Just a little bi-coastal chat this week, catching up on some news from the past weeks, and checking in on legislative relief efforts for the bar and restaurant industry.

As NYC increases capacity for indoor dining, and nightclubs turn restaurant to get by, the city's outdoor dining sprawl is getting people riled, which isn't too surprising.

We never got a chance to talk about those superbowl ads earlier - the Cointreau/IRC one which invokes an almost painful nostalgia, and the Doordash/Sesame Street charity ad now notorious for spending over $5M to publicize a $1M donation. Argh. Have we mentioned the terrible conditions for Doordash (and other) delivery drivers?

The Biden administration is making sounds about ramping up efforts against wage theft and labor violations because of the pandemic (some state AGs are following suit - at least they're saying they are). 

Which reminds me: wage theft - which has always been rampant in the service industry -  was in the news recently of course as Amazon was fined almost $62M for paying Flex drivers' base wages with tips. Which sounds an awful lot like what restaurants with submin wage do, legally, all the time. 

Last but NOT least - the Restaurants Act has morphed into a much smaller project as a part of the latest relief bill. We'll talk about how it's changed (shout out to Barb Leung for this good break down). Also, the second round of PPP appears to be somewhat less terrible at helping the restaurant industry, yay.

Shout out to groups to support in Texas: Austin Mutual Aid, Feed the People Dallas, Funky Town Fridge, and here's the Filipino-American agenda that Tiffany mentioned.