run afoul by using music that they did not have rights to.

This past fall, Twitch struck a deal with the National Music Publishers’ Association to allow for some leniency in delivering strikes, suspensions, and bans against users. While users are still not allowed to play licensed music on their streams, Twitch has some wiggle room in determining who to punish. For example, if a user accidentally comes across a website that plays copyrighted music, they would automatically been sanctioned under the older rules; however, with this, Twitch is allowed some discretion and can look the other way.

As it pertains to Kittch, not a lot of music plays on the streams that I’ve seen. I did watch one, though, that opted to play holiday music from a laptop, which made me wonder: are holiday songs still copyrighted? Disc Makers offered the nuance I was looking for: while certain songs may be in public domain, arrangements can still be construed as copyright infringements.

At the time of writing, Gene Autry’s “Here Comes Santa Claus” is still audible at around the 21-minute mark of Kittch project consultant Amanda Shulman’s “Xmas eve prep” stream.

As the team at Kittch begins to look at scaling, which is evident by the slowly growing roster of creators, the question of how to navigate legal waters is a big one. Twitch was able to skirt DMCA oversight because of how new it was, a benefit of being first to market. However, Kittch is entering the space at a time when oversight and compliance are becoming commonplace,. And these missteps will surely have far larger consequences than they did five years ago.

Accessibility

Making live video accessible to all is a challenge. But similar to the issue outlined above, it is not one that can be so easily glossed over by saying that this space we’re in is uncharted territory. It’s a topic that has seen its fair share of discussion in Twitch’s UserVoice, Input, Android Central, Wired, and more.

To be honest, I’m not too familiar with the topic, but quickly going through the main platforms’ support hubs, I am able to find documentation on platform policy (Twitch) and ways in which streamers can make their own content accessible (Twitch, YouTube).

It’s not to say that Kittch needs to have their product road map rejiggered immediately, but there needs to be a plan of sorts in place (or at least some explicit disclosure). Otherwise, they leave themselves vulnerable to legal complaints, such as this one.

Cultivating and nurturing talent

I get it. To build something that people will hopefully adopt, you’ve got to try and have some bankable names. But sometimes, these names are not the ones that can or ought to be carrying the brand. Beyond the tech adoption component, streaming goes past the simple ins and outs of steps in a cooking demo. There is a lot more of an interactive and intimate quality to this form of engagement than first meets the eye.

Every streamer has their own style and personality, but everyone can benefit from coaching from someone that has had experience in the space. Audio is as important as the picture, but in some of the streams I’ve watched, the audio seems to be an afterthought (i.e. lots of echo, background noise, or low quality) with the troubleshooting focused on getting EpocCam to work.

Adding team members who can better advise on setups for lighting, audio, and multi-cam support can upgrade the look of this set of handpicked and referred content creators. It’s not scalable if the number of monthly active users grow exponentially, but it is a way to neatly package a proof-of-concept to sell to potential content creators and to brands for sponsorship.

On that note, my first inclination would’ve been to round out the launch lineup by looking for any restaurants or chefs that were already in the streaming space. Maine’s Cong Tu Bot comes to mind, where they went from showcasing the crew playing video games to showing off a kitchen service or two. Their tech setups are superb, pulling in multiple cameras from various locations with clean audio output. Even if they weren’t up for being on the platform, I’d suggest Kittch to pay several consulting hours to them for their expertise of mixing cooking and streaming from something more intricate than Instagram Live.

As an aside, I am aware that the part of Kittch’s promise is that you’d be able to stream from your pop-up or on-the-go easily with minimal equipment. Even with the current setup that a lot of folks have been using at the suggestion of Kittch, it is possible to do it better. I have a a similar portable rig that I bring around for the Goldbelly Live classes, for instance. It can be achieved as easily by educating creators about lighting and creative (and affordable) rigging.

On the importance of education, it seems as though some creators are either: taught to familiarize themselves with the backend by uploading pre-recorded videos; or they are not clearly taught what it means to stream. Short 1- to 10-minute videos make appearances on the website, seamlessly moving from being visibly queued in the “Coming Up” schedule to the '“Recent Highlights” carousel when the launch timestamp hits. In this vein, these videos mitigate the platform’s purpose and instead act like a variation of YouTube’s Premiere function.

The first few instances are innocent enough; however, if this trend of uploading pre-recorded video continues, it poses as a preventable conflict to the platform’s identity and ethos, as it makes me ask myself and probably others, “why not just go to YouTube?”

Is there promise?

To come back to my initial question of whether such a specific platform is needed, I’ll say that it can’t hurt as a vehicle for brand marketing.

The Kittch team is smart enough to promote the diversity of revenue streams to potential creators, especially since they don’t have immediate plans for pre-rolls or other traditional ads. More importantly, they champion the larger social ecosystem and cross-promotion. For example, if you watch toward the end of Madeleine Smithberg’s January 21st stream, someone from Kittch proposes the idea that Madeleine can recirculate the content on her own YouTube channel. It’s definitely not a new idea—Twitch streamers port their highlights to YouTube all the time—but it is refreshing to see a company be open so early in their development to being embedded in the ecosystem, as opposed to being their “own thing”.

The missteps of educating mindset and technology, and of potential legal liability are ones that need to be addressed. Bringing on team members or consultants that have actual experience in this space is crucial, especially at this growth stage. The current team, according to LinkedIn, does not include anyone from the field. Sure, there are those whose backgrounds are in video, but this experience is not meant to be proxy for streaming.

But it looks like there are some improvements being made: a recent job posting for Sr. Product Manager outlines a “[b]ackground in livestreaming/audio/video products preferred”. I’d probably advocate that even their posting for Marketing Director should also have this preference. Bringing on someone whose previous position was tangentially related but at a company in the space will do wonders for Kittch’s growth.

Further reading

• Eater: “The last days of Mexico City’s cafes chinos”

• AdExchanger: “Here’s how Instacart plans to become a major ad platform”

• Taste: “Asian pizza doesn’t need to apologize”

• Mother Jones: “I was an Instacart Shopper. I had enough when someone gave me a 1-star review for too-ripe bananas”

What became very apparent in the last week-and-a-half is that the human body can only contain so much stress. And all this emotional pain that I’ve been carrying manifested itself as a physical one by way of an excruciating back spasm. During this time of immobility, I’ve been considering how two passings have left their everlasting imprints on me—food as a love language.

Justin

I didn’t know Justin died six months ago. I found out he passed when I was about to text him three weeks ago and thought to Google something on the off chance that there was a congratulations in order. Instead, I found his obituary.

Most of my memories of Justin surface when I’m out with company and I see a dish, drink, or restaurant that I eagerly espouse and share with them. And in those moments, I mentally (and sometimes literally) chuckle. His enthusiasm for food and drink wasn’t limited to the simple narrative of telling me about “this one time”. Rather, he immersed me in the stories, sharing with me these plates and cocktails that he so keenly described, all the while patiently waiting to see if my eyes would light up with a similar brightness as his did.

It was probably our second date when we went to the now-closed Miranda in Williamsburg. He professed himself not to be a salad person but insisted that we order this particular one on the menu, which had slices of fresh mango amongst leafy greens. Up until that point, I never thought of fruits in salads as a plausible combination—I mean, I was twenty-three, so what did I know? Anyway, I’m not sure if this part is a projection of my memory or if it actually happened, but I’d like to think that he was keenly awaiting my viewpoint of the sweet-meets-savoury pairing when the salad was served. What I do clearly remember, though, is both his relief and excitement that I liked the mangos, parmesan, and greens as much as he did.

And sometimes, his eagerness backfired comically, but he’d take it in stride, such as when we were at Traif a few years ago. When the cocktails arrived at our table, he took a sip that was immediately followed by a coughing fit. He took a large swig of water, and meekly remarked at how spicy the drink was. I took a sip from his glass and looked at him with bewilderment, to which he replied: “I can’t handle any level of spice, but the ingredients sounded good together, so I wanted to try it!” We promptly swapped my cocktail with his and I joked that I could never be with someone that couldn’t handle chilies.

Gong Gong

I first met my Gong Gong (maternal grandfather) and Poh Poh (maternal grandmother) when I was twenty-one, visiting Hong Kong for the first time. The forum where we convened then and in future years was always at a restaurant. Gong Gong was always so talkative, asking me questions about myself, despite the language barrier that existed between us.

For context, I was raised in a household where my parents were adamant that I only speak one of Canada’s official languages. Cantonese, their first language, was something that my parents reserved for each other; it wasn’t a secret language, but rather, one of convenience when they didn’t have to converse with me about anything. Growing up at home, I passively absorbed an understanding of conversational Cantonese; however, anything from my own mouth was limited to a vocabulary associated with mahjong and ordering food. (We can see where my priorities lay.)

What Gong Gong could figure out without need for a family member acting as translator was what I enjoyed eating. He’d see my eyes dart toward favourite dishes, such as braised sea cucumbers, pomelo skins, and shiitake mushrooms, and push the plates closer to me. Whenever I’d visit, he’d recite back to me what I enjoyed feasting on last time and ask if I would like the same lineup. After I gave the yay or nay, he’d always go a little rogue and add something new to the mix, based on what he had seen me take a liking to. And I think he was pretty spot-on with all his selections—they’d sometimes also make it into the rotation for next time.

Perhaps most memorable, though, was how he taught me how to properly hold my chopsticks when we first met. For the first half of that meal, he didn’t say anything about how clumsily I picked up morsels of food; he only watched.

At some point, while waiting for more dishes to come out, he pointed at my chopsticks with his own and said the Cantonese word for the utensil, “fi zhee”. He then took hold of my right hand with his, repositioning my fingers one by one so that I would hold the sticks correctly. When my fingers were in the right places, he pulled his his retreated and picked up his set of chopsticks, and then mimicked the motion of grabbing food. It took a few tries and adjustments, but eventually I got it. The patience he had was matched by the pride he had in seeing me grab at everything with more precision and speed.

Where Justin could bashfully express his enthusiasm in words while at the same time sharing plates and drinks with me, Gong Gong took a more subdued approach. My grandpa would watch me in my own space, as if putting together the pieces of how I came into my own and how I formed certain habits and tastes. And only after observing me and feeling comfortable in this idea of me did he add his own personal touch to my life.

Food as a love language

There is an aspect of vulnerability in sharing what one appreciates in food and drink. Consider the intimate nature of sharing someone’s favourite dishes or beverages—you are physically ingesting and incorporating someone else’s expressed fondness for something. And when someone enjoys the experience as much as you had that very first time you imbibed, feelings of excitement and pride feel considerably validated.

Similarly, on the rare occasions that I cook for others, what I choose to make is my way of sharing the experiences that were formative in my childhood and young adulthood. And the stories that I am able to tell to accompany each dish I’ve made—from the poutine that we would eat during middle school; to the Orthodox Easter feast in Greece that we stumbled upon; to the shellfish boils that a friend would take take me to when visiting him in Baltimore—are ways for me to communicate what I’ve loved and still hold close.

Thank you to both Justin and Gong Gong for showing these parts of themselves, providing that boundless enthusiasm that I now carry and share, and for leaving me with memories that make me smile when I encounter them, such as floral beers (Justin) and perfectly trimmed bok choy (Gong Gong).

Further reading:

• Taste: “Just Like Brandma Made”

• Vice: “Psychedelic telemedicine has arrived. Would could possibly go wrong?”

• Modern Farmer: “Learning to grieve and grow in my community garden”

• SF Gate: “San Francisco-based DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food — and they’re furious”

In full transparency, I partner with DoorDash on local restaurant delivery and with GoldBelly on nationwide shipping for Nom Wah. As such, I am privy to confidential and sensitive information.

However, nothing said by me in the below or in other public spaces contains any such information. Any and all remarks, including speculative ones, that I make are informed by what is publicly available.

So, with all that said and done, let’s get started, shall we?

Macro-expansion: nationwide delivery for DoorDash

DoorDash officially launched its nationwide shipping product (dubbed “Nationwide Shipping”) last month. Counter to Eater’s assertion that DoorDash’s move to nationwide would negatively affect local food delivery, I’d contest that it is a move that offers scale for the company and positioning in a space that hasn’t seen many challengers.

Up until now, Goldbelly had been the only player in providing restaurants a third-party platform for CPG and nationwide delivery. Otherwise, restaurant brands either stuck to local delivery or offered nationwide shipping on their own websites, pursuing the whole sales funnel of awareness to acquisition all on their lonesome. To become a contender in this space is difficult—the amount of logistics at play with regards to understanding shipping different types of perishables, handling losses with shipping companies, and walking small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) through new challenges is a behemoth.

Why it makes sense for DoorDash to enter the nationwide space

Considering the aforementioned challenges, it is clear why local third-party delivery platforms, such as DoorDash, would be primed to tackle this space head-on. After all, they’ve been working with SMBs for years at this point, and have the financial resources (even if it aids in hampering profitability) to hire teams to learn the ins and outs of shipping food.

More importantly, though, restaurants have had to come face-to-face with the stark realization that their business models had them putting all their eggs in one basket—which put many of them in financially precarious positions early on in the pandemic. In turn, DoorDash positions itself as the company who is already there, with whom many restaurants are already partnered, and offering proverbial baskets and eggs. And as such, it becomes a much easier hop, skip, and jump—vs. onboarding with another platform—to explore additional revenue streams and audiences.

Sure, we can discuss about how unfair third-party delivery platforms have been to independent restaurants, but put yourselves in the shoes of the business. Administering one’s own online perishable shop and managing all the backend logistics is a Sisyphean task, especially for an industry facing unprecedented labour shortages. If someone familiar is offering to help you jump through the hoops, why wouldn’t you at least consider it?

Not to mention, DoorDash’s (and other platforms’) customer databases are a huge boon for SMBs. Being able to tap into and be visible to millions of users is an advertising device that brick-and-mortar-forward business would not normally have at their disposal. It’s a tradeoff: having access also means that you will never own that customer data outright, but I’ve also pointed out the ways in which many SMBs are very much not prepared to house this information.

DoorDash is clearly covering latitudinal streams of revenue with this move to scale from only local delivery to actually shipping the local across the country. Whether or not this venture is a successful one, it is finally offering a direct competitor to GoldBelly, who has to stake its own claim in point of differentiation (which it has begun to do with the announcement of a media and personality extension).

And the micro-expansion: 15-minute delivery

Last week, DoorDash announced its "‘ultra-fast grocery’ deliveries in 10-15 minutes" service, DashMart. With one store in New York, the company plans to eventually scale the offerings to include additional locations. The DashMart concept is not new; DoorDash launched its first wave of stores last August. However, what motivates the company for its latest press release is that this NYC location is the first brick-and-mortar store, whereas the previous iterations were mystery fulfillment centres.

DoorDash’s move of making a bigger splash with fast grocery delivery is not surprising. After all, this past summer saw an influx of start-ups take over New York with ad nauseam digital out-of-home advertising (such as those LinkNYC kiosks) and promises of grocery delivery faster than your ability to put on pants and make the inconsequential trip to your local bodega or food mart. Given that DoorDash already has the infrastructure for local restaurant food delivery in place, horizontal expansion (and perhaps eventual integration) vis-à-vis grocery delivery is the next step in expanding their footprint across related services.

Let’s talk about the “DashCorps”

More interestingly, though, is the approach to workforce. DoorDash states that DashMart workers will be part of what the company calls the DashCorps, and will be considered full- and part-time workers—in other words, they will not be independent contractors (i.e. 1099 workers). The move is a copy of the 15-minute-or-less direct competitors who employ all their workers, from inventory control to grocery delivery. I wonder, though, if this move will be short-lived for all these businesses, particularly as it concerns the couriers.

When I was driving to dine out with a friend last weekend, I saw a Fridge No More backpack-wearing cyclist ride in the wrong direction down a residential street. The cyclist narrowly missed a nasty collision with a delivery bike that had the right of way. That incident allows for questions on liability and insurance to crop up in my mind.

While the current move on DoorDash’s part to expand into this space is an exercise in spreading its reach by way of leveraging its resources to fiercely compete against newcomers, I cannot foresee DoorDash maintaining the couriers as a part of the full- and part-time DashCorps over a long period of time. Either substantial changes to safety training and protocols would have to be made to mitigate risk, or this set of employees would be reverted to independent contractors so as to eliminate any risk whatsoever to the company. And seeds of this idea have already been planted, with DoorDash, in the more expansive blog post, reinforcing that it is, overall, very much pro-independent contractor work: “90% of Dashers nationwide say they want to remain independent contractors, and we’re steadfastly committed to protecting and strengthening this independent work.”

And then you have Instacart, who also announced that it will be jumping into the 15-minute-or-less game come February. However, unlike DoorDash or other direct competitors, Instacart makes no claims or plans to transition anyone out of the gig worker status—not even for a while.

Further reading

• Grub Street: “Megan Thee Stallion and fast food’s ongoing pursuit of Black buy-in”

• CBC: “I'm Chinese Romanian. It took moving to Toronto to meet someone like me”

• The Cleaver Quarterly: “The Chifa Diaries”

• New York Mag: “New York City is about to legalize noncitizen voting”

I took another month off from writing this newsletter and spent time in Yellowstone and Grand Tetons to do a lot of thinking. There isn’t much else to do when you are left alone with just your mind and miles of trails in areas with no cell service.

Since mid-September, we’ve seen DoorDash file a lawsuit against New York for its ordinance compelling third-party delivery platforms to share customer data with food service establishments. For simplicity, I’ll just refer to these food service establishments—which also encompass bars, food hall kiosks, quick-serve concepts, and more—as restaurants.

And while the suit is active, the city agreed early last month to hold off on enforcing the law for the time being. As the suit drags on, I wanted to take a look at it to figure out what it entails and articulate some of the issues that I have with it, as consider some of DoorDash’s arguments against the law.

Breakdown of the ordinance

According to NYC Int. No. 2311-A and NYC Int. No. 2311, the following are the main points of the local law:

• Customer data includes the following:

  • Customer’s name

  • Customer’s telephone number

  • Customer’s email address

  • Delivery address of the online order

  • Contents of the online order

• Food service establishments can request “all applicable customer data” to be furnished on a monthly basis (or on a quicker cadence if requested)

• All customers are presumed to consent to this data sharing, unless they actively opt out each time they order through a third-party food delivery service

• Data can be used for “marketing or other purposes” outside the third-party food delivery service’s ecosystem

• Data is not to be sold, rented out, or disclosed by restaurants to any other party in exchange for financial benefit unless express consent from the individuals has been given

• Customers can request deletion of their data from restaurants at any time

As we will see below, the ordinance’s vast scope creates issues on behalf of consumers’ privacy and also makes assumptions that in spite of trying to be be in the interest of the restaurant, are actually harmful to all parties involved.

Restaurants aren’t winning here, despite what the ordinance wants us to think

The public company ($DASH) makes several valid points in its filing (which of course is done so with a self-serving purpose). I want to take the opportunity to explore three of them: consumable data; consent and privacy; and data protection.

Give us all the data

It does not appear that anyone remotely familiar with data privacy or ethics was consulted in the development of this bill. One of the first questions that should be asked is what purpose does each field of data serve? For me, I limit the data I process to names and email addresses only, since that is what I strictly use for my customer satisfaction surveys and promotional emails. I have no immediate use for mailing addresses or phone numbers, so I readily discard those data sets, as opposed to house them and carry the burden of data protection.

The approach that is apparent here in the drafting of the ordinance was one that casted an oversized net, necessitating third-party delivery platform to give restaurants everything from the customer’s full name to address to what they ordered follows a “do it now, ask questions later” approach.

The argument could be made that the all-encompassing information gathered can help small businesses in driving hyper local marketing and advertising campaigns what with having the actual delivered-to addresses. But is a faulty premise.

In addition to the issues with data safety, I’d point out that not a lot of these small businesses have the knowledge to make use of such data or the funds to implement such campaigns. In a more likely scenario, businesses may want to have addresses and phone numbers to create additional points of contact to re-engage with customers, but the question of how to do so effectively and ethically is one that remains.

Consent

The ordinance is fixated on this relationship between third-party delivery platform and the restaurant, but forgets that the consumer is very much involved as well. With a lot of our online purchases, we’ve become accustomed to buying something once and receiving a never-ending deluge of promotional emails thereafter. This practice is known as “implied consent”, and it is way to grow email lists, but they are not necessarily the most engaged lists, since it includes a wide gamut of gift, one-off, and sometimes, frequent purchases.

But have you ever received mail from somewhere that you never shopped from, but seems kind of similar to what you would’ve bought? Think about those Broadway shows or those pre-approved credit card applications. That’s what the ordinance is trying to get at here with this sharing of data from delivery platform to restaurant where you can receive marketing from a multitude of sources.

At the high level, I don’t mind that idea. I’m ordering from a specific restaurant, and would like to know a little more about them. A lot of what we see now, though, especially as we move toward a more mindful approach in how customer information is acquired is the active opt-in, whereby you have to actually click a box stating you want to receive promotional emails from said company.

But what the ordinance wants to do here, though, is something that is antithetical to moving forward in data privacy and protection. Instead, by stating that the consumer will always be presumed to consent to data sharing unless they actively opt out every single time they order from a place, the onus of privacy—as opposed to that of active participation—is put on the consumer. It is also a more positive marketing and relationship-building tactic to have a customer say they want to hear from someone once, as opposed to having the customer reinforce with every purchase that they do not want to hear from a business.

Ownership of data and best practices

Considerably glaring is the lack of consideration of what it takes to house data in terms of monetary expense and knowledge. If we look to Mailchimp as an example (which is what I use) as a CRM (customer relationship management platform), there is a free tier, but if you are a small business that relies on delivery, you are bound to exceed the 2000 contacts at some point during business operations. And after those 2000 contacts, the monthly fees can add up.

The better question to ask, though, is whether or not restaurants see a CRM as a necessary and beneficial expense. Some businesses may very well just use an Excel sheet under the guise of it being a free service, but not realize that there are potential liabilities at stake here. In the event of a breach or theft, how are small businesses expected to cope with any potential fallout? They are most likely far from proficient in the area—their area of expertise is hospitality, not data security.

The ordinance’s clauses about not selling data unless express consent is given or to delete customer information upon request again shift the burden of data handling onto the restaurant. Again, these nuances are not their expertise. I have seen such types businesses share customer lists, not realizing there is anything wrong with it, and not know how to delete customer data that they weren’t sure they even imported in the first place. With that said, there is no mention of a specific body anywhere in the bill that will oversee compliance of these rules.

To back up this concern of availability of data and inability to handle it properly, both Tech:NYC and the Electronic Frontier Foundation cite concerns that this bill leaves the consumer’s right to privacy out of the equation. DoorDash, of course, it believes it is the responsible party here, given that it is able to hire those that specialize in data protection and pay for the services that house the information safely, but I believe we can empower small businesses as well if given the opportunity. If we are going to make consumer data readily available—which again, I believe should be opt-in, as opposed to opt-out—small businesses should be given the resources and tools as companion pieces to the customer information that is being solicited.

DoorDash is indeed looking out for DoorDash

Where there are the valid points that contest the ordinance’s current reach, there are also the arguments that are more self-serving than anything else. Specifically, when citing that the ordinance would impact DoorDash’s trade secrets, provide a pathway to the development of new and competing products, and a violation of the equal protections clause, the case makes itself clear that the lawsuit here is about protecting DoorDash’s interests first, and maybe the consumer second.

Trade secrets

One of the most aggressive assertions that DoorDash makes is that the ordinance will “allow restaurants to free-ride on DoorDash’s confidential, commercially valuable data.” The amount of first-party consumer data that the company possesses is what they regard as their trade secret—it is going to be their moneymaker, they believe. After all, this statement comes on the heels of the public company making a play to court advertisers with its advertising offerings. But to say that the restaurants are benefiting from the platform for free feels reckless.

Even though DoorDash provides the platform for restaurants to sell in an expanded ecosystem with delivery, these small businesses are doing the work and heavy lifting that has created such a large database of consumer data. Granted, the contractual agreement allows for DoorDash to own the customer information that passes through the system by their playing the middleman between restaurant and new customer.

And DoorDash tries to make this distinction clear: its contractual dealings with the restaurant have been fulfilled (a marketplace to sell on where they take a % cut). Providing consumer information is another transaction, albeit one where DoorDash does not gain anything outright. However, contractual law aside, it is hard not to associate the two transactions with one another. Sure, I get that we are talking about a second dealing or contract, but how about we not bite the many hands that have made you so plump?

Development of new and competing products

In perhaps is a way to lay the groundwork for the argument for equal protections, this lawsuit posits that by providing the trade secrets (i.e. customer information) that businesses can “aggregate [the data] with other restaurants to create a competing delivery platform. Yes, there are co-op delivery services, but if we are talking about something that can take on a public company with a current market cap of $65.83B, we’d need a lot more than customer names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses.

If the market cap number doesn’t faze you, let’s look at market share. DoorDash commands a 57% share of sales across the US as of this past September. Customers may not be loyal to a single service in particular, but a ragtag band of restaurants isn’t going to upend the public company with this ordinance.

Corporate personhood and the fourteenth amendment

As a reminder, I am not a lawyer. I am just interpreting what I read, learning as I go, and piecing everything together in attempts to make sense of what I observe.

Among DoorDash’s causes of action for such a suit, the company cites violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution (42 U.S.C. § 1983). Usually, we’ve seen this clause used in cases for individuals, as the clause itself states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

However, we have seen cases—Citizens United v. FEC and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, for instance—in which corporations have adopted personhood in order to leverage an equal protections argument. It’s not to say that “we the people” as corporation has always been widely accepted. There has been opposition to the treatment of corporations as “we the people”, citing corporations as artificial vs. natural persons (Justice Rehnquists’s dissent in Bellotti) and a stretching of the Constitution’s definition of personhood (Justice Steven’s dissent to Citizens United).

For two or more groups to be treated differently than one another, the court must determine if the favoured party falls under a suspect classification (a class or group or persons meeting a series of criteria that suggests they are the likely subject of discrimination; think Board v. Brown).

Some of the criteria cited in previous equal protections cases have included:

• Having been historically been discriminated against or been subject to prejudice, hostility, or stigma

• Possess an immutable or highly visible trait

• Having been historically unable to protect themselves via political process (“discrete” and “insular minority”)

In DoorDash’s case, the delivery platform says that it is being unfairly discriminated against. While third-party delivery platforms contracted with 20+ food businesses are legally bound to the ordinance (and to the fee cap law), delivery platforms that work with fewer than 20 businesses are exempt. This number of 20 businesses strikes a chord with DoorDash, who claims the number to be arbitrary. And I agree with them. There isn’t any proof that this specific number is a tipping point of a small vs. large business. But this argument is a red herring, distracting us from who needs the actual protection.

Another example that DoorDash cites as a violation of their equal protections is that other third-party platforms, such as reservation systems, are not obligated to disclose customer data. As a quick counter, such data is often available to restaurants; it might have to be requested, but it is seldom withheld from my personal experience. In any, this argument is yet another distraction from the actual discussion.

The real question for the courts is who is the actual other group—is it the emergent delivery platforms, other types of third-party platforms, or is it the restaurants? If DoorDash positions itself against the first two, they are much more on equal footing with one another. However, if we position it as a case of DoorDash vs. small businesses, we can see where the argument for equal protections may fall. Given that these small businesses often do not have the resources to protect themselves against unfair the legislation that has allowed big tech to flourish, being able to regain a part of the ecosystem that has made delivery platforms succeed may actually be leveling the field, as opposed to making it disadvantageous.

Again, not a lawyer, so I may very well be wrong here, but I figured I’d share my interpretation of suspect classification and how this particular argument could go.

What do restaurants really need when it comes to data?

Being able to craft a full sales funnel digital relationship with customers is what restaurants need now more than ever. With so many of the interactions taking place online, these small businesses cannot just rely on their social accounts, which are only a part of the equation. Especially when you don’t have the ad dollars to put behind a spend on social, these marketing tools become more about the brand, as opposed to performance, and more about generating awareness than conversions.

Third-party delivery platforms, for better or worse, are a source to piggyback off their large sums of ad dollars on TV, digital, and out-of-home ads for a chance at growing an audience while generating sales. This revenue benefits both the restaurant (minus the commission) and the third-party delivery platform, but we unwittingly, as restaurants, sell ourselves short in not knowing that we should be getting more for having helped propel these platforms into giants.

Yes, DoorDash does have a product (and GrubHub too) that lets the restaurant own first-party data, but it’s not enough to create a product that generates CSVs of customer information. And it’s also not enough to create bills that tell platforms to give us a fairer exchange for our work. None of this information is helpful if it isn’t used and if the consumer isn’t a willing active participant.

What we need are actual local laws that give the consumer the right to protect their details and the opportunity to share their information if they would like. And for restaurants and other food establishments, they need to be equipped with at least the basic tools and skills to actually use this data so that they have a chance to succeed and grow their business. I would love to see these third-party platforms create a best practices guide and walk restaurants through the do’s and don’ts of housing first-party data. If at the very least, I hope that the small businesses who might read this newsletter consider asking their delivery platform account managers for resources, and to start researching CRM best practices on their own.

Further reading

• LA Times: “History forgot the 1871 Los Angeles Chinese massacre, but we’ve all been shaped by its violence”

• The New Yorker: “The fight to rein in delivery apps”

• DigiDay: “‘The holy grail of e-commerce advertising’: why DoorDash is bolstering its advertising offerings”

• Viet World Kitchen: “15 years after writing my first cookbook, I’m glad I was wrong”

• Eater: “Fifteen-minute grocery delivery has arrived. Do we need it?”

Anyway, coming back to what I wanted to talk about. Recalling my discussion of authenticity in food in which Goffman’s actors and their roles are ones that have been established by a mutually agreed upon set of conventions. These agreed upon norms happen to incorporate the ideas of mainstream culture—and one of these ideas that I want to touch upon is that of perceived value.

Apply the concept of value to food, and I can only begin to tell you the number of statements that I read where a dish’s value is tied to a culturally accepted sentiment. And it is these deeply rooted notions that inadvertently result in gatekeeping cultures and their respective dishes from a going beyond a certain price threshold. Or more simply: the expectation that certain foods are always meant to be “cheap”, and that for them to command more than a certain price tag is impossible to fathom.

Here are a few examples from Yelp and Google Reviews that I pulled up from July:

“There are so many cheaper options around.”

“You can easily get ten dumplings for a dollar.”

“The food is so overpriced”

These comments come from everyone, including fellow second-generation folks, who have accepted that dumplings, in particular, have a price ceiling that they cannot pass. The base line is so often referred to, especially with quotes of specific price points, because it has become a presumed authority.

If dumplings are such a “cheap” item in the food hierarchy, are they also really that inexpensive to make?

Math time

Given that it takes an experienced worker to fold 200 dumplings per hour, let’s assume that four hours in a day is spent hand-pleating dumplings.

The food costs for these hourly churned 200 pieces come to a total of $24.84. If we were to take the stance that there is no food waste—an ideal but extremely unlikely scenario—the cost breakdown is as follows for chicken and cabbage dumplings:

• Pre-made dumpling wrappers: $9.33

• Ground chicken: $9.82

• Ginger, cabbage, and scallions: $3.16

• Seasoning: $2.53

If pre-made dumpling wrappers aren’t used, then we’d have to factor in additional time for dough prep and rest—which gets to my later question of the value of labour.

For this simplistic calculation, when we take the equation of (200 pieces) / ($24.84 food cost), we end up with a food cost of 12¢ apiece for chicken and cabbage dumplings.

These costs presume that certain ingredients, such as seasonings, are bought in bulk and through purveyors, and that the ingredients are sourced from purveyors and vendors, which offer more economical pricing due to scale.

At a base cost of 12¢ apiece, I can see how many are quick to surmise that dumplings are a “cheap” food item. However, not only are we leaving out the fixed costs of operating a business, but also the value of skilled labour.

Value of expertise and time

Sometimes I hear from second- and third-generation folks that dumplings should not be priced “so high” because their parents and grandparents can make them for less than the posted price.

Sure, you can make any food at home by paying only for raw goods, but are you expensing your time? Do you value the time you spent looking up the recipe, fumbling at attempt after attempt, or the inconsistent batch you ended up making?

And when you refer to your experienced family members, do you value the time they spent learning how to make each fold consistent? Do you value the time they spent honing this skill? Do you value the expertise that makes their finished products look so much better than yours?

Personally, in the hour that a skilled worker can fold two hundred dumplings, I end up with about three dozen misshapen inconsistent morsels.

This argument that I hear of how family can fold dumplings at home for so much less strikes a nerve with me because it so aptly reminds me of how devalued housework and home labour is. Just because you can do something at home doesn’t meant that expenses should go out the window. Value your time; value your parents’ time; and value your grandparents’ time. Not to mention, add value to the practice that it has taken to perfect this skill.

To evaluate how much each dumpling costs when labour is factored in at a business, let’s assume the minimum wage for what the lowest cost per unit is, then the $15/hour brings up the average cost per unit to 20¢.

= [(Cost of Goods for 200 pieces) + (Hourly Labour for 200 Dumplings)] / (Total Number of Pieces)

= [($24.84) + ($15.00)] / (200 pieces)

= ($39.97) / (200 pieces)

= 20¢

Even if you were to contend that some dumplings are folded at shops that are family-owned, and therefore there’s no labour expenditure, I’d ask you to reconsider. Why would you insist on devaluing expertise and skill just because someone is willing to suppress their salary from the equation to make prices work economically in your favour?

Then there are the other things to consider

So far, I’ve covered only the raw cost of goods and the hourly labour needed to wrap the dumplings. I’ve left out the math of operating a business: the fixed costs of rent, insurance, unemployment, licensing, garbage pickup, electricity, and more. And to be fair, I’m not as great at calculating this one out since I’d have to spread the costs across varied projects.

But what I can include in our consideration is the labour of preparing the ingredients and work space, and breaking down and cleaning the station after use. Even if the employees are prepping and cleaning for other work projects, we can still attribute a number to the cost.

For the purposes of this exercise, let’s assume that it takes two hours to prep the filling and clean the station thereafter, and that we are folding 800 dumpling pieces for the day.

= [(Cost of Goods) + (Folding Labour) + (Prep and cleanup labour)] / (Total Pieces)

= [($99.38) + ($15 * 4 hours) + ($15 * 2 hours)] / (800 pieces)

= ($189.50) / (800 pieces)

= 24¢

Without even considering fixed costs, we are almost at a quarter per dumpling in food and labour costs. The way that you find that most of Chinatown makes money is by selling through volume, as opposed to margin—and this illustration is indicative of how this is the case.

And if we want to get into the discussion of machine-made dumplings, I can tell you that in order to be able to operate the machine, you still need to know the fundamentals. How can you know what the output is supposed to be like if you don’t know any of the basics? Never mind that, let’s also consider that there is still a lot of manual labour involved in terms of preparing the filling and dough, pacing production, and ensuring quality assurance. The machine is a tool—it is not a replacement. As such, it merely increases the output, and does not depreciate the knowledge needed.

In short: yes, you should be paying more

We should be paying more for what we consume. Stop subscribing to the misinformed notion that certain cuisines—particularly Chinese food—should be cheap.

So, as a first step, how about you consider the price to cost ratio when you are grabbing a to-go order of dumplings, and add a few dollars to the tip bucket to help even out what you should be paying in 2021?

And as a second step, can we stop talking about how certain foods are “cheap”? Such a word has become synonymous with casting a barrier that never never allows certain foods to move at the same pace as economic inflation or to evolve in the cultural landscape. Let’s start with changing how we talk about food; if anything, food can be affordable.

Further reading

• Grub Street: “How New York’s restaurants suddenly got so expensive — and why that’s probably for the best”

• Edible Brooklyn: “During Popeyes mania, we wonder about the tried cost of a fried-chicken sandwich”

• The Verge: “As demand for bikes surged, Amazon got in the way”

• NYT: “With chop suey and loyal fans, a Montana kitchen keeps the flame burning”

• Washington Post: “Why you shouldn’t fear MSG, an unfairly maligned and worthwhile seasoning”

What forms this purported authority on authenticity? It seems, to me, that it is based on a set of stringent beliefs—ones that are, more often than not, informed solely by personal experiences. This strong and rigid commitment that some people have to authenticity is due to, what I surmise as, a strong commitment to the personal as truth. In turn, objecting against what constitutes as authentic is akin to confronting the idea that the individual’s past does not serve as universal fact.

Drawing on a recent example, there was a Yelp review that I read a few weeks ago where the reviewer cited having lived in southern China for years and therefore perceived themself as an authority on what was authentic dim sum. Their point of reference situated themselves not only in a specific geographic setting, but also within a certain period, which precisely echoes what Clarissa mentioned in her tweet above of this very notion of authenticity tying itself to an arbitrary time and place.

To get at these ideas of what I’ve found people have come to expect out of certain culinary experiences vs. what we are seeing now, I’d like for us to consider sociologist Erving Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy.

The world is literally a stage

One of the first texts that I had to read in university was Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, wherein he explains his concepts by using the imagery of theatre to illustrate the nuances of social existence and interaction.

At the core of each interaction is the actor—the central individual—and the audience. The latter is comprised of other individuals who observe the negotiations between identity and space, as well as react to the actor’s performances.

And within this ecosystem, we are presented with two settings: the front stage and backstage. The front stage is where the audience observes the actor’s performance. Aware that they are being watched, the actor performs their part, while adhering to the agreed-upon social conventions. But it is when the actor retreats backstage that they are able to shed the accepted guise and relax as their true self.

Specific to the front stage is the actor’s deployment of “impression management”. In order to influence the perception of their performance, the actor both consciously and subconsciously self-regulates and -controls what is shared and observed with the audience.

If the above sounds familiar, it’s because we all have been making some effort at self-presentation throughout our lives. There are numerous “front stages” on which we perform, such as our workplace with our coworkers or at a bar with a first date. And when we retire for the day, backstage can constitute as our own apartment or an unfiltered group chat with close friends.

Applying dramaturgy to “authenticity”

Coming back to the topic on-hand, I’d venture to say that the very idea of authenticity, as we refer to it, is rooted in: a) the actor catering to the audience’s expectations; b) the audience’s values of what ought to be being informed through these and other personal experiences; and c) continued reinforcement of a through b and vice versa.

Where Chinese food has been ever-so present in North America for the last two centuries in both urban and rural spaces, its identity, as portrayed by various actors, has been continually reinforced by the audience’s expectation of what it has been and assumption how it should continue to exist as such. But these expectations and assumptions aren’t homogeneous in the least. As we can see in Ann Hui’s Chop Suey Nation, for instance, what constitutes as Chinese food in Canada varies across provinces with regional dishes (such as “Newfoundland chow mien” and Alberta’s “Chinese pierogies”).

This existence of multiple performances and audiences particularly come to light as cross-cultural exchanges have made themselves more readily available with tourism (barring the pandemic's effect in halting on travel). Going beyond the regional influences within North American Chinese food, there is a bevy of differences in experiences when it comes to Chinese food around the globe. And so the chef as actor comes to perform on a front stage that is now host to a wider variety of audiences and expectations. In which case, there is no level of impression management that will satisfy everyone.

In addition to the performance for others, we must also keep in mind the experiences that inform the tastes of second- and third-generation chefs are so vastly different from those of the first generation. No longer is the backstage informed solely by a monolithic background, but rather, it is instead a confluence of the immigrant household and the Western experience outside of the home.

As an example of this evolving backstage, when we opened the Nolita storefront, I described the menu to friends as the dishes that we grew up eating but adding the toppings that our parents told us weren’t “traditional”. We were being naughty, as I’d like to joke. To add a condiment that blended bacon and X.O. sauce to dumplings was very true to an upbringing where my family would store bacon in the same fridge that housed bittermelon. It is to say that just because my experience with food is different than someone else’s, it doesn’t mean that mine is any less authentic. It’s simply different.

This fixation on a cultural food cannon is unnecessarily rigid. Instead of obsessing over how the food “ought to be”, go along for the ride. Think of any dining experience like a book—you’re never going to get into it if you expect the plot to always follow a certain prescription. Part of going out to eat at a restaurant is to see someone else’s point of view; sure, they are still putting on a performance but isn’t it time that they should be able to share a part of themselves with you without pre-conceived opinions?

In other news…

• Fee caps on third-party delivery platforms in NYC are now law (Pix 11)

• Congress introduced the ENTRÉE Act to add $60B to the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (Nation’s Restaurant News); per Section 2(b), this bill seeks to provide relief for the Fund without the obligations of fulfilling Priority Groups

• Excluded Workers Fund applications are expected to open this month; however, the DOL’s requirements are looking fairly restrictive (NY1)

Further reading:

• NYT: “Young Sikh Farmers in California Keep Up a Long Tradition”

• InStyle: “I'm a Psychiatrist and Even I Kept My Mental Health Meds a Secret”

• SF Gate: “SF Bay Area restaurants are still struggling. Returning customers don't see that”

• LA Times: “White residents burned this California Chinatown to the ground. An apology came 145 years later”

The SBA responded to the Independent Restaurant Coalition’s FOIA request with a data set detailing the recipients of the grant money. I would’ve also like to see the information about those whose grants were rescinded because of the priority group kerfuffle and subsequent injunction, but I’ll take what we can get. (Weirdly enough, the original link to the data set on sba.gov is now posting a 404 error EDIT: It’s back up; looks like they made some updates to the file with it being marked as “Last updated 7/12”).

Of the 370 000+ applications received, less than a third (101 004) were funded. The median award was $125 631, and the average was $282 909. The average being at least $150 000 higher than the median brings me to the next point, which is 5% of applicants received more than $1M+. But this group of 5% ended up totaling 39% of the total $28.6B fund. It’s not to say that a lot the businesses receiving more than $1M didn’t deserve it—I’m sure many do, but I do have some thoughts below on some of those who received such a lump sum.

Shall we begin?

Disclosure: I filed the applications for the businesses that I am involved with and received funds for all of them. The numbers are readily available in the data set and the business entity names are fairly self-identifying.

Where did the money go?

Mapping out the money by state, we can see that the top recipients were: California ($5.7B), New York ($3.7B), Texas ($1.7B), Illinois ($1.4B), and Florida ($1.3B). Approximately 60%–70% of the funds received in these states were by those that self-certified as minority-, women-, or veteran-owned (priority groups).

If we take a look at the number of total grant recipients who belonged in one of these categories, we can observe the following (and yes, groups can overlap; I didn’t review the data for exclusivity):

• 44% of applicants stated they were women-owned, receiving a total of $10.2B in aid, which is only 35% of the total grant money available

• 34% of applicants stated that they were minority-owned businesses and/or in economically disadvantaged areas, receiving $9B in aid, which hovers at 31.5% of the total grant money available

• 6% of applicants stated they were veterans, receiving a total of $1.7B in aid, which is ~6% of the total grant money available

It becomes apparent that not all groups are created equal, with the largest disparity between number of women-owned businesses being approved for funds vs. not being awarded a comparable amount in grant money. Minority-owned and economically disadvantaged located businesses do better in terms of closing that difference, but it is only with veteran-owned businesses that we finally see a 1:1 ratio. While it’s difficult to scrutinize this large delta without reviewing the applications and amounts requested vs. granted, I can’t help but wonder where a lot of the money ended up going.

10% of grant recipients belonged to a franchise business

To dive deeper into the numbers, we see that franchisees took home ~$2.65B of the possible $28.6B available, which is comparable to the 10% total applicants who noted themselves as a franchisee. And of those grant recipients, the top ten franchise applicants received approximately $1B in grant funds.

Even more striking about those top ten franchises? Subway franchisees dwarf the number of applications compared to other franchises (McDonald’s didn’t even crack 100 franchisee applications) by a ratio of 7:1 with the next closest franchise (Dunkin’ and Dunkin/Baskin Robbins co-brand).

Subway

• 2868 applications granted

• 72% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $362M distributed to Subway franchisees

Dunkin’ Donuts (and Baskin Robbins co-brand)

• 404 applications granted

• 78% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $90M distributed to Dunkin’ franchisees

IHOP

• 295 applications granted

• 76% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $118M distributed to IHOP franchisees

Kona Ice

• 207 applications granted

• 61% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $15.5M distributed to Kona Ice franchisees

Menchie’s

• 147 applications granted

• 66% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $18.5M distributed to Menchie’s franchisees

Denny’s

• 137 applications granted

• 64% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $79M distributed to Denny’s franchisees

Jimmy John’s

• 131 applications granted

• 44% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $29B distributed to Jimmy John’s franchisees

Golden Corral

• 125 applications granted

• 64% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $277M distributed to Golden Corral franchisees

Charleys Philly Steaks

• 112 applications granted

• 92% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $32M distributed to Charleys Philly Steaks franchisees

Moe’s Southwest Grill

• 108 applications granted

• 73% self-certified as belonging to one of the priority groups

• $22M distributed to Moe’s Southwest Grill franchisees

Even though there is an “owner” at the end of the day for a franchise business, they still have had quite the leg up in comparison to their local small business siblings. After all, franchisees benefit by building off of the established brand and receiving the coverage of continued regional and national advertising campaigns.

And with the high number of approved applicants for Subway franchisees, I’d venture a guess that the parent corporations also provided support in varying degrees for RRF applications. To contextualize the numbers, the sandwich giant had 2868 approved folks, which represents over 10% of all U.S. Subway franchise businesses (per 2019 data), whereas McDonald’s only saw 67 approved applications out its 13 175 U.S. franchise locations (per 2020 data). Smaller chains, such as Kona Ice and Menchie’s saw a large number of their franchisees receive grants as well, 16% (out of 1279 locations) and 41% (out of 358 locations) respectively, which leads me to believe that some parent companies were more willing than others to lend a hand in guiding applicants through the process.

Meanwhile in NYC…

An interesting data point this information release is the businesses that benefited the most after the injunction. What I ended up finding was that the June approvals included quite a few fine dining establishments, large caterers and venues, small business chains, and hotels (and a JFK Dunkin’ Donuts that received $10M). If it wasn’t made clear before the pandemic, it should be noted now: these businesses that command such capital and cachet are seldom operated by or have a majority shareholder that is a minority, woman, or a veteran.

To understand how much was at stake here by moving all the priority groups to the very back of the line, for the June recipients that received over $1M in grant funds, it totaled to $864M with some recognizable names:

• Greenwich Hotel, $5M (approved June 4)

• The William Vale, $5M (approved (June 25)

• Le Bernadin, $5M (approved June 4)

• Bowery Hotel, $5M (approved June 4)

• Gabriel Kreuther, $4.86M (approved June 25)

• Daily Provisions, $2.975M (approved June 4)

Granted, everyone applied at the same time in early May, but these amounts are also based on gross receipts where you can see how well-to-do these businesses are to begin with (and this does not count any licensing or other deals/businesses that the individuals may have). Where the Fund was meant to help the mom-and-pop shops, the injunction ended up dealing quite the blow and reinforced the message of who really matters in this ecosystem—those who are already at the top.

Further Reading

• Washington Post: “Stop Calling Food ‘Exotic’”

• NYT: “The New Yorker’s Go-To for Spices and So Much More”

• Punch Drink: “Crypto Cocktails have Arrived”

The commission limits are not new, as many large cities—including New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Portland—enacted laws limiting commission fees, citing the economic devastation brought on by the pandemic. However, these caps were limited in scope by the duration of the pandemic (and in NYC’s case, the duration of the pandemic plus 90 days after being able to resume 100% indoor dining). And with states lifting restrictions, there is a tremendous level of anxiety from businesses about what it means going forward. While delivery platforms saw record growth in 2020, restaurants and bars across the country have been left in the lurch—and holding onto massive debt—particularly with the Restaurant Revitalization Fund fully depleted. Thus, it becomes a no brainer, from my perspective, that cities need to review their local ordinances before they expire, and greatly affect vulnerable and recovering businesses.

Permanent fee caps in New York

Introduced and heard by the Committee on Small Business just before the long weekend, NYC Council Members Francisco Moya and Mark Gjonaj shared Int 2359-2021, which seeks to lift the disaster restriction on Local Law 2020/088. In addition to this amendment, three others were proposed and reviewed on July 1st by the Committee:

• Int 2333: as it pertains to the prohibition of delivery services arranging and listing food service establishments without their consent

• Int 2335: as it pertains to requiring transparency in the telephone numbers for food establishments listed by delivery services

• Int 2356: as it pertains to the prohibition of delivery services charging food establishment businesses for calls that do not result in a transaction

With regards to Int 2359-2021, Council Members Moya and Gjonaj make few changes to the original Local Law. The key differences are as follows:

• Statements regarding the Local Law only being in effect during declared emergencies are omitted

• Addition of the word “transaction” as it relates to credit card, so that it no longer just reads “credit card fee”, but rather, “credit card transaction fee”. In including the word “transaction”, delivery platforms are no longer able to massage the definition on what constitutes as such a fee into something more

  • Keep in mind that 2(b) states that any additional service, apart from the delivery fee, cannot exceed 5% (for a total maximum charge of 20% to restaurants), but credit card transaction fees were not included in that 5%. Thus, having a loosely phrased “credit card fee” posed as a possible loophole that delivery platforms could exploit should they wish to

  • To bolster 2(b), a definition of credit cards has been added as well

Should this amendment pass and signed into law, it would take immediate effect. At the moment, the amendment’s status is noted as “Laid in Committee”. This term means that floor action action will be postponed to the next legislative day. In other words, the vote has not yet taken place, but we’ve already had at least one hearing on the matter. Unfortunately, though, it can take some time before we see a vote. Take this example, as mentioned by City Limits, where Local Law 2019/092 was heard in January 2019, but not voted upon until four months later in April.

With the state of emergency no longer in effect as of June 24 in New York, the city’s fee caps are slated to expire on September 22nd. In other words, the clock is ticking. Restaurants cannot afford to wait much longer and risk being subjected to unreasonable commission fees if delivery platforms are not willing to work together with small businesses as equitable partners. City Council needs to intervene now and take the preventative action and protect our dining establishments by moving on this package as quickly as possible.

Edit 1: I originally tied the lifting of restrictions (June 15) to the end of state of emergency; however, Governor Cuomo officially lifted the state of emergency on June 24. I’ve updated the text as needed.

Edit 2: Council Member Gjonaj’s Chief of Staff Reginald Johnson noted that the expiration clause was meant to be written as an “and/or” trigger, as opposed to my parsing of AND, which means that 15% delivery fee commission will lift on August 17. I’ve included a copy of Local Law 2020/088’s expiration clause below with my emphasis in bold, and am letting Edit 1 stand for previous reference.

The requirements of this section apply only during the period in which a state disaster emergency has been declared by the governor of the state of New York or a state of emergency has been declared by the mayor, such declaration is in effect in the city, and all food service establishments in the city are prohibited from operating at the maximum indoor occupancy and for a period of 90 days thereafter.

Further reading

• Politico: “‘Rampant Issues’: Black Farmers are Still Left out at USDA”

• Grub Street: “Porcelain Is a New Destination for Vibrant, Energetic Cooking”

• Business Insider: “Chipotle Limits How Much Customers Can Tip Workers Delivering Online Orders. The Company Says it's to Avoid 'Human Error' and 'Fraud.’”

• Restaurant Manifesto: “The Food Media Needs to do Better”