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.”
President Donald Trump on Monday attacked a rural Virginia restaurant that refused to serve his press secretary over the weekend by criticizing its supposed lack of cleanliness.
“The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders,” Trump tweeted Monday morning. “I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!”
But perhaps those in glass restaurants shouldn’t throw stones. Compared to the Red Hen, some of Trump’s own restaurants seem like the bathroom of a dive bar the morning after a live show.
The Lexington, Virginia restaurant, which caused a Trumpworld uproar when it refused to serve White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Friday, passed its most recent health inspection with flying colors. State authorities found no violations when they visited the restaurant in February and gave the Red Hen their best possible health-risk rating.
By contrast, the conditions of restaurants at Trump’s hotels and resorts have ranged from moderately unsanitary to outright revolting.
In April, Washington, D.C. inspectors visited the Trump International Hotel and found 10 health-code violations, including raw meat stored above ready-to-eat foods and containers of flour stored next to a hand sink that lacked a splash guard. Inspectors also found that the hotel was operating a number of on-site kitchens without city permits to do so.
The hotel was given a “moderate risk” rating based on that visit.
Inspectors conducted a follow-up visit in May and found that the Trump hotel had failed to comply with instructions to correct some of those violations, including the permitting issue. It maintained the “moderate risk” category.
BLT Prime, the steakhouse at Trump’s D.C. hotel, had many of the same issues. It was also given a “moderate risk” rating in April, when inspectors recorded the same raw-meat storage issues as the hotel and a lack of signage in the kitchen instructing employees to wash their hands.
Even as inspectors were present, employees showed some fairly unsanitary handling of cookware. “An employee dropped an empty pan on the floor and then put it inside a refrigerator,” inspectors noted. “The pan was removed for cleaning upon request.”
When inspectors followed up with BLT Prime in May, they noted that the restaurant was storing raw steaks above vegetables, in violation of the D.C. health code. The violation was corrected on-site.
And yet, Trump’s D.C. hotel actually compares favorably to others in the president’s portfolio with respect to health-code troubles. The president’s Mar-a-Lago resort has been faulted with 51 health-code violations since 2013. Health inspectors have also found an additional 30 at Mar-a-Lago’s beach club.
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Trump’s Doral golf club outside Miami has fared even worse: In its main kitchen, banquet hall, café, patio grill, and bungalows, inspectors have found 524 health-code violations since 2013, including a number that resulted in fines. Among inspectors’ findings were multiple spottings of live and dead cockroaches (they noted 20-25 live ones visibly present in the main kitchen during one 2015 visit), “slimy/mold-like build-up” in coolers and freezers, and holes in kitchen walls.
During that same time, Virginia health authorities have found just three violations at the Red Hen. Last year, they observed a number of jars containing pickles and jams that had not come from an approved food processor. The restaurant said they were simply decorative, but agreed to remove them. In 2014, inspectors noted that its grits were not properly dated, and that raw beef was being stored above ready-to-eat food. A follow-up visit showed that those violations had been corrected.
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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
