This weekend a (now former) Yelp employee, Talia Jane, wrote an open letter to her employers revealing the financial struggles brought on by her low paycheck, and criticizing the irony of the company spending millions on a food delivery app while employees “can’t afford to buy food.” The post was widely shared, and Jane was subsequently let go – a move which, predictably, Yelp Human Resources claims was not caused by the letter but which Jane herself says was a direct result.
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has since taken to Twitter to acknowledge Jane’s point that the cost of living in San Francisco is much to high, but skirt around her direct attacks. Both Stoppelman and other spokespeople have mentioned expanded entry level employment in areas where the cost of living is cheaper.
It’s likely that this event will blow over without too great of an effect on Yelp’s sales or stocks. But the viral nature of the original post reveals a distrust for the large companies like Yelp and Seamless which increasingly act as middlemen between restaurants and their guests.
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Although it seems unlikely that airline food will overcome it’s reputation any time soon, the partnership between Delta and Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group has at least shifted the conversation. In 2013, Delta began serving food from USHG’s Blue Smoke on a select few flights, and although there were a few hurdles along the way the feedback was mostly positive. Beginning March 1st, all customers on international flights in the Delta One cabin will now be able to enjoy an updated menu from Carmen Quagliata, which tosses out some of the airline food standbys like reheated, textureless pasta and instead aims to work within the limitations imposed by small spaces and packaging. This means no more chunky soups or fried garnishes, but plenty of purees and roasted vegetables.
Ravi DeRossi, the restaurateur behind Death and Co, Avant Garden, Mother of Pearl and 12 other bars and restaurants around the city, is making a serious push to turn all of his operations fully animal-free. He’ll be starting by expanding the already vegan Avant Garden into multiple spinoff concepts, as well as closing the charcuterie-focused The Bourgeois Pig and reopening it as vegan wine and tapas bar LadyBird. All of his restaurants are in for some sort of shake-up, and it seems his mixologists won’t be safe either, as cocktail and beer lists will be purged of the often ignored animal ingredients that are sometimes used in drinks.
The Nonprofit Open House New York states as their mission “promoting a greater appreciation of the city’s built environment; broadens public awareness by exposing diverse audiences to distinctive examples of architecture, engineering and design,” and what’s a more impressive feat of engineering and design than the city’s food system, which brings some of the greatest food in the world to millions every day?
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