“We’ve totally transitioned into basically a soup kitchen from normal restaurant operations,” Fernando said. 

[Reporter Sonia Paul guest-hosted our daily podcast and radio show, “Civic,” this week, interviewing restaurateurs and nonprofit leaders working to save small businesses while addressing hunger. Listen to the three shows on this page or subscribe to the podcast.]

1601 Bar & Kitchen is one of 189 small restaurants working with the pandemic-born nonprofit SF New Deal. Spearheaded by Jacob Bindman, the group’s director of operations, and Lenore Estrada, CEO of the pie-baking business Three Babes Bakeshop, SF New Deal is a grassroots organization that sourced seed money from philanthropy — a $1 million investment from Twitch CEO Emmett Shear — to employ restaurant workers to feed the hungry. The nonprofit serves as a direct-services mediator between restaurants and community-based organizations that have long been doing the work of feeding vulnerable populations, and it continues to add restaurants to its roster on a rolling basis.

But as the coronavirus vaccine rolls out and San Francisco’s commercial eviction moratorium extends at a piecemeal rate — it was scheduled to lift at the end of this month but has now been extended to meet the duration of California’s commercial eviction moratorium through the end of June — questions about the future of SF New Deal and similar programs, and the future of the city’s restaurant industry, are becoming louder.

Organizers in the restaurant industry, including SF New Deal, are well aware that food insecurity is a symptom of a much larger rot — poverty and systemic racism — and that the restaurant industry was in crisis before the pandemic. It is one of the largest employers in the U.S. yet pays the lowest wages out of any industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Restaurant profit margins are slim. Workers already driven out of San Francisco because of its high rents can barely afford to work in the industry.

Against this context, the restaurant industry has suffered more than any other sector in the pandemic. The National Restaurant Association found that as of Dec. 1, 2020, more than 110,000 eating and drinking places in the U.S. had closed either temporarily or for good, and that 2.5 million restaurant jobs had disappeared. In San Francisco, 112 restaurants have shuttered, according to a non-exhaustive list compiled by The Infatuation. The Small Business Administration recently announced it would roll out the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund grant program, part of Congress’s recently passed American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, within 30 days, although the exact details on when and how restaurants can apply for direct aid are still unclear.

Struggling restaurants, meanwhile, are hanging by a thread. The California restaurant industry employs about 1.6 million people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, making it one of the largest private-sector groups in the state, and sales from the California restaurant industry generated an estimated $97 billion in 2018, according to the National Restaurant Association. A recent report from San Francisco’s Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office — based on data from a number of real estate reports and rent surveys — estimates that from April to December 2020, the retail sector, excluding hotels but including restaurants and bars, may have accounted for 89% to 98% of unpaid commercial rent in San Francisco, and that the total amount of unpaid rent from all retail properties may be between $18.5 million and $39.8 million per month. The city instituted a commercial eviction moratorium in March of 2020, soon after it announced shelter-in-place orders.

The city allocated about $46 million to address COVID-19-related food insecurity, and SF New Deal is one of a few nonprofits the city is supporting in this response, said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the San Francisco Department of Disability and Aging Services. While San Francisco has an overall policy to support organizations that distribute food in the community, McSpadden said circumstances will change as more workers go back to their jobs, kids go back to school and older adults return to senior centers.

“Right now, our thought is that we will be scaling back a little bit in the next fiscal year, on some of this food support,” she said.

In addition to government contracts from the city, private donations also help to keep SF New Deal funded. This in turn allows the nonprofit to distribute anywhere from $6,000 to $8,000 a week to each participating restaurant for a minimum of 12 weeks, Bindman said.

“Our expectation is that SF New Deal alone is not enough to keep small businesses afloat,” he said. “But what we’ve heard is that for the majority of the businesses participating, it is enough to close the gap.”

That is the case for Fernando at 1601 Bar & Kitchen. Neither transitioning to takeout nor setting up outdoor dining were viable options for his business, which he said he believes is the only brick-and-mortar Sri Lankan restaurant in San Francisco. It was always a destination restaurant where patrons paid for the atmosphere on top of the cuisine. Support Fernando has received from SF New Deal is the main reason his business survived the past year, he said.

He has continued to pay all his fixed costs throughout the pandemic including rent, thanks to income from SF New Deal, and has recently requested a rent reduction from his landlord, the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. At the time of reporting, the only response he had received was essentially a copy and paste of the city’s commercial eviction moratorium, a policy that is both beneficial and frustrating, he said.

“We’re not making any money, we’re getting the money that we’re supposed to be paying now waived to some later date in the future,” Fernando said. “In the meantime, there’s no means for us to make up for that money lost.”

Fernando gestured to structural damage in the interior of the restaurant from a car ramming into it at the end of last year, which the landlord has yet to repair. He said it is obvious why so many places are closing: The simple arithmetic of what they are earning versus what they owe gives owners few revenue-positive options. 

Fernando said he would like to see food support programs like SF New Deal embedded in the larger fabric of the restaurant industry long term, and would be glad to make it a part of his business model. But that does not eliminate the stress of trying to stay in business, or worries about the potential displacement of restaurants once the commercial eviction moratorium lifts this summer, despite a number of rent repayment options San Francisco has instituted that extend beyond June 30.

That points to a burgeoning catastrophe within a catastrophe, and organizers are trying to think beyond the pandemic. While food support programs are a worthy cause, Saru Jayaraman, director of UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center and president of One Fair Wage, emphasized that they do not actually tackle the root of the issues.

“Providing grants to restaurants to feed people for free isn’t ultimately going to make them sustainable,” she said. “What is going to make them sustainable is that people in their communities, in their neighborhoods, can afford to eat out, have the ability to consume and eat out. And ultimately, that requires raising wages and increasing equity.”

Jayaraman is one of the co-founders of High Roads Kitchen, another food program initiated in the pandemic. It offers cash grants to restaurants that commit to participating in the organization’s gender and equity program and providing free meals to the community. While High Roads Kitchen currently has a limited presence in San Francisco, operating in 10 cities nationwide, it started in California. It was launched with the support of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Now we’re in conversations with the Biden administration about making it a federal program,” Jayaraman said.

As organizers try to influence the future of the industry, restaurant owners are still reeling over how the past year has reshaped their present operations. Over Hong Kong-style milk tea at Washington Bakery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, owner Chelsea Hung, who took over the restaurant from her parents, said she started observing a difference in the neighborhood back in January 2020. While more people are emerging now, the situation is hardly normal.

“We’ve noticed a huge decline in foot traffic here,” she said. “A lot of it had to do with misconceptions of the virus, a lot of xenophobia and people just avoiding Asian communities.”

Hung, who previously worked in the tech industry, said she had a much bigger appreciation for the sacrifices her parents made to build the restaurant after a roller-coaster year. She has had to lay off and rehire staff, negotiate rent, figure out delivery apps and innovate the menu to offer items people would want in a pandemic, like meal kits for popular noodle soups. SF New Deal is not the only program Washington Bakery is participating in. It is also involved with Feed + Fuel, a program run by the Chinatown Community Development Center.

“I really do hope that this program can be long term or permanent,” Hung said of SF New Deal in particular, and food-support programs more generally. She added that her restaurant also used to serve office workers who may be inclined to work from home beyond the pandemic.

“I hope that as this becomes long term, more restaurants can be involved, because so many restaurants — it’s going to take them years to recover from this,” Hung said. “We’re still currently in this situation.”

Audio segments from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen daily at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on 102.5 FM in San Francisco, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post As Pandemic Threatens Restaurants, Charities Battling Hunger Offer a Lifeline appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“The need for holiday meals and holiday food for households has doubled. That means for us that we not only fundraise during this time for the holidays and for the year, but we’re doubling what we need and doubling the ask. It definitely feels like we have been supported — people have seen our work, we’re in the community — we continue to get donations. But the longevity of serving double the community that needs food right now, there is no, sort of, end in sight. So we know that we’re going to continue to need the donations throughout this year to meet this need.”

— Tina Gonzalez

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post As Lockdowns Wear on, Food Bank Grows Services to Meet Still-High Need appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“I think there’s been a variety of responses, everything from employers who are very diligent and who have started training their workers, distributed masks, who have spaced out their workers in the field so that they’re not so close together when they’re working. There’s employers who have not even talked to their workers about COVID-19, employers who refuse to space workers farther apart. It’s really quite a wide variety.”

Gosia Wozniacka

The post Outbreaks Among Food Supply Chain Workers Reflect Crowded Conditions appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“I’ve definitely seen an increase in usage of EBT and also people who are new to the system and who are new to learning that farmers markets are also a place for them to utilize their benefits,” said Christine Farren, executive director of the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, which runs some San Francisco farmers markets.

Markets across the nation are reshaping their layouts and changing shopping procedures, while farmers, vendors and advocacy groups grapple with decreased foot traffic and at times inconsistent government guidance. Some states and cities have issued conflicting directives as to whether markets may remain open.

“I think that that’s one of the things that the markets are really suffering from is that they can’t necessarily breathe a sigh of relief when they hear that, you know, their city or their state is deeming them an essential service,” said Kelly Verel, senior director of programs and projects at the New York nonprofit Project for Public Spaces. “Markets are really key destinations in our neighborhoods. And we love that, we want that. But they are serving other benefits that are super important, especially right now, like public health, food access, local agriculture, small business entrepreneurship.”

The post Farmers Markets, as Essential Food Sources, Adapt to Pandemic appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“Those are the things that we’re trying to prepare and plan for, so we can sustain that,” said José Ramirez, executive director of St. Anthony’s. “Fortunately, St. Anthony’s has been a staple in the Tenderloin for 70 years, we’ve been a great steward of our resources.”

These costs include an increase in staff time and extra pay for those who spend at least half their time on-site, as the volunteer workforce has dropped to zero under the region’s shelter-in-place order. The group also paid for 30-night stays in hotel rooms for 22 residents of its winter shelter over age 50, the rental of hand-washing stations for those living on the street and packaging for meals which must now be taken to go rather than eaten in a communal indoor space.

The increased expenditures come at a time when fundraising is particularly difficult. An annual gala that could under normal circumstances be expected to bring in hundreds of thousands cannot be held because of the pandemic.

“It does kind of compound itself in … kind of a double whammy, you know, more expenses, and then we can’t fundraise the way we traditionally have,” Ramirez said.

Public funding has eluded the nonprofit. St. Anthony’s is renting the hand-washing stations from the same vendor the city is using to deploy stations around San Francisco, he said, but is receiving no city money to do so.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Give2SF fund, which has attracted more than $10 million in donations, is out of reach, Ramirez said, as his staff has not been able to identify a way to apply for money from that fund, though two nonprofits, Meals on Wheels and Project Open Hand, have been allocated $1 million from the fund, the San Francisco Examiner reports. Individuals and organizations cannot apply for Give2SF funds. Instead, San Francisco officials decide how to disburse the funds, using city agencies to dole them out to specific groups or individuals, said Alyssa Sewlal, communications manager for the Office of the Controller. Fund disbursements are approved by a committee that consists of the Controller, City Administrator, and Director of Emergency Management.

“We’ve had to do everything independently, fundraise privately,” Ramirez said. “So we’re just really grateful for the support of, you know, the foundations that have come to our aid, the corporate groups that have come to our aid, our board members who continue to advocate and push and, and our development team that continues to try to be creative.”

The post S.F. Nonprofit Faces Quarter-Million Monthly Cost of Coronavirus Adaptations appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“They were a relatively healthy 65-year-old person that worked in the meat department in one of the grocery stores. Now, we don’t know if they contracted the virus at their workplace or not. They were away on vacation a couple weeks prior to that. It really elevated the level of acknowledgement of the risk that our members are taking every day when they’re out there.” — Jim Araby

The post Grocery Union Reaches Deal for Workers on Front Lines of the Coronavirus Pandemic appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

In “Waging Change,” a new documentary from filmmaker Abby Ginzberg, workers explain the toll this wage structure takes on their pay, safety and families. On this episode of “Civic,” Ginzberg and Saru Jayaraman, director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley and co-founder of One Fair Wage, say the tipped minimum wage is directly linked with sexual harassment and racial discrimination in the workplace.

“Waging Change” will have its San Francisco Bay Area premiere at the Castro Theatre on Sunday, July 12, at 1 p.m. (postponed from an original date of March 22 due to coronavirus precautions).

“The idea of a minimum wage that was established in 1938 as part of the New Deal was the idea that everybody who works should not be paid less than this. And yet, even from that moment, there was exceptions for black people there and exceptions for women. And that’s where we’ve come as a country: We have these notions that somehow there are universal things that hold that nobody should be paid less, except for people that we value less.” — Saru Jayaraman

The post ‘Waging Change’ Documents Worker Movement to End Tipped Minimum Wage appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

According to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, the rule is designed to encourage self sufficiency. But California and 13 other states have filed suit against the Trump administration to block the rule, claiming that the administration failed to follow the necessary steps to implement this kind of sweeping change.

On this edition of “Civic,” hear from Dr. Hilary Seligman, an associate professor of medicine at UCSF and director of the university’s National Clinician Scholars Program, which trains clinicians as change agents for improving health care. Seligman explains how food stamps impact public health and what the impending policy shift, along with other proposed changes, might mean for food-insecure households in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

“People are forced to make really tough choices about the quality of food that they buy and the quantity of food that they buy… And we know that food of lower quality predisposes people to, really, the epidemics of our day: Obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure, etc.” — Hillary Seligman

The post As State Sues Over Impending Food Stamp Changes, How Could S.F. Be Affected? appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“It comes with the territory of the San Francisco Public Press that whatever reporting you’re doing is going to look beneath the surface and have a much deeper dive on whatever topic it is.” – Journalist Angela Woodall

The post Former Public Press Journalist Reflects on Covering S.F. Affordability Crisis appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“San Francisco has evolved into have and have nots. And for me the nots are neighbors on the street.” — Andrea Carla Michaels, the “Pizza Lady” 

The post Kindness, 1 Pizza Slice at a Time appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.