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- Next up on the list of businesses Amazon plans to disrupt: convenience stores. The online shopping giant has opened a high-tech brick-and-mortar store on the ground floor of its headquarters in Seattle. “High-tech,” in this scenario, means customers do their shopping and are automatically charged, thus eliminating annoying check-out lines. The store, officially called Amazon Go, carries prepared items, beer, wine, meal kits, and similar grocery items.
- Ando, celebrity chef David Chang’s delivery-only restaurant that has operated for a few years in NYC, is no more. The kitchen and corresponding smartphone app have been shut down, and the team is now integrating with delivery juggernaut UberEats.
- It’s getting expensive for travelers to eat in Venice, Italy. A group of visiting Japanese students was charged 1,100 euros ($1,346) for three steaks and a plate of fried fish. A local civil rights group blames the exorbitant prices on Venice Carnival, a festival that draws in tourists and their wallets.
- Hisako Roberts, co-founder of Austin barbecue institution the Salt Lick, died last week. She was 104. Roberts opened the smokehouse with her husband, Thurman, in 1967.
- New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells and Hannah Goldfield, recently installed as the New Yorker’s first dining critic, discuss what it’s like to take in meals as professional eaters.
- The United States Department of Agriculture wants to “modernize” how pork processing plants operate by cutting regulations on inspections. But don’t worry, the USDA says the new system can provide public health protection “at least equivalent” to the existing inspection system. That sound you hear just might be the ghost of Upton Sinclair sharpening his pencil.
- With the federal government shut down, thousands of employees with the Centers for Disease Control, the agency that tracks and investigates food-borne illnesses in America, are temporarily out of work.
- And finally, tragedy recently struck in Montgomery, Alabama, when a Taco Bell burned to the ground. Thankfully, no one was hurt. But mourners turned out to the site of the blaze on Sunday to pay their respects and hold a candle light vigil for the departed fast-food restaurant. RIP.
