Eater: All Posts by Vince Dixonhttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52682/favicon-32x32.png2020-05-12T11:45:00-04:00https://www.eater.com/authors/vince-dixon/rss2020-05-12T11:45:00-04:002020-05-12T11:45:00-04:00Restaurant Workers: How Do You Feel About Businesses Reopening?
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<p>Take our survey to help us understand COVID-19’s impact on restaurant work</p> <p id="sBhVOQ"><em>Se puede encontrar una versión en Español de esta historia y la encuesta </em><a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/5/12/21255303/eater-restaurant-worker-reopening-survey-spanish"><em>aquí</em></a><em>/A Spanish version of this post and survey can be found </em><a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/5/12/21255303/eater-restaurant-worker-reopening-survey-spanish"><em>here</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="YBYKjk">The COVID-19 pandemic continues to change the way restaurants operate, perhaps in ways that will stick around for years to come. The impact on workers has been paramount. Since the last week of March, more than 30 million people have filed for unemployment benefits, and the unemployment rate has risen to 4.4 percent. Restaurants have laid off or furloughed most, if not all, of their staff. Now that <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/5/7/21249357/reopening-coronavirus-phases-where-are-restaurants-open-covid-19">restaurant operators are teetering with ways to re-open</a> their businesses, many of the more-than-11 million workers who power the industry are at a crossroads. How soon will they return to work? Will it be secure? Will it be safe? </p>
<p id="tHWicJ">If you currently work in the restaurant industry or have worked in the industry in the last three months, Eater wants to know what’s next for you. As the country experiments with ways to re-open, we want to know where you see yourself fitting in the picture. Whether you’re a baker, bartender, busser, or barista, fill out this survey and share your insight. The goal is to understand how the restaurant industry is doing and where it’s headed.</p>
<p id="ESAOhp">This survey is open to all restaurant and food service workers, regardless of citizenship status. Responses are confidential. Though, if you provide permission and contact information (optional), a reporter may reach out to you with more questions.</p>
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https://www.eater.com/2020/5/12/21249558/restaurant-workers-reopening-surveyVince Dixon2020-05-12T11:45:00-04:002020-05-12T11:45:00-04:00Trabajadores de servicios de alimentos: Eater quiere saber qué opinas sobre la reapertura de la industria
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<p>Responde nuestra encuesta para ayudarnos a entender el impacto de COVID-19 en los trabajadores, y lo que opinas sobre la reapertura de restaurantes en las próximas semanas.</p> <p id="e9UZ1h"><em>An English version of this post and survey can be found </em><a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/5/12/21249558/restaurant-workers-reopening-survey"><em>here</em></a><em>/Se puede encontrar una versión en Ingl</em>é<em>s de esta historia y la encuesta </em><a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/5/12/21249558/restaurant-workers-reopening-survey"><em>aquí</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="MhMVrD">A mediados de marzo, la pandemia golpeó la industria de los restaurantes como un meteorito, deshaciendo o transformando de manera radical la manera en que operan casi todos los restaurantes del país. El impacto en los trabajadores ha sido de duro, luego de que muchos restaurantes despidieron o suspendieron de manera indefinida la labor de la mayor parte, sino todo, su personal. De los <a href="https://www.univision.com/noticias/dinero/eeuu-pierde-20-5-millones-de-trabajos-y-el-desempleo-se-dispara-a-14-7-en-abril-la-profundidad-de-la-crisis-en-graficos?mi_u=2df5267b35419eb6d6cc2a138787d0417f23212c&utm_source=sf&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digmktg_noticiasmay8&utm_term=na&utm_content=tp3">20.5 millones de empleos que oficialmente se perdieron en abril</a> —lo que ha llevado la tasa de desempleo de Estados Unidos a 14.7%, un nivel que no se veía desde la Depresión—, <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">5.9 millones pertenecían a la industria de los restaurantes</a>. </p>
<p id="iEqENY">Conforme los estados <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-52583945">empiezan poco a poco a autorizar la reapertura de comedores</a> y la industria <a href="https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2020/05/01/asientos-separados-en-las-escuelas-menus-desechables-en-restaurantes-la-propuesta-de-los-cdc-para-reabrir-en-medio-del-coronavirus/">contempla una nueva normalidad</a> de restaurantes <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/5/1/21243489/limited-capacity-could-destroy-the-restaurant-business">funcionando a mitad de su capacidad</a> y comensales nerviosos, millones de trabajadores en el servicio de los alimentos enfrentan una disyuntiva: ¿Qué tan pronto volverán, o deberían volver, a trabajar? ¿Seguirán teniendo trabajo? Si es así, ¿serán los mismos que hace tres meses? Lo que es más, ¿será seguro? </p>
<p id="6ObJ4H">Si trabajas actualmente en la industria de los restaurantes o trabajaste en ella en los últimos tres meses, Eater quiere saber cómo pinta tu futuro, y cómo te sientes sobre la industria y tu lugar en ella en las próximas semanas y meses. Ya sea que eres mesero, cocinero, anfitrión, panadero, <em>barman</em>, limpiador de mesas, carnicero o barista, por favor compártenos tus impresiones en esta encuesta.</p>
<p id="SJpoFc">Esta encuesta está abierta a todos los trabajadores de restaurantes y servicios de alimentos sin importar su estatus migratorio. Las respuestas son confidenciales, aunque si nos das información para contactarte (es opcional) y permiso, un reportero podría buscarte para hacerte más preguntas.</p>
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https://www.eater.com/2020/5/12/21255303/eater-restaurant-worker-reopening-survey-spanishVince Dixon2020-05-05T13:43:09-04:002020-05-05T13:43:09-04:00Restaurant Owners: Eater Wants to Know What’s Next for Your Business
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<p>Take our survey to help us understand COVID-19’s impact on your restaurants and food businesses — now and in the near future</p> <p id="FMO2Vd">As America slowly stumbles back onto its feet amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the restaurant industry is <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2020/4/13/21216441/nyc-restaurant-coronavirus-reopening-permanent-closure">having a particularly tough time</a> figuring out how to bounce back. Reports of small restaurant owners being <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/4/23/21233286/independent-restaurant-coalition-paycheck-protection-program-loans-shake-shack-sweetgreen">overlooked for federal assistance</a> while large chains take up the bulk of the funding, restaurants <a href="https://la.eater.com/2020/4/27/21238554/morning-briefing-restaurant-news-los-angeles-basque-noriega-bakersfield-closing-covid">shutting down for good</a>, and some restauranteurs <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/4/21/21229973/what-restaurants-need-to-survive-reopening-covid-19-stimulus-ppp-failure">unsure of what their businesses will look like</a> going forward have been common anecdotes during this period. But successfully rebuilding the economy might hinge on successfully reviving the restaurant industry, which employs more than 11 million workers and almost 7 percent of the American workforce.</p>
<p id="pcTz8g">If you’re a restaurant owner, Eater wants to understand the state of the restaurant industry from your perspective. How soon can you re-open? Will you have enough customers to remain open? How much longer can restaurants remain closed or operating on takeout/delivery only models? If you’re an owner of a restaurant or food business take this survey and share your experience.</p>
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https://www.eater.com/2020/5/5/21242050/eater-survey-restaurants-bars-industry-coronavirus-impact-covid-19Vince Dixon2020-04-22T12:55:46-04:002020-04-22T12:55:46-04:00Survey Says: Restaurants Won’t Be Ready to Open With Rest of the Country
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<p>New data from restaurant groups and organizations shows a stark future for the hospitality industry</p> <p id="FqAt8w">As governments start planning ways to re-open the COVID-19-stricken economy, in some cases <a href="https://atlanta.eater.com/2020/4/20/21228633/atlanta-georgia-restaurants-resume-dining-room-service-april-27-2020-covid19">as soon as next week</a>, several surveys show that independent restaurants probably won’t be ready to open with the rest of the country — at least not <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/4/21/21229973/what-restaurants-need-to-survive-reopening-covid-19-stimulus-ppp-failure">without a profound increase in aid and more realistic goals</a>. Despite a $2 trillion-plus federal stimulus program, known as the <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2020/3/26/21193579/coronavirus-restaurants-stimulus-package-impact-new-york">Paycheck Protection Program</a> (PPP), <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/3/17/21182293/coronavirus-relief-funds-restaurants-food-service-workers">nationwide fundraising efforts</a>, and an additional <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/us/politics/congress-business-relief-ppp.html">injection of capital for small-business loans</a>, an increasing number of restaurant owners say that even in two months they won’t have the staff, customers, or finances needed to stay open long term. </p>
<p id="tVSN91">Recent surveys conducted by the <a href="https://restaurant.org/Articles/News/Restaurant-sales-and-job-losses-are-widespread">National Restaurant Association</a>, a partnership between the <a href="https://jbf-media.s3.amazonaws.com/production/pressreleases/IRC%20Press%20Release%20JBF%20Survey.pdf">James Beard Foundation and the Independent Restaurant Coalition</a>, and the <a href="https://www.brewersassociation.org/insights/brewery-sales-dropping-sharply-many-set-to-close/">Brewers Association</a> show that COVID-19 has not only been bad for business the past month, but despite federal aid, will continue to eat away at restaurant operators’ bottom line for months and months to come. Here are some of the highlights:</p>
<h2 id="JD59Uv">Job losses in the industry:</h2>
<p id="tuXStN">• <strong>8 million restaurant industry employees</strong> have been laid off or furloughed since the beginning of the outbreak. <em>(National Restaurant Association)</em></p>
<p id="ZHbmLj">• Restaurants<strong> laid off, on average, 91 percent of their staff</strong> (this includes restaurants that have completely closed). <em>(James Beard and Independent Restaurant Coalition)</em></p>
<p id="HMDXJt">• <strong>61 percent of restaurant operators </strong>don’t think existing federal relief will prevent more layoffs. <em>(National Restaurant Association)</em></p>
<p id="26fVrs">• Most brewers have <strong>laid off at least 80 to 90 percent of staff</strong>. (<em>Brewers Association)</em></p>
<p id="dwyTNI">• At least<strong> 16 percent of operators said that rehiring would be one of the biggest challenges</strong> when they open again, especially if unemployment benefits seem more secure than coming back to work at doomed businesses. <em>(James Beard and Independent Restaurant Coalition)</em></p>
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<h2 id="ymQV5h">Sales losses:</h2>
<p id="ZPMCRb">• Breweries have<strong> lost more than 70 percent of sales</strong>. (<em>Brewers Association)</em></p>
<p id="reI4WR">• Businesses in the coffee and snack segment reported<strong> losing 73 percent in sales during the first 10 days of April</strong>. <em>(National Restaurant Association)</em></p>
<p id="yTiZVE">• Only <strong>20 percent</strong> of restaurants in cities affected by mandatory restaurant closures are certain that delivery and takeout can sustain business until normal operation resumes. <em>(James Beard and Independent Restaurant Coalition)</em></p>
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<h2 id="SSK4zp">Loans woes and debt:</h2>
<p id="CmtQOg">• <strong>80 percent </strong>of restaurant owners applied for small business loans through the PPP. At least <strong>57 percent </strong>have applied for small business grants and<strong> 44 percent </strong>have applied for small business loans. <em>(James Beard and Independent Restaurant Coalition)</em></p>
<p id="mlT1wU">• However, recent data from the Small Business Administration revealed that <strong>44 percent of the $349 billion PPP loans went to only 2 percent of recipients</strong>. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/4/20/21227846/shake-shack-returns-ppp-loan-federal-funding-covid-restaurants">many large restaurant chains have borrowed</a> multi-million-dollar funds up to a maximum of $10 million, taking advantage of a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-restaurant-recovery-plan-is-built-on-fast-food-chains-2020-4">loophole</a> that allows larger businesses with <strong>fewer than 500 employees per location</strong> to apply for the stimulus loans. In some cases the loans were more than <a href="https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/while-small-operations-struggle-chains-land-ppp-loans">twice as large as payrolls</a>. </p>
<p id="LUvEh8">• <strong>56 percent </strong>of independent restaurants have at least $50,000 in new debt as a result of COVID-19. <em>(James Beard and Independent Restaurant Coalition)</em></p>
<p id="AYV9X2">• <strong>65 percent </strong>of respondents to the Beard survey were women and <strong>67 percent were people of color</strong>. However, federal efforts to rebuild the restaurant industry appear unwilling to acknowledge the industry’s diversity. Not only have loopholes allowed large chains to take up most of the funds, the fact that President Trump’s Economic Support Council (a group chosen to advise on ways to reopen businesses) is notably <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/4/16/21223653/white-house-economic-council-restaurants-trump-thomas-keller-jean-georges-major-chains">almost exclusively white men who lead large chains and fine dining establishments</a> — is particularly disconcerting to operators. </p>
<p id="XPztAh">The nation is (perhaps too) optimistically pushing forward with plans to restore life and business back to normalcy. Some <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/health/coronavirus-america-future.html">experts are uncertain about whether the country is ready</a> to re-open; California health officials warned residents that dining out at restaurants <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/4/17/21224960/reopened-restaurants-face-new-reality-after-coronavirus">won’t feel the same for a long time</a>. Many restaurants will <a href="https://atlanta.eater.com/2020/4/21/21229896/atlanta-restaurants-not-opening-april-27-dining-room-service-covid19">remain closed</a>, even as others open up. The ones that manage to open will have strict protocols, <a href="https://www.eater.com/2020/4/21/21229650/what-eating-out-might-look-like-when-restaurants-reopen-coronavirus-impact">like mandating mask-wearing when inside or taking diner temperatures before seating</a>. And until a vaccine is developed, <a href="https://london.eater.com/2020/4/21/21228609/coronavirus-restaurants-lockdown-social-distancing-eating-out">there remains the risk of new outbreaks, and lockdowns to follow</a>. If the surveys are any indication, it’s hard to say which restaurants, if any, will be capable of surviving that again.</p>
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https://www.eater.com/2020/4/22/21229627/restaurants-covid-19-survey-data-job-losses-8-million-layoffsVince Dixon2019-03-13T11:21:51-04:002019-03-13T11:21:51-04:00Maybe Everyone Should Blow Out Their Birthday Candles Like Mitt Romney
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<p>What if he’s not weird and you’re just gross? </p> <div id="lvJVMl">
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">My team surprised me with a cake made out of my favorite snack—twinkies! Looking forward to all this year has in store. <a href="https://t.co/lQfyIrQ9Qe">pic.twitter.com/lQfyIrQ9Qe</a></p>— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) <a href="https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1105455525074997249?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 12, 2019</a>
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<p id="dtL5bw">The other day, Utah senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney <a href="https://www.eater.com/2019/3/12/18261660/mitt-romney-twinkie-birthday-cake-candle-blowing">tweeted a video of his staff</a> presenting him with a homemade cake, a Stonehenge-like array of Twinkies, for his 72nd birthday. But instead of leaning over the cake to blow out the candles with a dramatic huff and puff, like most people, Romney daintily <a href="https://www.eater.com/2019/3/12/18261660/mitt-romney-twinkie-birthday-cake-candle-blowing">plucked each candle out of the Twinkiehenge and blew them out</a>, one by one. I can relate: Growing up, members of my family didn’t let<strong> </strong>children blow out the candles at birthday parties; instead, the adults dipped each one in a bowl of water.</p>
<p id="0PTKDD">People jumped at the chance to mock the senator’s “bizarre” candle extinguishing method, calling him awkward and even “<a href="https://twitter.com/BradfordPearson/status/1105464669353971712">deeply weird</a>.” But Romney’s candle-blowing technique is not all that strange — just more sanitary, if science, and common sense, are considered. <a href="http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jfr/article/view/67217">A 2017 Clemson University study</a>, published in the <em>Journal of Food Research</em>, showed that blowing out candles the standard way, over a birthday cake, increased bacterial levels on the cake by some 1,400 percent. It concluded: “Due to the transfer of oral bacteria to icing by blowing out birthday candles, the transfer of bacteria and other microorganisms from the respiratory tract of a person blowing out candles to food consumed by others is likely.” In other words, you’re almost definitely swallowing tiny globules of the birthday haver’s spit and whatever else is mixed with it. </p>
<p id="s6ZGTr">The standard method for blowing out candles is the weird ritual here, blessing a birthday cake with the dispersion of hot slobber, spreading who-knows-what microorganisms — influenza and the common cold are commonly spread by such fluid droplets — to family, friends, and frenemies alike. Senator Romney might have been caught on tape doing some inappropriate things — remember <a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/sep/18/mitt-romney/romney-says-47-percent-americans-pay-no-income-tax/">the 47 percent comment</a>? — but how he snuffs out his birthday candles is not one of them. </p>
<p id="14qfVS">Maybe I’m biased: The germophobe in me has always shuddered at the tradition of people blowing all over food before handing it out. Birthday cakes aside, when food appears at the office, I’m the person who resorts to unorthodox techniques to avoid touching the bits I’m not eating, using napkins to rip apart pizza slices, or forks to divvy up unwieldy pastries. When I see co-workers ripping, pulling, breaking, and adjusting communal food, I take a piece from the other side or lose my appetite altogether. At parties, I shift the bowl of chips around before taking one from the bottom (with a napkin, of course). And yes, I’ve been called out for it. </p>
<p id="9WedDi">The social sanctioning of people who deviate from social norms, even with good reason, isn’t a surprise. Food rituals have significance in social bonding and relationships; in the case of birthday cakes, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/blowing-out-birthday-candles-makes-the-cake-taste-better-17365911/"><em>Smithsonian</em> magazine</a> reported that the practice of blowing out the candles makes people enjoy the cake more, with studies showing that the ritual creates a special moment that gives people a warm and fuzzy feeling — which, it turns out, might just be the signs of a fever coming on.</p>
<p id="lqqLK4"><small><em>Vince Dixon is Eater’s senior data visualization reporter.</em></small></p>
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https://www.eater.com/2019/3/13/18263919/mitt-romney-birthday-candles-germsVince Dixon2018-12-28T09:02:08-05:002018-12-28T09:02:08-05:00The Year We Remembered That Restaurants Are Political Spaces Too
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<p>The past year has been an ongoing reminder that restaurants have long been platforms for civil unrest, social justice, and activism</p> <p id="4MHnPF">It was supposed to be a quiet work dinner on a hot June evening in Washington, D.C. The United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and an unidentified companion chose to meet in a dark corner in the back of MXDC Cocina Mexicana, a scene-y Mexican restaurant and bar run by celebrity chef Todd English, just two blocks from the White House. Their small booth seemed discreet enough as not to draw too much attention or foot traffic. But someone in the restaurant recognized the secretary and sent a quick text to a friend, a fellow political activist. </p>
<p id="cB79vX">A few minutes later, a group of about 15 people began live streaming as they marched into the restaurant and up to Nielsen’s table. “Secretary Nielsen, how dare you spend your evening eating dinner as you’re complicit in the separation and deportation of 10,000 children separated from their parents,” a member in the mob shouted as Nielsen and her dinner mate tried their best to ignore the barking. “If kids don’t eat in peace, you don’t eat in peace,” the group chanted.</p>
<p id="PAcuJG">Two security agents were able to stand in between Nielsen and the angry group — organized by the Metro D.C. Democratic Socialists of America — which pointed out to the other diners the irony of Nielsen, the executor of the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family-separation-and-zero-tolerance-at-the-border">Trump Administration’s newly enacted zero-tolerance border policy</a>, eating in a Mexican restaurant while thousands of Latin American migrant children were sleeping in cage-like compartments, separated indefinitely from their parents. “Shame!” <a href="https://dc.eater.com/2018/6/20/17482866/kirstjen-nielsen-immigration-protesters-mxdc">they chanted</a>.</p>
<p id="p3K9En">Nielsen’s public shaming wasn’t the first or last time in 2018 that restaurants served as the backdrop for a political showdown. A few days earlier, Stephen Miller, senior policy advisor to the president and reportedly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/politics/family-separation-trump.html">instrumental to the development of the controversial zero-tolerance policy</a>, had also been confronted at a Mexican restaurant and called a “fascist.” In July, a bartender at a sushi shop in D.C. reportedly <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/7/9/17548194/stephen-miller-trump-adviser-sushi-run">followed Miller on his way outside, shouting profanities</a>. Senate Majority Leader <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/10/22/18008498/mitch-mcconnell-protesters-louisville-restaurant">Mitch McConnell was dining in a Cuban restaurant</a> in Louisville when a man allegedly grabbed the Kentucky senator’s doggie bag and tossed it outside while shouting at him about his stance on Social Security and healthcare. Texas senator <a href="https://dc.eater.com/2018/9/25/17898096/ted-cruz-protesters-fiola">Ted Cruz was harassed</a> out of a swanky Italian spot in D.C. for his support of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who had been accused of sexually assaulting psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford when they were teenagers in the 1980s. </p>
<p id="XYZLvj">The confrontations sparked a <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/25/17500988/sarah-sanders-red-hen-civility">debate about civility</a>. California Representative Maxine Waters <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/maxine-waters-warns-cabinet-on-street-confrontation_us_5b305621e4b0040e27447208">told supporters</a>, “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Critics, meanwhile, called the backlash “uncivil,” arguing that restaurants were no place for rage-filled shouting matches. David Axelrod, former chief campaign strategist and senior advisor for Barack Obama, <a href="https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1010917905586970625">argued</a> that the hostility only served to further divide the country. The <em>Washington Post</em> editorial board, in a piece titled, “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/let-the-trump-team-eat-in-peace/2018/06/24/46882e16-779a-11e8-80be-6d32e182a3bc_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.fba2c9954efc">Let the Trump team eat in peace</a>,” described the confrontations as political feelings spilling over into the “private sphere,” saying “we understand the strength of the feelings, but we don’t think the spilling is a healthy development.” </p>
<p id="MWTz76">But restaurants have long been platforms for civil unrest, for social justice, and for activism — a fact that has been obscured in the fog of recent history. In the early 1900s, <a href="https://www.racked.com/2018/2/9/16951116/department-stores-women-independence">feminists forced their way into restaurants,</a> demanding that they be seated in the main dining rooms, to protest that <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2015/03/women-restaurants-united-states-history/">many American restaurants would not allow women to dine during evening hours</a> without the company of a man. (Many restaurants at the time relegated women to special dining rooms called the Ladies’ Ordinary.) The fight to be seated in the same spaces as men, which extended to court battles, coincided with the women’s suffrage movement and women’s liberation movement.</p>
<p id="DlM2th">In the South, for the majority of the twentieth century, a culture of Jim Crow segregation kept people of color from dining in the same establishments or areas as white people. In 1960, during the civil rights movement, four black college students decided to push back by holding a “sit-in” at a lunch counter in a Woolworth retail store in Greensboro North Carolina. Per policy, the counter staff denied service to the group, but the students refused to leave. They returned each day with more volunteers; by the fourth day, 300 supporters had joined them. News coverage of the protests spread, spawning sit-ins at diners, restaurants, and other segregated businesses throughout the South. In some cases, mobs of white segregationists violently confronted the activists. The resulting images of protesters being doused with condiments, hot coffee, and other beverages <a href="https://youtu.be/mT7xgLIYhaI?t=236">rattled the country</a>. Black customers began boycotting segregated businesses until many places felt financially compelled to end their discriminatory policies. </p>
<p id="C1lu0V">Queer people living in mid-century America used a similar tactic to challenge institutional homophobia. In New York City, vague laws permitted restaurant and bar owners to refuse service to “disorderly” people. At the time, living openly as a gay man or woman was considered “disorderly,” in effect permitting restaurants and bars to discriminate against gay and lesbian patrons; establishments that welcomed LGBTQ clientele, on the other hand, were subject to constant police scrutiny. In 1966, a gay rights group called the Mattachine Society <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/nyregion/before-the-stonewall-riots-there-was-the-sip-in.html">held a sip-in</a> at <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2016/3/23/11294634/julius-bar-landmark">Julius, a Greenwich Village</a> restaurant after they were refused service. News of the protest spread, prompting the New York City Human Rights Commission to clarify in court that bars and restaurants could not in fact use the New York State Liquor Authority laws on serving “disorderly” people to discriminate against gay patrons. Three years later, police raids at the Stonewall Inn, a bar a block away from Julius, sparked riots that would be a milestone in the fight for gay rights.</p>
<p id="CRnaKb">These historic events took place in restaurants because, while privately owned, they are public spaces — in particular, they function as communal sites outside of home or work, making them a natural stage for the expression of the most deeply rooted tensions in public life. In April, a <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/4/16/17242414/starbucks-arrest-protest-philadelphia">barista at a Philadelphia Starbucks called police on two black men</a> who were having a business meeting at the store. A video of the encounter between the men and the police sparked a national conversation about <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/4/27/17263584/starbucks-arrests-third-place">black people constantly being asked to prove</a> that they have the right to be in a space. Shortly afterward, countless videos of black people being questioned about their presence in various places, from universities to gyms, went viral, exposing the vast gulf between ideals about public spaces in America and the reality that many face when they simply try to exist in them. </p>
<p id="vklYDH">Starbucks, for instance, <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/9/10/17819404/starbucks-crying-in-public">expressly declares its commitment to being a “third place”</a> where customers are encouraged to not only buy and drink coffee, but stay and get comfortable, socialize, maybe even <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/9/10/17819404/starbucks-crying-in-public">sit and cry</a>. The company’s <a href="https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information">website even states</a> that “It’s not unusual to see people coming to Starbucks to chat, meet up or even work. We’re a neighborhood gathering place, a part of the daily routine — and we couldn’t be happier about it.” But the workers charged with putting it into practice have to reconcile that lofty concept with their own biases and the imperfect social structures that construct them — which is how two black men using a Starbucks location as intended can be kicked out by police, while everyone else is left alone. </p>
<p id="aIfuGl">Owning a business ultimately means wielding power, and wielding power often means taking a political stance or making a statement, for better or for worse. Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the United States government, owned a tavern outside Washington D.C. that was well-known for catering to a largely Confederate clientele. It’s where she helped John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators hide ammunition and other tools they needed to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. More than 150 years later, members of the Proud Boys, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys">white nationalists hate group</a>, met up at a Los Angeles bar one night in July. When word got out and <a href="https://la.eater.com/2018/7/16/17573876/proud-boys-protest-police-fight-the-griffin-atwater-village-news">protesters arrived to confront the Proud Boys</a>, some employees at the bar seemed to defend the group, with one bouncer allegedly saying, “the only color I see is green” (implying that as long as the men were paying, they were welcome). Police were called as the confrontation intensified, prompting them to shut the bar down for a couple days.</p>
<p id="OEciUa">Restaurant owners can also attempt to avoid overtly political issues, but sometimes activists or the government give them no choice. Under a commitment to boost immigration enforcement, ICE conducted four times the number of worksite enforcement raids this fiscal year, according to the agency’s <a href="https://www.ice.gov/features/worksite-enforcement">2018 fiscal year report</a>, and <a href="http://www.fox5ny.com/news/suburban-restaurants-close-after-surprise-raids-by-ice-agents">restaurants remain a prime target</a>, with 12 percent of the food preparation work force consisting of undocumented immigrants, the <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2018/11/27/unauthorized-immigration-estimate-appendix-c-additional-tables/ph_2018-11-27_unauthorized-immigration-estimate_7-08/">latest statistics from Pew Research Center show</a>. In response, some restaurants have been <a href="https://twincities.eater.com/2018/8/14/17688804/st-agnes-bakery-ice-immigration-closure">forced to close</a> or lay off employees. While some restaurants owners have tried to protect workers, refusing to let ICE agents search their kitchens for individuals, many comply, leading to <a href="https://la.eater.com/2018/2/21/17037134/ice-immigration-agents-the-grove-los-angeles-maggianos">detainments and arrests</a>. In New York City, activists retaliated against a local bakery for complying with ICE audits and firing employees who couldn’t provide papers; top New York restaurants that used the bakery as a supplier, like Le Bernardin, <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2018/2/21/17012296/tom-cat-immigrant-firings-ice-raid-protests-nyc">got caught in the crossfire</a>, and were pressured to cut ties with the bakery by protests.</p>
<p id="uOwh2B">Political clashes in public space are ultimately unavoidable, and restaurants may be America’s quintessential public spaces. While the clashes of the last year may appear “uncivil” and alarming at first, moments like these have historically been springboards for a better — and more civil — future. As the country remains politically divided going into the next year, restaurants will continue to bring together Americans with different beliefs, values, and ideologies, putting them in the position of confronting these issues again and again and again, for better or for worse. </p>
<p id="tJMHRm"><small><em>Vince Dixon is Eater’s senior data visualization reporter.</em></small></p>
<p id="LPMiJd">• <a href="https://eater.com/year-in-eater">All Year in Eater Coverage</a> [E]</p>
<aside id="s9UmxU"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"eater"}'></div></aside>
https://www.eater.com/2018/12/28/18157209/restaurants-politics-civility-kirstjen-nielsen-starbucksVince Dixon2018-10-29T09:00:29-04:002018-10-29T09:00:29-04:00Heaven Was a Place in Harlem
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<img alt="Father Divine Wife" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Qn5Hc2PR7C38NXzn95SNhRBrQ7w=/0x150:2530x2048/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/61878699/fd-wife.0.1540314015.jpg" />
<figcaption>Father Divine (C) speaking at a banquet September 01, 1953 | Photo by Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The radical tableside evangelism of Father Divine — equal parts holy man, charlatan, civil rights leader, and wildly successful restaurateur</p> <p id="A7GOQb">The quiet town of Sayville, New York, had its world turned upside down in October 1919, when a mysterious couple purchased a large house on Macon Street. The buyers, the first African-American homeowners in the town, turned out to be spiritual leaders who called themselves Father and Mother Divine. Large groups of people — racially diverse, but mostly women — could be seen coming in and out of the home for dinner, inspiring salacious rumors in the majority-white Long Island town. The so-called “Holy Communion Banquets” doubled as worship services, where attendees would shout and sing praises to Father Divine, who they thought was God. Neighbors, on the other hand, thought he was a problem.</p>
<p id="cGidH1">The Sayville community spent nearly four years trying, but failing, to oust Divine and his rowdy flock. Finally, during one of Divine’s worship banquets in November 1931, police raided his home and arrested him, along with 30 of his followers, on noise and nuisance charges.</p>
<p id="FmRihv">The case was brought to Justice Lewis J. Smith, who sentenced Divine to a year in prison. But four days after the sentencing, the 55-year-old judge died of a sudden heart attack. When journalists asked for Divine’s reaction, his brazen response made headlines, and helped turn the cult leader into a media phenomenon: “I hated to do it,” he reportedly said.</p>
<p id="mvu8AY">Divine appealed the late Judge Smith’s sentence and won; the appellate court overturned the conviction and he was released from jail. His followers had, in their eyes, just witnessed proof of their leader’s divine power. The frenzy over the judge’s death and Divine’s release was covered in newspapers from New York to Baltimore, and his congregation, the International Peace Mission, leapt into the public consciousness.</p>
<p id="HAgQ5D">For decades to come, Divine and the Peace Mission were at the center of controversies, contradictions, and ironies. Divine was one of the best-known spiritual figures of his time, but he had eccentric beliefs and a mysterious past, and many considered him little more than a kook. He was accused of breaking up families to increase his following, yet Divine and the Peace Mission also opened a network of hotels, farms, grocery stores, and restaurants that fed thousands of ordinary Americans throughout the Great Depression. The movement peaked during an era of Ku Klux Klan lynchings and Jim Crow segregation in the South, yet Divine’s numerous followers, black and white, worshipped him as a god. Divine refused to acknowledge the notion of race, but <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516589&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F192176768&referrer=eater.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eater.com%2Fa%2Ffather-divine" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><strong>historians have argued</strong></a> that his vocal opposition to segregation made him a link between Marcus Garvey and Martin Luther King Jr. Father Divine was equal parts holy man, charlatan, civil rights leader, and wildly successful restaurateur. The key to his movement’s influence and longevity could be found in the bit that started it all — food.</p>
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<img alt="Father Divine Followers" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AEmmSLu9aFG2fQkxAV3p8ClCglQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10703547/fd-followers.0.jpg">
<cite>Getty/ Brettman/ Contributor</cite>
<figcaption>Father Divine followers congregate at a Peace Mission location in New York City </figcaption>
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<p id="1Dmw9k">During the International Peace Mission’s heyday — beginning around 1932 and lasting for the better part of three decades — the group’s membership base is conservatively estimated to have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. (It was against Peace Mission policy to formally track membership figures, so concrete numbers are nonexistent.) Articles from the 1930s counted far-flung branches of Divine’s movement in Australia, Switzerland, and Panama. But the movement was strongest in Harlem and then in Philadelphia, where its headquarters have been based since the early 1940s.</p>
<p id="Lam2QN">Wherever the Peace Mission could be found, so could the Holy Communion Banquets. Hundreds — sometimes thousands — of members and curious visitors packed ballrooms and dining halls at Peace Mission locations to feast while listening to Divine’s speeches, either live or via audio recording. When Divine was present, he’d make a grand entrance with his wife, Mother Divine, before taking his place at the head of the table. (Divine married twice, first in the 1910s, to a follower, Peninnah, although her legal name and the exact date of their union is unknown. After her death in 1943, Divine married another follower, Edna Rose Ritchings. Within the movement, both were known as Mother Divine.) As dishes like candied sweet potatoes, buttered baby carrots, and seafood platters made their way down the table, he’d “bless” each one by shoving a serving spoon in it and passing the plates along to singing crowds. It was, by design, pure spectacle.</p>
<p id="vH9Tzr">Food and feasts have long served as connection points for religious movements, which associate feeding the needy with good works that find favor with God. The Loving Hut vegan restaurant chain is owned by Vietnamese spiritual guru Ching Hai, who preaches a form of meditation called <em>Quan Yin</em>. Hare Krishna temples open their in-house <a href="https://www.eater.com/2016/8/4/12364764/hare-krishna-restaurants-vegetarian"><strong>vegetarian cafes</strong></a> for free public “love feasts” every Sunday. In the New Testament, Jesus miraculously feeds 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. The Eucharist, the ritual at the center of the Catholic mass, is based on the story of Jesus’s “Last Supper.” The Passover Seder in Judaism includes the invocation, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”</p>
<p id="O7UlPY">The Peace Mission’s banquets served as a riff on the Eucharist and Christian communion, but the group also used food as a form of evangelism. For Divine and the Peace Mission — like many religious movements before them — the stomach was the route to salvation. Amid the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, Jim Crow segregation in the South, and de facto segregation in the North, Peace Mission members ate for free and in abundance at the banquets. Peace Mission followers argued that the bounty was not merely a gesture of Divine’s generosity, but a tangible gift from the man they called God. Rejecting the mainstream Christian “heaven in the sky” belief, the Peace Mission argued that heaven was accessible here on Earth, and Divine’s bounty was the literal proof in the pudding, according to Sylvester Johnson, director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Humanities and an expert in African-American religious history. “They used the banquets as evidence that the Mission was bringing salvation,” Johnson said. “That salvation was for the here and now and not just something that you had to get after you die.”</p>
<p id="UBFeG2">The banquets became a cornerstone in the popular movement and wound up serving as the settings for many of the group’s highest-profile moments. It was during a Peace Mission banquet in June 1971, six years after Divine’s death, that Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple cult, and 200 of his followers dined with members of the Peace Mission. During the dinner, Jones stood up and declared that he was Father Divine’s reincarnation and would be taking over the Mission. Divine’s widow, the second Mother Divine, expelled Jones and his followers from the banquet, then banned him from the Peace Mission outright. Seven years later, Jones orchestrated the infamous Jonestown Massacre, the murder-suicide of more than 900 of his followers using a mix of cyanide and other poisons dissolved into grape Flavor Aid punch.</p>
<p id="tuwnU3">The banquets were also the source of taboo-defying social gatherings and fellowship between races that prior to the civil rights movement could be considered nothing short of revolutionary, according to Johnson. “Here is a multiracial movement that is led by what outsiders would view as a black man,” Johnson said, noting that people within the movement spurned the notion of race. “He was leading this movement in which people have financial security. They had food security, they had housing security — during the Great Depression, in the city. That’s striking.”</p>
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<img alt="Father Divine Diners" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/inpv4wlEEdj5IK-h9lhc8zBexnQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10703493/fd-diners.0.jpg">
<cite>Getty/ Bettmann / Contributor</cite>
<figcaption>A large group sits around a dining table with Father Divine and his first wife, Peninnah, also known as Mother Divine, in undated photo </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="FdxQSp">No one knows exactly when or where Father Divine was born, or even what his real name was; he presented himself as having simply manifested from heaven. When asked for his age, he’d say he didn’t know. Historians have surmised that Divine was born in poverty around 1879 in Rockville, Maryland, and that he was named George Baker — possibly after his father, though in other accounts his father’s name may have been Joseph Baker. Throughout his life in the public sphere, Divine declined to confirm these details, claiming that “God has no mother.” What scholars know is that around 1912, he began travelling and preaching in the South, gradually refining his god-like persona. He experimented with various names that depicted him as holy figure, including “The Messenger,” Major J. Devine, and Major Jealous Divine (alluding to the jealousy of the biblical God), before finally settling on Father Divine.</p>
<p id="bg0VYN">The weekly worship banquets became enshrined as the focal point of Divine’s movement, with Divine and his wife lavishing food upon their 30 or so followers. In <em>New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration</em>, Princeton University religion scholar Judith Weisenfeld writes that the couple also ran an employment agency from the home to help their members find jobs, housing, and food. The congregants showed their appreciation by singing it to Divine. By the early 1930s, these praise gatherings had grown popular and loud enough to create the noise disturbances that led to Divine’s arrest, conviction, and the remark about striking dead the judge who’d sentenced him. After Divine’s conviction was overturned, he became famous. “It allowed the media to publicize his claims,” Johnson said, adding that even though the media dismissed Divine’s more unusual beliefs, “controversy sells.”</p>
<p id="BnPee4">Emboldened by the growing interest, Divine moved his headquarters to Harlem in 1933. The Peace Mission’s arrival in New York City dovetailed with the waning years of the Harlem Renaissance and the ongoing Great Migration of millions of black Americans from the rural South to cities in the North, Midwest, and West. This timing proved fruitful for Divine and his burgeoning movement. Urban black communities were especially open to experimenting with religious identity, according to Weisenfeld, as many people rejected traditional forms of Christianity that had been passed on through slavery. Instead, they sought Afrocentric forms of worship and turned to black religions like Divine’s International Peace Mission, the Nation of Islam, and other groups such as the Moorish Science Temple, the Shakers, and the Ethiopian Hebrews.</p>
<p id="WxG9Vg">The Peace Mission presented itself as a form of evangelical Christianity. It practiced belief in the Christian Bible and its core teachings: that Jesus Christ died for all people and that everyone should live moral and righteous lives. Their beliefs differed from mainstream Christianity in the claims that Divine was God in the flesh, and that he had come to earth to make heaven accessible in the here and now. The group also preached celibacy and segregating sexes in all its properties, and rejected the existence of race, meaning members did not see Divine or themselves as white, black, or any other race.</p>
<p id="ROf5kr">“We see lots of religious movements that are raising questions about religious orientation and racial identity,” Weisenfeld said in an interview. “The cultural movements, political movements, religious movements, social movements of the Great Migration are all part of a period of searching for different ways of thinking about collective identity.”</p>
<p id="gNbMiY">For many Peace Mission believers, creating a new collective identity meant sacrificing their old lives. Divine’s followers took on new names that often contained Biblical allusions, like Simon Peter, or expressed themes of nature and peace, like Sunshine Satisfied and Venus Star. The staunchest devotees lived in the movement-owned compounds called “heavens.” Neither smoking and drinking nor the “undue mixing of the sexes” was allowed on Mission property. Celibacy was required and marriage was discouraged — even though Divine would eventually marry twice.</p>
<p id="5lHqqo">Many members, most of whom were women, walked out on their families to follow Divine, facing public scrutiny. “The husbands of these women actually instigated a cultural distance against Father Divine,” Johnson said. “[They claimed] he was a religious fraud and that he was breaking up their families.”</p>
<p id="p2WMNT">In addition to the criticism of members who abandoned their previous lives to follow Divine, the Mission generated no shortage of other scandals and salacious allegations. Publications like the <em>New York Times</em> and <em>New York Evening Journal</em> tracked Divine’s never-ending drama, including the in-fighting and the numerous lawsuits, arrests, and accusations circling the cult.</p>
<p id="lYoo4y">The year 1937 was particularly difficult for the group. In April, a man was stabbed with an ice pick while his friend, a process server, tried to deliver a summons to Divine at a Harlem Peace Mission location on behalf of an ex-member who wanted money that she had given to the Mission returned. The man was sent to the hospital with a near-fatal stab wound to the stomach, the <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/04/22/issue.html"><em><strong>New York Times</strong></em><strong> reported</strong></a>. That same day, another high-ranking member named Faithful Mary argued with Divine over money. She later defected, taking over a Peace Mission “heaven” compound in her name. Faithful Mary, whose legal name was Viola Wilson, later published an expose called <em>“God”: He’s Just a Natural Man</em>, alleging that she and Divine had a sexual relationship and that his movement was a scam to support his lavish lifestyle. In May, a couple who had left the group over its gender-separation policy sued Divine after he refused to return the money they’d given him and the Mission upon joining. The couple won the lawsuit but never received their settlement money. When Divine moved the Peace Mission headquarters from Harlem to Philadelphia in 1942, a primary reason for the decision was the need to evade legal entanglements within New York City’s jurisdiction.</p>
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<img alt="Cooks at Father Divine Peace Mission Restaurant" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RP5s9qTvQ3kjLLqwF_dSULvWyGo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10703465/fd-cooks.0.jpg">
<cite>Getty</cite>
<figcaption>Cooks prepare dinner in a Peace Mission-owned restaurant in 1939 </figcaption>
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<p id="S9l6Jc">In spite of criticism, the Peace Mission attempted to captivate non-members with acts of service and outreach in the form of enterprise. An internal cooperative within the Peace Mission pooled finances to build and operate dozens of hotels, laundromats, grocery stores, and restaurants, all called “heavens,” another reference to the group’s “heaven on earth” tenet. The restaurant heavens were open to the public, with menus featuring hearty meals for as little as 10 cents. Members encouraged diners to indulge in the extravagant spreads. Menus from the ’60s included fried Louisiana Gulf shrimp and broiled tender lamb-ettes with mint jelly, both of which cost $2.50. Jumbo Australian lobster tail went for $3.25. A bowl of raspberries cost 20 cents, while 23 cents would buy a chef’s salad.</p>
<p id="Rw08cU">The wide-ranging selections were meant to attract the broadest possible group of non-members, while reflecting the values of the individuals preparing them, Weisenfeld said. “In contrast to a movement like the Nation of Islam, where the dietary practices were about rejecting the foodways of slavery, Father Divine’s theology embraced Southern black foodways and embraced eating a lot,” Weisenfeld said. “In one way, Father Divine provided the food, but I actually think it’s much more accurate to say he didn’t do anything except provide the occasion for it, and it was members’ labor and money and cooking that made the banquet.”</p>
<p id="njXIR1">Although the restaurants were staffed by devotees who took vows of celibacy, lived in Peace Mission compounds, and believed Father Divine to be God, they operated pretty much like any other full-service eatery, with a few exceptions. Most of the restaurants were licensed, although some struggled to obtain the proper paperwork due to members’ insistence on applying under Peace Mission names like Venus Star. For average diners, the most notable difference between Peace Mission restaurants and other eateries may have been the owners’ ban on tipping, <a href="https://www.eater.com/a/case-against-tipping"><strong>a policy that even today would be ahead of its time</strong></a>. Divine condemned the social imbalances inherent in tipping, which became widespread in the early 1900s as a way for employers to avoid paying fair wages to their mostly black and immigrant service workers.</p>
<p id="FTw4NL">In the official Peace Mission bylaws, Divine declared: “In restaurants and in public places the people have accustomed themselves to giving tips to the employees. It was because of the employees not being paid, in a great measure, and on the other hand it was because of selfishness among the employees, as well also as among the employers. ... I have requested that there would be not tip taking, and the employees would not have an occasion to be bribed by the influence and the custom of receiving and taking and requesting tips with the hope of getting something for nothing.”</p>
<p id="nMEvfg">There were other progressive policies in place at Peace Mission restaurants. Most notably, the restaurants, like the organization that ran them and the banquets that inspired them, were all integrated. Black customers sat next to and ate from the same serving plates as white diners — a subversive policy during the Jim Crow era.</p>
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<img alt="Father Divine Protest" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZMg2YEVr6x1tIa5nu4npSEdJ3dg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10703579/fd-protesters.0.jpg">
<cite>Getty Images/ Bettmann / Contributor</cite>
<figcaption>A parade of Father Divine supporters protest rent prices in Harlem, 1936 </figcaption>
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<p id="REGsUD">Despite his rejection of race as a concept, Divine remained committed to social justice causes and championed them from the dining table. In addition to promoting integration, he used the feasts to preach against lynching, along with drafting petitions and organizing marches in opposition to the practice. The height of the group’s activism began over 20 years before Martin Luther King’s rise to national prominence, which may explain why Divine’s role in the civil rights narrative has largely been forgotten.</p>
<p id="l3dtMf">The 2017 documentary <em>Father’s Kingdom</em> argues that Divine was the “link between Martin Luther King Jr. and Marcus Garvey,” citing Divine’s anti-lynching efforts, his vocal opposition to war, and his mandate for all Peace Mission followers to vote. Yet Garvey and King have remained marquee names while Divine has faded in the public’s memory, partly because Divine never embraced the title of “civil rights leader.” His rejection of race also made him difficult to categorize — how could he both fight for black Americans’ rights and preach that there was no such thing as a difference between black and white people?</p>
<p id="XWL6iz">“To the extent that people took him seriously as a social-political figure was because he actually had a political program that involved anti-lynching, racial integration, disarmament, peace, and things like that,” Weisenfeld said. But as the more organized civil rights movement gained momentum, Divine’s influence faded. “The rise of the modern civil rights movement, in some ways, can account for the declining prominence of Divine.”</p>
<p id="SRiLNd">Divine better fit the classic mold of a cult leader, from his enigmatic past to his compounds of zealous followers to his Messianic insinuations. Although the International Peace Mission did not collect offerings, and Divine claimed to own nothing, he often wore expensive suits and traveled in limousines. These luxuries were apparently paid for by the Mission or its members, and they were often cited in critical press coverage of Divine. Along with the Peace Mission’s social advocacy, the group pushed for peculiar policies like banning the word “hello” because it included the word “hell,” and requiring doctors to guarantee they could cure patients or else be held responsible for medical-related deaths. In 1946, three years after the death of his first wife, Divine married his blonde, 21-year-old Canadian secretary, Edna Rose Ritchings. He announced the relationship to followers only after a secret ceremony, introducing Ritchings as his virgin bride, the reincarnation of Mother Divine. The apparent inconsistencies between Divine’s behavior and his teaching kept outsiders from taking him seriously.</p>
<p id="TW5WDz">Yet much of Divine’s flock stayed faithful throughout the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. They continued to attend weekly communion banquets and supported the Mission’s political advocacy. Thousands of Peace Mission devotees marched in parades, signed petitions, and picketed. When Divine died in 1965, however, the movement effectively died with him, even though a dwindling number of followers continued to believe that Father Divine’s presence never left them and chose to follow the second Mother Divine, who took over leadership of the group. Without its star, though, the movement lost its intrigue. “They were well-known because of the media,” Johnson said, adding that after Divine’s death, “basically, the novelty wore off.”</p>
<p id="UfQPh7">As membership dropped, the restaurants and most other properties were sold. The Keyflower Dining Room in Philadelphia, the last Peace Mission-owned restaurant, was closed in 2006. These days, the movement retains its headquarters at the Woodmont mansion, a historic landmark in suburban Philadelphia where roughly 20 members still live, as well as the Circle Mission in Philly proper, and a location in Sayville. The Woodmont campus offers public tours and is home to a museum and library to preserve Divine’s memory.</p>
<p id="SzYQfG">The communion banquets continue, though. Every Sunday, the small group of remaining devotees set a table at the Woodmont estate, with places for themselves, Father Divine, and Mother Divine. They serve Father Divine first, even though he died 53 years ago. They sing to him, pray to him, and speak to him as if he’s there, because they believe he is. Mother Divine attended the meals until her death in 2017. Nevertheless, the faithful, most of whom are in their 80s and 90s, carry out the ritual, serving and speaking to her, too.</p>
<p id="F8F5HZ">Woodmont’s archivist, Christopher Stewart, who lives at the campus and curates the library and museum, said that Divine’s flock upholds these traditions as an act of faith. “Most followers feel that whatever happens, it’s God’s will,” he said, referring to Father Divine. “They’re not upset that there’s not hundreds of people here. They believe that whatever’s going on is what Father wants. ... So the spirit of it is definitely going to go on.”</p>
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<img alt="Father Divine Shake" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FqT190bqvZIREKH-cr1gQxko5Ec=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10704703/fd-shake.0.jpg">
<cite>Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Father Divine (center) shaking hands with religious leader Prophet James F. Jones (left) | Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection </figcaption>
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https://www.eater.com/a/father-divineVince Dixon2018-04-27T11:28:52-04:002018-04-27T11:28:52-04:00Who’s Really Welcome at Starbucks?
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/H6QCAVJmbckYnJq-uTXugjugVeg=/86x0:1414x996/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/59545459/Reports_StarbucksDiscrimination_BHB_1.1.0.png" />
<figcaption>Starbucks photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images; Eyes photo: Getty. Photo-illustration by Eater</figcaption>
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<p>In America, people of color are constantly asked if they have a right to be in the room</p> <p id="VQ2hjq">When two black men walked into a downtown Philadelphia Starbucks for a business meeting on April 12, they had no idea that they’d be walking out in handcuffs. The men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were waiting for a friend to arrive when a manager called 911. As Nelson and Robinson sat at the table, mere minutes after arriving, police suddenly showed up to arrest them for trespassing. </p>
<p id="bL8niH">The arrests, caught on video, <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/4/16/17242414/starbucks-arrest-protest-philadelphia">sparked national outrage</a>, with calls for boycotts and protests. <a href="https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/986954411661516800">Some have argued</a> that the manager was justified in calling the police because the pair explicitly declined to purchase anything; that sentiment has echoed throughout <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/4/17/17248090/starbucks-closing-racial-bias-education-day-may-29#471471761">comments sections</a> and in various <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/8ehke2/cmv_the_philadelphia_starbucks_incident_is">forums</a> across the internet. But that line of thought erroneously suggests that sitting in a Starbucks is dependent on a financial transaction; for years, Starbucks has <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/887990/starbucks-third-place-and-creating-ultimate-customer-experience">aggressively branded itself</a> not simply as a spot to purchase coffee, but as a “third place” for people to freely commune. </p>
<p id="rgOjxN">Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place” in the late 1980s to describe places outside of work and the home, where people could exchange ideas and build communities — places like parks, bookstores, bars, and cafes. Such spaces invite people from otherwise disparate walks of life into a common location, where the act of lingering becomes crucial to successful community building.</p>
<p id="I0LuEG">Starbucks has long used the idea to promote its coffeehouses. <a href="https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information">On its website</a>, the company recounts how its executive chairman, Howard Schultz, was inspired “to bring the Italian coffeehouse tradition back to the United States, building a place for conversation and a sense of community — his vision of third place between work and home.” He hoped to make Starbucks more than a cafe to buy coffee and leave, in other words — a place to hang out and make connections, just like Nelson and Robinson tried to do in Philadelphia.</p>
<p id="QYdpPZ">But Schultz’s and Starbucks’s ideal clashes with the reality that people of color in this country must <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/bryanwashington/black-men-philadelphia-starbucks-racism?utm_term=.ing6oyL2l#.xlwVpP590">constantly justify their existence, especially in predominantly white spaces</a>; they must constantly answer the questions, “Do you have the right to be here?” and “Why are you <em>really</em> here?” — questions rarely asked of white people in the same spaces. </p>
<p id="8WjOSb">In the weeks since Nelson and Robinson’s arrest, multiple similar incidents have also made headlines: Last week, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/employees-fired-nj-gym-racial-profiling-report-article-1.3942390">three LA Fitness employees in New Jersey were fired</a> after asking two black men using the gym to pay or leave, even though both men had signed in before working out. The men were told that their membership had been terminated and were asked to leave, before staff called police on them. A few days later, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/black-women-golfers-york.html">golfing club called the police on a group of black women</a> who wouldn’t leave after a group of white members complained that the women were playing too slowly. And a <a href="https://sf.eater.com/2018/4/20/17262252/elmwood-cafe-berkeley-closed-w-kamau-bell">Berkeley cafe suddenly closed</a> last week after comedian W. Kamau Bell — prompted by the Starbucks incident — recounted a 2015 incident in which an employee shooed him away from the store window. </p>
<p id="QuFzll">Vague corporate policy often acts as the mechanic that conveniently allows these things to happen — empowering corporate America to question whether people of color have a right to exist in a given space. At Starbucks, for instance, the chain’s third place concept isn’t clearly dictated in any company directives, and the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> reports <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/starbucks-lacks-clear-guidance-for-employees-on-non-paying-customers-1524308400">that the official policy regarding the removal of non-paying customers</a> is unclear at best. As a result, managers around the country have enacted contradictory case-by-case policies. </p>
<p id="N4Hs6o">While Schultz has stated in interviews that no one should be kicked out of Starbucks unless they are disruptive, on Reddit, where there is an active community of Starbucks employees and fans, one <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/starbucks/comments/6yhtu0/kicking_out_the_noncustomers/">user claimed in a post</a> written seven months ago that their district manager directed staff to walk around the location every few hours and kick out people who had stayed for too long. Another user claimed their store covered electrical outlets to prevent people from using their laptops, an act <a href="https://www.eater.com/2011/8/3/6665127/ny-starbucks-covering-outlets-cutting-off-laptop-squatters">reportedly approved by leadership for other locations</a> in New York City in 2011. Eater reached out to a Starbucks representative for clarity on its non-paying customers policy, but the company did not comment before publication.</p>
<p id="fwgkJM">Based on Starbucks’ lack of a clear policy, Philadelphia police commissioner Richard Ross initially said his officers did “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-chief-officers-did-nothing-wrong-arrest-black-men-starbucks-n866061">absolutely nothing wrong</a>.” But when the 54-year-old commissioner learned that the men his officers arrested were simply doing what Starbucks has invited people to do for more than 30 years, he publicly apologized, claiming neither he nor the officers involved realized this before. “While it is no excuse, my lack of awareness of the Starbucks business model played a role in my message,” Ross said. “While this is apparently a well-known fact with Starbucks customers, not everyone is aware that people spend long hours in Starbucks and aren’t necessarily expected to make a purchase.” </p>
<p id="NcFhsK">It’s hard to buy that one. After the incident, Melissa DePino, the white patron who filmed the video, <a href="https://twitter.com/missydepino/status/984539713016094721">noted that she has stayed</a> at Starbucks for hours on numerous occasions and has never been asked to leave; in fact, one would be hard-pressed to find an avid Starbucks consumer who hasn’t at some point taken the company up on its offer and used the free Wi-Fi, electrical outlets, or cozy booths for hours on end without a regular re-up on their Frappuccino. People “loiter” in bars, bookstores, and cafes around the world, sometimes without paying, because it is generally expected that it is okay to do so, within reason. This shows that what happened in Philadelphia is more than a misunderstanding of policy, it’s a result of believing that some people have less of a right to exist in certain places. </p>
<p id="w6kVXj">The irony in this incident is that Starbucks has frequently professed to be an agent of social change. Led by Schultz, an outspoken Democrat who has <a href="https://www.eater.com/2016/2/8/10904984/restaurant-PACS-political-donations">donated frequently to liberal causes</a>, Starbucks has weighed in on social issues pertaining to race and class again and again. In the midst of discourse surrounding the police shootings of unarmed black men such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the company attempted to debunk assertions that it did not care about minority or lower-income neighborhoods by announcing <a href="https://news.starbucks.com/news/starbucks-deepens-investments-in-diverse-under-represented-communities">plans to open stores in 15 underrepresented communities</a> around the United States, including one in Ferguson. (A <a href="https://www.eater.com/a/starbucks-income-map">2015 Eater analysis</a> showed that despite the 15 new locations, more than 80 percent of American Starbucks stores were located in predominantly white neighborhoods, mostly with median income levels of $50,000 or higher.) Before that, the company put together the <a href="https://www.eater.com/2015/6/18/8807849/why-starbucks-race-together-campaign-failed">highly criticized Race Together initiative</a>, in which baristas were encouraged to talk about race with customers.</p>
<p id="O7zFnB">Despite the failed attempts to appear inclusive, Starbucks presses on with pushing its “woke” image, at great expense. Since the day Nelson and Robinson were arrested, Starbucks executives have been on a costly apology tour, trying to reiterate its commitment to the third place and social justice. A reactionary <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/4/17/17248090/starbucks-closing-racial-bias-education-day-may-29">plan to close stores</a> to discuss implicit and racial bias with employees could cost the chain millions. About 8,000 stores will close for the afternoon on May 29 for the training.</p>
<p id="jLFOTs">But for many, the damage is done, and the incident serves as yet another example of a harsh reality: That despite loudly touted ideals, patrons of color face discrimination every day in the most mundane of spaces, from cafes to gyms. While some businesses are assumed to be an open place for all, this recent incident has confirmed for many that at the end of the day, for many businesses, front-facing inclusivity and welcomeness are still works in progress, if not flat-out shams. </p>
<p id="0BGxLw"><small><em>Vince Dixon is Eater’s data visualization reporter.</em></small></p>
<p id="heKp6D">• <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/4/16/17242414/starbucks-arrest-protest-philadelphia">Protesters Storm Starbucks for Calling Police on Black Customers</a> [E]<br>• <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/4/17/17246796/starbucks-black-men-arrests-philadelphia-kevin-johnson-response">Starbucks Attempts to Recover from PR Nightmare Following Philadelphia Arrests</a> [E]</p>
<aside id="Q3rDRh"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"eater"}'></div></aside>
https://www.eater.com/2018/4/27/17263584/starbucks-arrests-third-placeVince Dixon2018-02-22T15:25:47-05:002018-02-22T15:25:47-05:00Why Tipping Is Bad for America
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<img alt="The case against tipping" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RRxbUFIsPfL5kgzJvYtpddty2uU=/400x0:2000x1200/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58737629/chorus_image.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo illustration: Eater; Steve Debenport/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The data is clear: Tipping encourages racism, sexism, harassment, and exploitation </p> <p class="p--has-dropcap p-large-text" id="BhBzdb"><strong>When a night at a restaurant </strong>or bar finally comes to a close, most Americans engage in an instinctive ritual. They dig into their wallets, fiddle with their smartphone calculators, and then decide how much money to give their server or bartender for a job well done. </p>
<p id="jpclcj">Tipping, while practiced around the world, assumes a unique role in America, one to which most diners are obliged, because the United States is one of the only countries that allows businesses to offload the burden of paying workers a fair wage to their customers. And though construed as a fair way to encourage hospitality and reward good service, tipping’s roots are in racialized exploitation, while recent data show that it continues to be, at its core, racist, sexist, and degrading. </p>
<p id="BA3BpF">For many, it’s time for tipping — or at least the wage laws that allow it to penalize servers and diners — to end. Academics and advocacy groups are starting to push to pay servers the same minimum wage as in other fields, <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-minimum-wage-movement-is-leaving-tipped-workers-behind/">rather than having servers rely on the so-called tipped minimum</a> — the low hourly rates (currently set at $2.13, federally) that servers are paid by restaurants in some 43 states — which forces them to rely on tips for a majority of their income. </p>
<p id="t555Xs">Until that day, tipping continues to be the source of a power play between workers, employers, and diners. In 2015, Union Square Hospitality Group’s <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2015/10/14/9517747/danny-meyer-no-tipping-restaurants">Danny Meyer began eliminating tipping</a> at more than a dozen of his restaurants in favor of generally fixed hourly wages, paving the way for <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2017/9/27/16364962/diner-marlow-sons-no-tipping">other restaurateurs</a> to implement gratuity-free service, with <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2018/2/8/16991528/claus-meyer-agern-no-tipping">varying</a> <a href="https://www.eater.com/2016/5/10/11651954/joes-crab-shack-no-tipping">degrees</a> of <a href="http://www.grubstreet.com/2017/10/danny-meyer-no-tips-staff-expectations.html">success</a>. (As some have <a href="https://twitter.com/DemianRepucci/status/966836727309570049">noted</a>, Meyer <a href="http://www.grubstreet.com/2013/06/restaurants-dont-accept-tips.html">was not the first</a> restaurateur to do away with tipping, but the shift at USHG is arguably the catalyst for much of the current conversation around going gratuity-free.) Most recently, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/12/5/16708374/tipping-laws-trump-department-of-labor-changes">proposed legalizing tip pools again</a>, which would effectively transfer the ownership of tips from servers to employers, who could then distribute the money as they see fit — opening the door to pocketing tips entirely, as well as other, more subtle forms of wage theft — prompting an <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/1/24/16927926/tip-pooling-department-of-labor-comments-opposition">outcry in the industry and beyond</a>.</p>
<p id="6J41Ks">Against this backdrop, Eater analyzed recent data from the U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, and academic research and advocacy groups like Restaurant Opportunities Centers United in order to understand the unique impact tipping has on the American dining community. The results are clear: The case against the current tipping system in America is stronger than ever. </p>
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<h3 id="Y3sP9R">
<strong>Tipping Reflects </strong><strong>a</strong><strong>nd Amplifies Racial Inequality</strong>
</h3>
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<img alt="Racial inequality in tipping: White servers receive more, followed by Latino servers, black servers and Asian servers" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pD04cZyuOZ4IIDQMrD7kbPMnGEw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10259251/race_chart_mobile_2.19_01.png">
</figure>
<p id="ZhkS1J"><small><strong>Source:</strong></small><small> Eater analysis of C</small><small>urrent</small><small> Population Survey data, courtesy of the </small><a href="https://cps.ipums.org/cps/"><small>Integrated Public Use Microdata Series</small></a></p>
<p id="dka9F1">American travelers brought tipping to the United States from Europe shortly after the Civil War. Once home, they flaunted their newfound European etiquette by offering gratuity to <a href="https://www.fordfoundation.org/ideas/equals-change-blog/posts/american-tipping-is-rooted-in-slavery-and-it-still-hurts-workers-today/">unskilled laborers</a>, many of <a href="https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/207_wd54xsc1.pdf">whom were immigrants and former slaves</a>. The practice spread, and by the early 1900s, some employers saw it as an opportunity to avoid paying wages by encouraging customers to tip workers instead. The Pullman Company, a train service that primarily employed African-American porters in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was notorious for openly <a href="http://interactive.wttw.com/a/chicago-stories-pullman-porters">underpaying its workers</a>, forcing them to rely on tips. </p>
<p id="VTUeyA">Despite <a href="http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1267&context=jbl">civil rights battles</a> and a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/30/457125740/when-tipping-was-considered-deeply-un-american">brief ban</a> on tips <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wdWKG5rGx3oC&pg=PA94#v=onepage&q&f=false">in some parts</a> of the country, tipping became normalized in America. Many tipped workers, including restaurant workers, were even excluded from the country’s first national minimum wage laws until the mid-1960s, when the first “subminimum” wage — a wage for tipped employees set below the standard minimum wage, now referred to as the “tipped minimum” — was established.</p>
<p id="6r6Dka">While the unskilled labor force has since diversified, employers of tipped workers can still avoid directly paying them a living wage, and tipped workers of color still suffer disproportionately under the current system. As studies, like one <a href="https://www.wagehourlitigation.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/215/2015/10/cornell.pdf">Cornell University report</a>, have shown, some diners let race, gender, and attractiveness impact how much they pay servers: Most dramatically, diners of all races tend to give higher tips to white servers and lower tips to black servers. An Eater analysis of U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data (see methodology below) showed that white servers and bartenders across all restaurant types make more in tips than most other racial groups: Between 2010 and 2016, the median estimated hourly tip for white servers and bartenders was $7.06; Latinx (who include people who identify as either black, white, Asian, or multiracial), earned $6.08 an hour in tips; black front-of-house workers made a median hourly tip of $5.57; and Asians earned a median hourly tip of $4.77. </p>
<h3 id="x7CXyF"><strong>Tipping Encourages Racial Profiling</strong></h3>
<p id="0JYNSr"><strong>39</strong><strong> percent</strong><strong> of servers admitted to acting on racial bias against patrons of color</strong></p>
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<img alt="39 percent of servers admitted to racial discrimination" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kDBkxCDlX07LE8flHKmvn2OqF08=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10259273/square1.jpg">
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<p id="Ro7sbv"><strong>66</strong><strong> percent</strong><strong> of servers admitted witnessing coworker bias against patrons of color</strong></p>
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<img alt="66 percent of servers said they witnessed racial discrimination from colleagues" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/noBTp6P11ER9VJpkbaBiCn_-WHI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10259295/square2.jpg">
</figure>
<p id="Uec5XE"><small><strong>Source:</strong></small><small> “Quantitative Evidence of the Continuing Significance of Race: Tableside Racism in Full-Service Restaurants,”</small><small><em> </em></small><small>by Zachary W. Brewster and Sarah Nell Rusche</small></p>
<p id="eS4mmt">Servers have biases too, and tipping unleashes them. A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00167.x/abstract">growing body of research</a> shows that racial profiling over expected tips — or a lack thereof — can encourage hostility and flat-out discrimination toward diners of color, especially black diners. “There is a good amount of evidence that indicates that some servers do stereotype,” Zachary Brewster, a sociology professor at Wayne State University and author of a number of studies on racial profiling in restaurants, told Eater. “In most cases the form of discrimination is quite subtle.”</p>
<p id="cIxKXW">For instance, servers may <a href="https://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1585&context=articles">provide slower service to black diners</a> — or try to turn the table over more quickly. Brewster’s body of research, which includes surveys and interviews with servers, found that in some restaurants, servers actively avoid waiting on black customers because they believe that they would lose out on tips. In some instances, restaurant staff played “games” in which servers tried to stick one another with black tables, or developed code words to warn each other when a black table is seated. This behavior was sometimes allowed by management, Brewster found. </p>
<p id="9wPMks">In one <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021934711433310">2012 study</a>, Brewster surveyed 200 servers from “bar and grill”-style restaurants. He asked the servers about their perceptions of black diners, and whether they’d seen discriminatory behavior by other employees. Most respondents admitted to providing different levels of service based a diner’s race, or witnessing another server do so, at least “sometimes.” In similar studies published by <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00167.x/abstract">Brewster</a> and colleagues, servers who admitted to profiling black customers justified their actions by claiming that black patrons demanded more and tipped less. <a href="http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=articles">Another study</a> found such sentiments published on online message boards for waiters. (Earlier this month, Applebee’s fired <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516589&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2Fmoney%2F2018%2F02%2F13%2Fapplebees-apologizes-racial-profiling-restaurant-fires-3%2F332657002%2F&referrer=eater.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eater.com%2Fa%2Fcase-against-tipping" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">employees at a location</a> in Missouri for racial profiling.) </p>
<p id="zVjAcz">Research <a href="https://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=articles">does show</a> that black diners appear to tip less than white diners — by roughly 3 percentage points — but the reasons are nuanced, Brewster said. One explanation is that African Americans are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/21/whats-behind-racial-differences-in-restaurant-tipping/?utm_term=.1b8476c6e6c4">generally less familiar with the unwritten rule that a 15 percent tip</a> is the minimum. Other researchers speculate that black diners may have less exposure to dining out growing up — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics expenditure data, black households spent an average of $2,228 on food away from home in 2016, compared to $3,243 from white households — and thus may be less acquainted with sit-down restaurant norms, he added. Black servers are also underrepresented in front-of-house positions, leading to less familiarity with the direct role that tips play in a server’s income. “So they are less likely to learn this tipping norm,” Brewster said.</p>
<p id="m7ssVN">Still, Brewster added, servers often exaggerate the tipping differences between black and white diners in order to justify discrimination. “This exaggeration is a function of racial prejudice and working in a racialized workplace,” he said. Prejudice over tipping can also become a cycle that perpetuates itself, as law professor Lu-in Wang described in <a href="http://www.vjspl.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2.20.14-FINAL-LAYOUT_At-the-Tipping-Point_Wang.pdf">one report</a>, published in the <em>Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law</em>: “Some restaurant servers recognize that stereotypes regarding customers’ tipping habits can set in motion a self-fulfilling cycle by affecting the service they provide, and in turn, the tips they receive from those customers.”</p>
<h3 id="ZjF9fE"><strong>Tipping Widens Opportunity Gaps</strong></h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oyHurqSAOiOofc2s2b_y1LLW3cY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10266299/gap_chart_mobile.NEW.png">
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<p id="AdQIkk"><strong>Source:</strong> <a href="http://rocunited.org/wp2015b/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/RaceGender_Report_LR.pdf">”Racial and Gender Occupational Segregation in the Restaurant Industry,”</a> ROC United</p>
<p id="iySUnw">One straightforward explanation for why white servers earn higher tips than servers of color is that they are disproportionately employed at fine dining restaurants — defined by the restaurant worker advocacy group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United as “full-service restaurants with a price point per guest of $40 or more including beverages but excluding gratuity.” According to a <a href="http://rocunited.org/wp2015b/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/RaceGender_Report_LR.pdf">2015 study</a> by ROC United, which analyzed U.S. Census Current Population Surveys and surveyed 133 fine-dining restaurants, white people make up 55 percent of all restaurant servers, but comprise 78 percent of the total number of servers in fine dining restaurants. Additionally, fine dining servers are more likely to be men: While women make up 52 percent of restaurant workers, they represent only 43 percent of fine dining front-of-house workers.</p>
<p id="kBKOwZ">People of color are more likely to be employed in “back-of-house” or non-tipped jobs — like dishwashers and line cooks — where they often find it difficult to rise up in the ranks to better-paid tipped positions in the “front of the house,” in part because of implicit biases, according to Teófilo Reyes, research director with ROC United. Here’s how one restaurant owner described so-called successful employees in ROC United’s <a href="http://rocunited.org/wp2015b/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/RaceGender_Report_LR.pdf">2015 report on race and gender</a> in restaurant workplaces: </p>
<blockquote><p id="XeRQEd">People who have had really good parenting, where there’s been boundaries, and encouragement, and positive feedback, do the best. And people who come from broken homes, and don’t understand boundaries, who don’t understand punctuality, or make bad choices, or have never really faced consequences for their choices do the worst … this is very much a performance-based environment.</p></blockquote>
<p id="GWt49i">The report argues that such sweeping generalizations are welcome mats for bias, having an impact on who managers see as being fit for higher-paid jobs, disadvantaging people of color. The resulting lack of representation in tipped and higher-paid restaurant positions inherently discourages people of color from applying for them, according to Reyes. “There’s a type of self-selection that occurs if people think they’re going to be rejected,” he said.</p>
<p id="4dF59q">The fine dining opportunity gap between white men and everyone else has far-reaching consequences: As <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/tipping-workers-minimum-wage/">data from FiveThirtyEight</a> showed last year, on average, workers in casual dining restaurants have to work nine times harder than their counterparts in fine dining to reach the standard minimum wage (turning four tables an hour, versus 0.2 tables). </p>
<h3 id="62pluM"><strong>Tipping Fosters Sexual Harassment</strong></h3>
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<img alt="The food services industry is one of the leading industries for sexual harassment complaints" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2IHueJ-Y7XXeNyyUFZk1gKvRQKs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10259259/harassment_chart_mobile_.png">
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<p id="zsDD8b"><strong>Source:</strong> <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/index.cfm">U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission</a></p>
<p id="VlPvHH">Sexual harassment in the food industry is <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/12/6/16717060/sexual-harassment-restaurant-industry-customers-tips-fair-wage">pervasive</a>, and tipping plays a role in perpetuating it. A 2014 <a href="http://rocunited.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/REPORT_The-Glass-Floor-Sexual-Harassment-in-the-Restaurant-Industry2.pdf">ROC United study</a> showed that nearly 80 percent of female restaurant workers reported experiencing some sort of sexual harassment from customers at work. The food service industry accounts for more sexual harassment filings (referred to as “charges”) with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission than any other industry, according to EEOC data (many filings are also unassigned to any particular industry, while sexual harassment may be underreported in others).</p>
<p id="sVfBI5">According to Reyes, one reason is that tipping creates a power dynamic in which servers adopt a mentality that “the customer is always right.” In a situation in which servers are actually working for diners and their tips, rather than for their employers’ wages, they may be more vulnerable to abuse. That notion is borne out in <a href="http://rocunited.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/REPORT_The-Glass-Floor-Sexual-Harassment-in-the-Restaurant-Industry2.pdf">data showing that women working in restaurants in states with lower minimum wages</a> for tipped employees are twice as likely to report experiencing sexual harassment than those who work in states that have one minimum wage for all workers. Both male and female servers working in tipped-minimum-wage states report higher rates of sexual harassment — women, for instance, were three times more likely to report being told by management to dress “sexier” or to alter their appearance. As the country moves forward in its discussion about sexual harassment in light of the #MeToo movement, tipping customs expose the industry as one of the most affected industries outside of Hollywood.</p>
<h3 id="1OQxec">
<strong>Tipping </strong><strong>E</strong><strong>ncourages Worker Exploitation</strong>
</h3>
<p id="I8p4cH">The restaurant industry suffers from an endemic wage theft problem. According to the Department of Labor, the food service industry is one of the biggest violators of wage and labor laws; in 2016, the department found that the industry owed $39 million in back wages. </p>
<p id="wHJMpl">Wage theft takes many forms: not paying for overtime work, failing to properly distribute tips, and withholding paychecks, among others. Tip-pooling, the practice of collecting and re-distributing tip revenues among the entire staff, has long been contentious, with the debate leading to a ban by the Department of Labor under the Obama administration in 2011. A <a href="https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20171204">new tip-pooling proposal</a> under Trump’s labor department takes the opposite stance, arguing that employers should be able to collect worker tips and redistribute them as they see fit — to back-of-house workers, for instance. Critics say that the bill, as proposed, will give restaurant owners a legal opportunity to keep tip revenue, rather than actually redistributing it back to workers. </p>
<p id="4Q4HLd">The best way to fix the broken institution of American tipping, Reyes argues, is to pay restaurant servers like any other non-tipped professional. “There are certainly plenty of countries around the world where they look at restaurant workers as professionals, they treat them like professionals, and they pay them a professional wage,” Reyes said. “I think we can move to a more professional system.” </p>
<p id="elRNKg">Some restaurants have already attempted an entirely tip-free system, and the results have been mixed. After Danny Meyer fully eliminated gratuity from his restaurants — a move he called a win for back-of-house staff and diners — <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2018/2/6/16978464/danny-meyer-tipping-staff-turnover">40 percent of his long-time front-of-house staff quit</a>. Menu prices were raised, with the additional revenue redistributed in the form of higher base wages for all employees; a <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2017/10/11/16458002/tipping-lawsuit-david-chang-danny-meyer-tom-colicchio">lawsuit against Meyer and other restaurateurs</a> alleges that after the switch to a gratuity-free model, money was not fairly distributed between the restaurants and front-of-house staff.</p>
<p id="omS55z">Ultimately, an equitable <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-war-on-tipping-harms-customers-88626">tipping system</a> will require getting rid of the subminimum tipped wage and paying servers, bartenders, and other service employees the standard minimum wage, while allowing them to receive bonuses for exceptional service. However that happens, everyone involved in America’s restaurant culture — owners, servers, and diners — will have to play a part.</p>
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<h3 id="XlFLZ3"><strong>Methodology</strong></h3>
<p id="uI5vY1">To determine the median hourly tip rate for American servers and waiters by race from 2010 to 2016, Eater looked at Current Population Surveys released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census. The surveys are conducted monthly, with 50,000 to 60,000 households queried per month.<em> </em>Eater used data from 2010 to 2016 surveys, filtering responses from servers and bartenders (occupation codes 4040 and 4110), then filtered the results further to show only workers who made an hourly wage and “usually receive overtime, tips, or commissions” — three additional forms of income that the CPS survey refers to as one group. (Also filtered from the results were people who worked more than 40 hours a week, didn’t make an hourly wage, and/or who provided “non-universe” responses, which indicate that for one reason or another the question did not apply to the respondent.) These filters left a dataset of servers and bartenders receiving hourly pay and some form of additional commission, overtime, or tips, which were assumed to be tips. </p>
<p id="kv6uEY">The data included the year of the survey, weekly earnings, number of hours worked per week, hourly wage, gender, race, and weights for earnings and wage values. Eater converted the overall weekly earnings and hourly wages to 2016 dollar values using the Consumer Price Index purchasing power formula, then multiplied the reported number of hours worked by the reported hourly wage to determine weekly hourly wages. Eater then subtracted the weekly wage value from the overall weekly earnings value to calculate tips each respondent received. That number was divided by the number of hours each respondent reported working to determine the amount in tips the respondents made per hours worked.</p>
<p id="H8U4Dc">To find the median hourly tip for all respondents, Eater filtered any result that indicated no additional income or tips were made, then calculated the weighted median of the remaining hourly tips (the CPS provides weights for weekly earnings data, indicating the number of people a respondent actually represents, given his or her overrepresented or underrepresented demographic group). </p>
<p id="ZtiNEX"><small><em>Vince Dixon is Eater’s data visualization reporter.</em></small><br><small><em>Visuals and Design Manager: Brittany Holloway-Brown </em></small><br><small><em>Special thanks to Daniela Galarza and Ryan Sutton</em></small></p>
https://www.eater.com/a/case-against-tippingVince Dixon2017-12-29T09:32:01-05:002017-12-29T09:32:01-05:00A Look Back at 2017’s Biggest Food Trends
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LlUbPbC-LHSvVq1nG_RY5e196IA=/127x0:1906x1334/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58142499/soft_serve_food_trends.0.jpg" />
<figcaption><a href="https://www.jeanphotos.com/">Jean Schwarzwalder</a>/<a href="https://ny.eater.com/2017/8/17/16157962/martina-menu-photos-nyc-danny-meyer">Eater NY</a></figcaption>
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<p>Jamaican food, pot edibles, and soft serve saw big rises in Google searches this year</p> <p id="wjYqdj">Some could say 2017 was a year of politics, confusion, shock, and uncertainty. But a poke at Google Trends data shows that in the food world at least, there were many opportunities to escape the commotion that was the rest of living in 2017. That is: If Americans were looking for a release, they found it in food. A look at this year’s top food trends shows the country’s hunger for the diverse, the magical, the nostalgic, and the euphoric. Here are 2017’s top food trends, according to the Internet:</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="Cn4ocv">
<h4 id="RVN0Tc">Jamaican cuisine</h4>
<p id="csNUxq">Jamaican-inspired menus have been growing in popularity over the last few years, but 2017 was the cuisine’s breakout year. As <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/10/31/16492690/jamaican-food-fusion">Eater reported</a>, this might be due to the growing number of chefs who, in an effort to make the island’s food more familiar and accessible to Americans, have been fusing Jamaican flavors with other international cuisines like Latin and Korean. Google Trends data shows search interest for “Jamaican food” and “Caribbean food near me” were high in 2016, but even more so throughout 2017.</p>
<div id="f4UHy2">
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/trends_nrtr/1243_RC12/embed_loader.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"jamaican food","geo":"US","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":71,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"cat=71&date=today 5-y&geo=US&q=jamaican%20food","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"}); </script>
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<h4 id="988rgW">Soft serve</h4>
<p id="Ir0caK">Earlier in the year, Eater predicted the summer of 2017 would be the <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/6/26/15858180/raw-cookie-dough-trend">summer of edible raw cookie dough</a>, but Google search interest data proved that despite the slew of raw dough parlor openings this year, people were not that interested in searching for it. Instead, soft serve, the cold ice cream-ish dessert, saw a huge boost in search interest. It makes sense: Eater revealed the economical treat has been <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/9/13/16279044/soft-serve-ice-cream-restaurant-dessert">popping up on restaurant menus all summer</a>, appearing to be the “it” item for dessert counters and tasting menus alike. </p>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/trends_nrtr/1243_RC12/embed_loader.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"soft serve near me","geo":"US","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":71,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"cat=71&date=today 5-y&geo=US&q=soft%20serve%20near%20me","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"}); </script> </div>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="BCK8Sq">
<h4 id="sHfm4e">Breakfast and brunch</h4>
<p id="S9DBLU">All-day and midday breakfast were all the rage this year, thanks in part to more <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/7/12/15927952/all-day-dining-restaurant-trends-2017">restaurants serving meals throughout the day</a> (one catalyst for that trend: breakfast food <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/5/30/15702210/restaurant-breakfast-trend-business">tends to be profitable</a> for restaurants). So it should come as no surprise that Google search interest for “breakfast near me” and “brunch near me” spiked in 2017, peaking in the late spring. </p>
<p id="sUOBQs">“Brunch near me” was especially popular in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois, the data shows. In D.C., brunch culture has grown among young urban professionals there, much to the chagrin of some folks like one D.C.-based writer, whose <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-the-d-c-brunch-says-about-young-urban-elite/">hot take on brunch</a> caused a stir. But if search data is any indication, interest in brunch and breakfast doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. The millennials have solidified this one.</p>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/trends_nrtr/1243_RC12/embed_loader.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"brunch near me","geo":"US","time":"today 5-y"},{"keyword":"breakfast near me","geo":"US","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":71,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"cat=71&date=today 5-y,today 5-y&geo=US&q=brunch%20near%20me,breakfast%20near%20me","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"}); </script> </div>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="g8ci4G">
<h4 id="IO6m9E">Meal delivery</h4>
<p id="ZFkC0b">The new(ish) meal kit delivery market <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/9/18/16306748/food-delivery-mobile-app-restaurant-design-operations">has been booming</a>. Services like Plated, HelloFresh, and Blue Apron have been slowly enticing busy professionals into buying pre-prepared cooking kits for the last five years or so. This summer, Blue Apron <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/6/29/15894152/blue-apron-ipo-debut-nyse">began trading on the New York Stock Exchange</a>; in the coming weeks, its performance would <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/8/22/16185656/blue-apron-investor-lawsuit-ipo">prove disappointing</a>. HelloFresh, the German-based meal kit service, would <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/11/02/blue-apron-hellofresh-ipo/">go public</a> in November, hoping to overthrow Blue Apron as the leader in meal kit delivery. </p>
<p id="M8EoHD">Despite concerns over <a href="https://www.eater.com/2016/5/20/11691446/meal-delivery-blue-apron-plated-hello-fresh-marley-spoon">how these companies will sustain profits</a>, Google data shows customers are very, very interested in them. Trends data shows an all-time high in interest in food delivery kits — and/or their zigzagging stock prices — and it seems to be growing.</p>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/trends_nrtr/1243_RC12/embed_loader.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"meal delivery","geo":"US","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":71,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"cat=71&date=today 5-y&geo=US&q=meal%20delivery","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"}); </script> </div>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="JhPUJN">
<h4 id="JlTIZ2">Edibles</h4>
<p id="VleEOR">As more states move toward laxer recreational marijuana laws, interest in pot-based edibles has spiked. Voters in four states — California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada — approved the legalization of recreational cannabis on Election Day 2016, with California entrepreneurs set to open legal retail marijuana stores on January 1. Meanwhile, companies and chefs are working to <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/2/23/14700398/weed-marijuana-edibles-microdosing-mindy-segal">improve the taste and experience of edible marijuana</a> snacks, as more states consider making recreational use legal.</p>
<p id="ER7r4u">Search interest for easy-to-consume CBD edibles like “cbd gummies” skyrocketed in popularity this summer. </p>
<div id="7L5Nrt">
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/trends_nrtr/1243_RC12/embed_loader.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"edibles","geo":"US","time":"today 5-y"},{"keyword":"cbd gummies","geo":"US","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":71,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"cat=71&date=today 5-y,today 5-y&geo=US&q=edibles,cbd%20gummies","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"}); </script> </div>
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<h4 id="mkWNU2">Unicorn Frappuccino</h4>
<p id="AddZfP">Starbucks’ <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/4/17/15325638/starbucks-unicorn-frappuccino">Unicorn Frappuccino</a> was one of the year’s biggest viral stunt dishes. Capitalizing on other crazy food trends like rainbow food, galaxy desserts, and mermaid drinks, Starbucks debuted the purple and blue glittery Frappuccino in April, and the Internet went mad for it. While it lacked the staying power of other food trends of the year (the Unicon Frapp was designed as a limited-time-only menu item), it may have spawned a <a href="https://ny.eater.com/2017/4/25/15423524/unicorn-food-nyc">wave of unicorn-branded Instagram food</a>. </p>
<p id="qRgHK9">Location intelligence company Foursquare saw a spike in mentions of the “unicorn” on its <a href="https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/what-america-ate-drank-and-saw-in-2017-ce4f56614a1c">Swarm app the week of the Frapp’s debut.</a> </p>
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<aside id="VGP6XK"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"eater"}'></div></aside>
https://www.eater.com/2017/12/29/16826078/2017-food-trends-restaurants-diningVince Dixon