Such hybrid restaurants are spreading to other high-cost cities, and they fit what analysts say is growing demand for more flexible dining options. But here, the extreme economics have rapidly made the model commonplace.
San Francisco’s tech riches have fed demand for restaurants — and some wealthy tech workers have decided they would also like to be partners in a restaurant, opening up more investment. But as those highly paid workers have also driven demand for scarce housing, the city has struggled to keep lower-wage workers afloat.
On July 1, the minimum wage in San Francisco will hit $15 an hour, following incremental raises from $10.74 in 2014. The city also requires employers with at least 20 workers to pay health care costs beyond the mandates of the Affordable Care Act, in addition to paid sick leave and parental leave.
Despite those benefits, many workers say they can’t afford to live here, or to stay in the industry. And partly as a result of those benefits, restaurateurs say they can’t afford the workers who remain. A dishwasher can now make $18 or $19 an hour. And because of California labor laws, even tipped workers like servers earn at least the full minimum wage, unlike their peers in most other states.
Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, estimates that when housing prices rise by 10 percent, the price of local services, including restaurants , rises by about 6 percent. (The median home price in San Francisco has doubled since 2012.)
So burgers get more expensive as houses do. But even wealthy tech workers will pay only so much to eat one. “If we were to pay what we need to pay people to make a living in San Francisco, a $10 hamburger would be a $20 hamburger, and it wouldn’t make sense anymore,” said Anjan Mitra, who owns two high-end Indian restaurants in the city, both named Dosa. “Something has to give.”
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The Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., probably wishes that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders hadn’t stopped in for dinner. All the other — unaffiliated — Red Hen restaurants would be good with that, too.
The cheese board had arrived but her entree had not when Sanders was asked to get up from her table in Lexington and, kindly, leave.
Sanders tweeted as much over the weekend, saying she was given the boot “because I work for @POTUS,” referring to President Trump. The owner of the restaurant — which is well past Charlottesville and about 190 miles from the White House — told The Washington Post that to uphold her business’s standards of honesty and compassion, Sanders had to go.
[As Border Patrol searches its buses, Greyhound is pulled into immigration uproar]
But for Twitter users, angry callers and Yelp reviewers, geography be damned. Any restaurant bearing the name Red Hen with some kind of bird silhouette for a logo was lumped in with the one that showed Sanders the door.
Let’s start a little closer to the White House, with the Red Hen in the Bloomingdale area of Washington. It’s a charming little upscale neighborhood restaurant. Same name. Also has a logo of a hen. Did not host the White House press secretary.
It tried to make that clear: On Saturday, that Red Hen tweeted that Sanders “went to the unaffiliated [Red Hen in Lexington] last night, not to our DC-based restaurant.”
That tweet received 4,400 replies from nonbelievers and supporters alike. To talk the naysayers down, the Red Hen responded to Twitter threads with the definition of “unaffiliated,” sarcastic GIFs and a reminder that businesses in the District of Columbia are prohibited from discriminating against people based on political views because they are in a federal district.
Behold, a sampling:
Businesses in DC are prohibited from discriminating against people for political affiliation because we are a federal district. We have patrons from both sides of the aisle. https://t.co/IOmNmYqoj5 pic.twitter.com/xfkff7t4B0 — The Red Hen (@RedHenDC) June 24, 2018
Or you could stop @-ing us... pic.twitter.com/9ndkll4qpe — The Red Hen (@RedHenDC) June 24, 2018
It’s almost like all of our logos are of the same animal we’re named after or something. pic.twitter.com/iFc33FQkGj — The Red Hen (@RedHenDC) June 24, 2018
Then, Yelp. One user asked whether the Red Hen in the District sells wine by the glass. Another wanted to know: “Is this restaurant related to the one in Lexington that denied service to Sarah Sanders? If so will stop by.”
One reviewer wrote, “Hey, torch bearing internet mob, THIS IS NOT THAT RED HEN. Y’all out of towners need a lesson in basic geography.”
[The first layoffs from Trump’s tariffs are here]
Another took a more diplomatic approach: “Why not stop by anyway and show your support for this establishment that is being mistaken for the one in VA.”
Alas, its owners might have welcomed the support. Instead, the place was not only pulled into a social media storm but also — in a not-so-subtle protest — egged.
Turns out Red Hen restaurants are popping up all over. To the north, another Red Hen restaurant in Swedesboro, N.J., was lambasted for denying service to someone who never ate there.
According to NJ.com, angry phone calls and Facebook posts poured in on Saturday morning as the staff was getting ready for a private event. In a Facebook post that day, the Red Hen in Swedesboro wrote that it is an independent, family-owned business that happens to share the same name as the one in Virginia.
“Kindly check your facts before you erroneously defame an innocent business on Facebook,” the post reads.
Elizabeth Pope, the restaurant’s operating manager, told NJ.com that the restaurant’s rating dropped from “4.8 stars to three-point-something.” Some callers lobbied violent threats, including, “I hope someone burns it down.” The restaurant received more than 100 calls over six hours on Saturday afternoon.
Next up: the Red Hen restaurant in Old Saybrook, Conn. Like Virginia, Connecticut was one of the original 13 colonies. But it is different from Virginia.
[The U.N. says 18.5 million Americans are in ‘extreme poverty.’ Trump’s team says just 250,000 are.]
Now, before visitors can access that Red Hen’s website, a message pops up saying the eatery has “absolutely no affiliation with any other Red Hen restaurant anywhere else.”
Especially that one.
Shelley Deproto, the owner of the Old Saybrook restaurant, told TheDay.com that 50 phone messages came in by noon on Saturday, including this ominous warning: “we’re going to get you.” Calls streamed in from across the country on Saturday once every minute and continued into Sunday.
The restaurant’s Yelp rating dropped from a 4.5 (out of 5) before Friday night to a 2, Deproto told The Day. Some people placed fake takeout orders and said the restaurant cooked old meat.
“This is our livelihood,” Deproto told The Day. “People here depend on this restaurant.”
On Monday morning, President Trump weighed in, saying the Red Hen should “focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job).”
He did not specify which Red Hen.
Read more:
Everything Trump got wrong about Red Hen, in one tweet
The owner of the Red Hen explains why she asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave
Melania Trump’s Zara jacket shocked many — but statement clothing is in vogue
If Sarah Sanders had chosen to dine out closer to the office, chances are she would not have been asked to leave, as she was recently in Virginia. That's because one's political affiliation or ideology is a protected trait in the District of Columbia. But that's not so in most of the rest of the country, including at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, which asked the White House press secretary to eat elsewhere Friday night.
Current events -- including Sanders' controversial experience and the refusal of a Colorado baker to make a cake for a same-sex wedding -- raise ethical and legal issues, many of which are handled differently, state by state.
The Sanders case is unusual if one views her as in the realm of mainstream politics, but less so if one categorizes the Trump administration as extremist, according to Brian Powell, a sociology professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. "We are in an unusual period of time, where restaurants and fast-food chains have become politicized, and where you shop does speak to politics," he told CBS MoneyWatch.
Federal law prohibits establishments serving the public to deny service to someone because of their race, color, religion or nationality, and a recent Supreme Court ruling ducked the broad issue of whether religious claims shield merchants from antidiscrimination laws. Other factors in which policies are viewed as discriminatory depends on location. Louisiana, for instance, in 2016 became to first state to add police officers to those protected by its hate-crime law.
"You can deny service for lots of reasons," said Powell, pointing to the common "no shoes, no shirt, no service" dress code many establishments impose. "You can't say, I'm not going to serve a woman, or someone older, and depending on what state you're in, you can't deny based on being a sexual minority."
Still, a large number of Americans believe a private business owner should be able to deny service to anyone, period, according to research Powell has authored. Putting medical and other necessary services aside, Americans responding to surveys overwhelmingly support the notion that a photographer, for instance, can deny offering services to a same-sex couple, even if the respondents themselves support same-sex marriage.
The mindset has little to do with religion and much to do with a free-market philosophy because a majority of Americans believe a business should be allowed to operate with little government intervention. "The overriding theme was businesspeople in the U.S. have the right to deny service. And, in turn, people have the right not to fraternize those businesses," Powell said.
However, those sentiments didn't hold when it came to big corporations. The public is opposed to letting large companies run unencumbered.
Of more than 2,000 people surveyed late last year, 61 percent said a self-employed photographer could deny service to a same-sex or interracial couple, but only 31 percent said a corporation could do the same.
"The American population doesn't buy the idea that a corporation is similar to an individual business, let alone an individual," said Powell, referring to the Supreme Court's 2014 Hobby Lobby decision. That ruling said closely held corporations hold the same rights as individuals in denying workers insurance coverage for contraception because of the business owners' religious views.
The National Restaurant Association distanced itself from the controversy that Sanders' encounter at the Red Hen sparked. "We welcome all guests," a spokesperson for the industry lobbying group said in an email, "regardless of their background or political beliefs."
