Tag Archives: restaurant

7 Sneaky Plastic Items to Stop Using

by Bikor11 Posted on April 20, 2018

This Earth Day, reducing our plastic consumption is a huge step we can take toward making the planet a better place?and this huge step is actually comprised of several itty, bitty steps! Addressing this part of our lives doesn?t mean we have to immediately and completely shun plastic in all its forms (although, if you?d like to go cold turkey, have at it!).

By being more aware of the everyday situations wherein plastic can sneak into our lives, we can opt to be better prepared and to ultimately reduce how much plastic creation we are supporting.

1. Produce bags

These have an easy way of sneaking their way into our lives while grocery shopping. Even if we commit to not using them for firm fruits and veggies, it is hard to resist a plastic casing for delicate herbs and greens. However, arming ourselves with reusable (and washable) cotton or mesh bags for this purpose is a great step toward never having to use those wasteful plastic bags again.

2. Straws

The sneakiest! They show up in our restaurant and bar drinks without having to ask. Yet, remembering to ask for ?no straw, please? can be quickly learned. If you still like the feel of sipping through a straw, several glass and stainless steel versions exist (some with their own cloth bags for portability).

3. Items that could be purchased in bulk

Hungry for pistachios? Need some pine nuts for a new recipe? Most of these items (and more) can be found in bulk at health food stores and, more often nowadays, more mainstream grocers, as well. Bringing a cloth or mesh bag for nuts and grains (and then transferring to glassware at home) and even glassware for items like nut butters, maple syrup and olive oil (have an associate weigh your container first) are great Earth-friendly ways to reduce plastic waste and the demand for more plastic creation.

4. Bottles of water

It cannot be said enough: always have a water bottle with you! This will reduce temptation to buy water bottles or accept offers for one (?No thank you, I have my water bottle?).

5. Snack bags

Instead of storing snacks (or fridge leftovers) in little plastic bags that will probably be thrown away after one use, invest in some quality reusable packaging: cloth wraps, glassware, stainless steel boxes, etc.

6. Plastic tampon applicators

The only item on this list I?m sure is only used once and definitely thrown away, instead of recycled. Instead of relying on these, consider investing in a menstrual cup that can be used for years – less waste, less hassle and less moments of panic when you realize you don?t have any tampons on hand. If that doesn?t float your boat, several companies are now creating panties that absorb menstrual blood so tampons needn?t enter the equation.

7. Gifts from others

Surprises are wonderful, as are gifts from loved ones. Yet, those who may not be aware of our mission to make the world a plastic-free place may provide gifts chock full of the stuff. As meaningful dates approach, you can gently let your loved ones know that you would greatly appreciate spending time together to make new memories and, oh, by the way, you?re working on reducing your plastic consumption so there?s no need to gift anything with plastic ingredients.

Related Stories:

Here’s What Happens to a Plastic Bag After You Throw It Away
Check the Label for These Sneaky Non-Vegan Ingredients
10 Ways to Get Plastic Out of Your Kitchen

Photo credit: Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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7 Sneaky Plastic Items to Stop Using

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We Have Weird Ideas About What’s Appropriate for Kids These Days

by michelmartz136 Posted on March 31, 2017

Mother Jones

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Peter Holley has this story up today:

The final straw was a little girl using an iPad with the volume on high, a device her parents refused to turn down despite repeated requests from the staff at Caruso’s, an upscale Italian restaurant in Mooresville, N.C….“Finally, we had to ask them to leave,” Nunez told The Washington Post.

“That was the incident that triggered the entire thing.” “The entire thing,” as Nunez puts it, is the restaurant’s strict ban on children under the age of 5. It went into effect in January, drawing passionate applause from some diners online and angry condemnation from others.

So what does everyone think about banning small kids from an upscale restaurant? I am informally banned from commenting on stuff like this because I have no children and am therefore assumed to have no understanding of the vast stresses involved in raising kids.1 Fair enough. I’ll keep my mouth shut.

Except for this. Thirty years ago, this wouldn’t have been an issue. There were places that were appropriate for small children and places that weren’t. McDonald’s? Appropriate. Denny’s? Appropriate. That little Italian place on the corner? Maybe. How well behaved are your kids? Morton’s Steakhouse? Inappropriate. It’s a grownup place.

This distinction seems to have died out, and I’m not sure why. A lot of people think it has to do with this:

As the number of small children has declined, they all become precious snowflakes who deserves constant attention and only the best things in life. For what it’s worth, I don’t buy this. I don’t have any particular reason. It just doesn’t seem right.

And yet, the distinction between places that are appropriate for small children and those that aren’t sure seems to have gotten bolloxed up. At the same time that lots of parents take their toddlers to upscale restaurants and R-rated movies, older children are all but banned from walking alone to a nearby park lest some busybody call the cops to report this obviously reckless parental neglect.

I dunno. I’m not a parent, and my cats don’t do a damn thing I tell them. What’s going on?

1I also have no experience with the vast stresses of running a restaurant, but no one ever seems to care about that.

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We Have Weird Ideas About What’s Appropriate for Kids These Days

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Is Your Favorite Restaurant Standing Up for Immigrants?

by ShaniceCastella Posted on February 24, 2017

Mother Jones

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On this episode of the Mother Jones food politics podcast, Bite, restaurant owners dish about what it’s like to run an eatery in the age of Trump-administration immigration raids.

Back on January 25, President Donald Trump issued an executive order vowing to crack down on the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. The move confirmed that Trump meant to make good on the anti-immigrant zealotry he repeatedly spewed during his campaign—and sent shock waves through the US restaurant scene.

That’s because about 15.7 percent of US restaurant workers are undocumented immigrants, and another 5.9 percent are foreign-born US citizens, as this 2014 study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows. So when Trump ramps up the pressure on undocumented US residents, he’s also making life stressful for the people who cook restaurant meals, wait tables, and wash dishes.

As if they didn’t have enough on their plates to deal with. According to EPI, restaurant workers’ median wage stands at $10 per hour, tips included—and hasn’t budged, in inflation-adjusted terms, since 2000. For non-restaurant US workers, the median hourly wage is $18. That means the median restaurant worker makes 44 percent less than other workers. Benefits are also rare—just 14.4 percent of restaurant workers have employer-sponsored health insurance and 8.4 percent have pensions, vs. 48.7 percent and 41.8 percent, respectively, for other workers.

As a result of these paltry wages, more than 40 percent of restaurant workers live below twice the poverty line—the income level necessary for a family to make ends meet. That’s double the rate of non-restaurant workers. In other words, Trump is going after the most vulnerable subset of an extremely vulnerable group of workers.

On Thursday of last week, activists organized a national Day Without Immigrants, a kind of general strike that included the closing of restaurants in Atlanta, Austin, Detroit, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Phoenix, Nashville, Albuquerque, Denton, Dallas, Fort Worth, and—most prominently— Washington, DC. My colleague Nathalie Baptiste reports that busy DC spots Busboys and Poets and Bad Saint shut their doors that day, as did all of the restaurants owned by prominent chef Jose Andrés, including Jaleo and Zaytinya.

The gesture took place in a highly charged atmosphere, amid reports that US immigration authorities arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in at least a half-dozen states, including Florida, Kansas, Virginia, and my home state, Texas. Things got really tense in my hometown of Austin, where the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set up checkpoints in low-income neighborhoods with high concentrations of immigrants.

Meanwhile, a “Sanctuary Restaurant” movement gained momentum. Launched back in January by the Restaurant Opportunities Center, Sanctuary Restaurants pledge not to “allow any harassment of any individual based on immigrant/refugee status, race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation to occur in their restaurant” and hang a “Sanctuary Restaurant” sign on their doors. By last week, more than 100 had signed on nationwide.

In the midst of it all, Maddie and I hit the streets to talk to a couple of participating restaurants for the new episode of Bite.

I talked to Johhny Livesay, the chef and co-founder of Black Star Co-op, a community-owned, worker-managed pub and brewery in Austin. In addition to signing on as a sanctuary restaurant, Black Star also has an innovative compensation policy: all the workers are paid a living wage, with benefits, and tips aren’t accepted. Austin has emerged as an incubator of restaurants challenging the industry’s unfair practices. L’Oca d’Oro, an Italian spot helmed by the former punk-rock musician Fiore Tedesco, also rejects the standard tipping model and has joined the sanctuary-restaurant movement.

And Maddie spoke with Penny Baldado, the owner of a lunch joint called Cafe Gabriela in Oakland, California. Penny is an immigrant herself—she’s originally from the Philippines. Give it a listen, and subscribe on iTunes if you haven’t already.

Bite is Mother Jones‘ podcast for people who think hard about their food. Listen to all our episodes here, or subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or via RSS.

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Is Your Favorite Restaurant Standing Up for Immigrants?

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Who Subsidizes Restaurant Workers’ Pitiful Wages? You Do

by TammieHinds Posted on April 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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For Americans who like to eat out occasionally, the full-service restaurant industry is full of relatively affordable options—think Olive Garden, Applebees, or Chili’s. But these spots aren’t exactly a bargain once a hefty hidden cost is factored in: The amount of taxpayer assistance that goes to workers earning little pay.

Food service workers have more than twice the poverty rate of the overall workforce, and thus more often seek out public benefits. A new report published last week by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), a restaurant workers’ advocacy and assistance group, calculated the tab and found that from 2009 to 2013, regular Americans subsidized the industry’s low wages with nearly $9.5 billion in tax money each year. That number includes spending from roughly 10 different assistance programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, and low-income housing programs like Section 8.

Here’s the breakdown per program:

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United

The amounts were calculated by combining Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics figures on the programs’ cost and enrollments with the number of Americans working in full-service restaurants.

ROC also found that employees at the five largest full-service restaurant companies alone cost taxpayers about $1.4 billion per year. According to the report, these five companies employ more than half a million of the sector’s more than 4 million workers.

Here’s another striking statistic: If you add up these five companies’ profits, CEO pay, distributed dividends, and stock buy-backs, the total comes to a bit more than $1.48 billion—almost exactly what taxpayers spend on these five companies’ workers, $1.42 billion.

ROC’s report notes another key point: Polling shows that most Americans want a tax system that requires Corporate America to pull its weight. If customers start realizing that their meal costs a lot more than the check says, they just might lose their appetite.

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Who Subsidizes Restaurant Workers’ Pitiful Wages? You Do

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Do Your State’s Hospitals Serve Big Macs?

by MarcelSievwrigh Posted on April 6, 2015

Mother Jones

Would you like fries with your hospital stay? If so, you’re in luck: Many hospitals house fast-food restaurants. Some even offer delivery to patient rooms. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) isn’t wild about this phenomenon and made this map, which shows the US hospitals with fast-food chains inside them:

Image by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

Of the 208 hospitals—most of them public—that PCRM investigated in its report, 43 had fast-food chains inside, mostly McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Chick-Fil-A. PCRM staff dietitian Cameron Wells told me that some of the fast-food joints have contracts that require them to give a certain percentage of their profits to their hospitals, “meaning the more unhealthful food the restaurant sells to patients and their families, the richer the hospital gets,” she said.

Six of the fast-food-serving facilities in the report were children’s hospitals. One of those, Children’s Hospital of Georgia, offers delivery service from McDonald’s straight to patients’ beds. “Seeing this in a children’s hospital—that’s the most vulnerable population,” Wells says. “Fast food is not going to help children get better.”

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Do Your State’s Hospitals Serve Big Macs?

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McDonald’s May Soon Serve Kale—After Promising Never to Serve Kale

by SheilaGooseberr Posted on March 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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So remember way back in January when McDonald’s promised it would never serve kale?

Well, forget all that, because now the brand may soon do the very thing it vowed not to do just over two months ago. Nation’s Restaurant News has the story:

According to Janney Capital Markets Analyst Mark Kalinowski, the Oak Brook, Ill.-based restaurant chain is planning to add kale as an ingredient in a to-be-named product at some restaurants later this year.

A spokeswoman for the big burger chain would not confirm or deny the kale reports, saying only that, “As we continue to listen to our customers, we’re always looking at new and different ingredients that they may enjoy.”

A kale flip-flop wouldn’t be that surprising, considering the fact that in the face of McDonald’s increasingly dismal sales, the company is trying to appeal to people who no longer crave giant quantities of processed junk. (And they really don’t, as my colleague Tom Philpott points out here.) To wit: Last week, the company promised to ditch chicken raised on antibiotics. It also recently hired a fact checker to prove it serves real food.

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McDonald’s May Soon Serve Kale—After Promising Never to Serve Kale

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These State Lawmakers Want To Save Thanksgiving From Greedy Retailers

by Trista3686 Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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In recent years, more and more big-box retailers have begun forcing their employees to work on Thanksgiving Day. Now, some Ohio state legislators have had enough. They’re introducing bills that would give workers the right to refuse to punch in on Thanksgiving, and, if they do agree to show up on the holiday, to receive substantial overtime pay.

“Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be a day when we retreat from consumerism,” says Cleveland’s Democratic State Rep. Mike Foley, the author of one such bill. “It’s a day when you hang out with your family, go play touch football, have a big turkey dinner, and complain about your crazy uncle or cousin—but you don’t think about super blockbuster sales at Target.”

Foley’s House Bill 360 would allow stores to open on Turkey Day but ban them from retaliating against workers who opt to stay home with their families. Workers who do show up would be guaranteed triple wages—which would also apply on Black Friday if stores open earlier than normal (12:01 a.m. and earlier openings have become common).

Foley says he was inspired to write the bill last year while leafing through newspaper circulars advertising Thanksgiving Day sales. “My wife said, ‘You’re a legislator, do something about this,'” he recalls. “And I thought, ‘Well, I am.'”

If employers want to treat Thanksgiving as “an opportunity to make money or get above the black line, so be it,” say Democratic Rep. Robert Hagan, the bill’s cosponsor. “But the fact still remains that they have that responsibility to take care of their workers.”

Out in Middletown, Connecticut, Democratic State Rep. Matt Lesser has pledged to introduce a similar bill next year. “The idea is to discourage retailers” from opening on Thanksgiving, he told the Hartford Courant. “And if they do require their workers to come in on Thanksgiving, that they would at least be paid overtime to compensate.”

Laws restricting Thanksgiving Day commerce aren’t without precedent. For decades, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island have completely banned most retailers from opening their doors on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rules date back to Colonial-era “blue laws” that restricted commercial activity on Sundays. More recently, some labor advocates have called for a federal blue law to protect Christmas and Thanksgiving. (Don’t hold your breath).

Although the GOP likes to think of itself as the party of family values, Foley and Hagan say that the Republicans who control the Ohio legislature want nothing to do with their Thanksgiving law. Their bill, first introduced last year, was quickly tabled. It’s not expected to come up for a vote this year either. “They are on the side of the retailers, the restaurant owners, the people making the money, as opposed to working families,” Hagan says. “That’s the bottom line.”

Still, the backlash against Turkey Day retail has gained some steam. The Boycott Black Thursday Facebook page has more than 100,000 likes. And more than two-dozen retail chains plan to stay dark on Thanksgiving this year, including Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dillards, Nordstrom, GameStop, and Costco. “We don’t believe that we will lose ground to competitors,” GameStop president Tony Bartel told the New York Times. “Even if we lose ground to competitors, we are making it corporate principle—we have committed to associates that we will not open on Thanksgiving.”

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These State Lawmakers Want To Save Thanksgiving From Greedy Retailers

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“Wild-Caught,” Eh? 30 Percent of Shrimp Labels Are False

by MelissaBresnaha Posted on October 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Shrimp is America’s favorite seafood—we eat more of it than any other kind, by a wide margin. And the tasty crustacean still (more or less) thrives near our ample shores—from the Pacific Northwest to the Gulf to the Carolinas. That’s why it’s deeply weird that 90 percent of the shrimp we eat comes from often-fetid farms in Southeast Asia, which tend to snuff out productive mangrove ecosystems and have a sketchy labor record. But it gets worse. Even when we do try to choose wild-caught US shrimp, we’re often fooled. That’s the message of a new report by the ocean-conservation group Oceana.

The researchers sampled 143 shrimp products from 111 grocery stores and restaurants in Portland, Ore., New York City, Washington D.C., and along the Gulf of Mexico, and subjected them to DNA testing. Result: 30 percent of them were misrepresented on labels.

They found the most deception in New York City, where 43 percent of the samples from supermarkets and restaurants proved to be misleadingly labeled. Of those, more than half were “farmed whiteleg shrimp disguised as wild-caught shrimp.” Oof. D.C. shrimp eaters have also have cause for doubt about what’s being served them: Supermarkets there showed better than in ones in New York, but nearly half of shrimp samples from D.C. restaurants turned up mislabeled.

Even in the Gulf, still the site of a robust shrimp fishery despite the occasional cataclysmic oil spill and vast annual dead zones from agricultural runoff, the researchers found that “over one-third of the products labeled as ‘Gulf’ shrimp were farmed.” On the other hand, “nearly two-thirds of the samples simply labeled as ‘shrimp’ were actually wild-caught Gulf shrimp,” the report states, “possibly a missed marketing opportunity for promoting domestically caught seafood.”

Only Portlandia emerged virtually unscathed from Oceana’s scrutiny: Just one sample in 20 turned out to be mislabeled—a dish presented as “wild Pacific shrimp” turned out to be farmed.

Beyond rank mislabeling, the report also reveals that consumers indulge their shrimp habit from within a generalized information void. “The majority of restaurant menus surveyed did not provide the diner with any information on the type of shrimp, whether it was farmed/wild or its origin,” Oceana found. As for supermarkets, “30 percent of the shrimp products surveyed in grocery stores lacked information on country-of-origin, 29 percent lacked farmed/wild information and one in five did not provide either.

This overriding lack of transparency does more than lull us into accepting an inferior product. As Paul Greenberg argues in his brilliant 2014 book American Catch, it also makes our coastal areas—home to 40 percent of the US population—vulnerable to climate change.

That’s because treating treasures like the Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishery as an afterthought allows us to disregard the ecosystems that make them possible: the region’s wetlands, which are vanishing at the rate of one football field-sized chunk per hour, largely under pressure from the oil industry. These coastal landscapes don’t just provide nurseries for shrimp and other seafood; they also provide critical buffers against the increasingly violent storms and rising sea levels promised (and already being triggered) by a changing climate. Greenberg argues that a revival of interest in US-caught shrimp could rally support for wetland restoration, “conjoining of the interests of seafood and the interests of humans.”

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“Wild-Caught,” Eh? 30 Percent of Shrimp Labels Are False

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Film Review: "The Hand That Feeds"

by Rosario38U Posted on October 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Hand That Feeds

JUBILEE FILMS

At the beginning of The Hand That Feeds, Mahoma López, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, counts out the $290 he’s just received for a 60-hour workweek in a deli on New York City’s ritzy Upper East Side. The film feels like a familiar tale of exploitation and wage theft, until López and his Hot & Crusty coworkers stand up and fight back. In this behind-the-scenes look at the ensuing labor dispute, directors Rachel Lears and Robin Blotnick lead us through the struggles and eventual triumph of López & Co. as they enlist the help of activists and, notably, a group of Occupy Wall Street-influenced twentysomethings. Despite the film’s narrow focus—which leaves out some much-needed context about the treatment of immigrants in the restaurant biz—it’s an inspiring tale.

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Film Review: "The Hand That Feeds"

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This Restaurant Is Trying To Be The Worst One on Yelp

by Delmar8501 Posted on September 18, 2014

Mother Jones

Botto Bistro wants to be the worst-reviewed restaurant on Yelp. Fed up with the site’s alleged manipulation of consumer reviews, owners David Cerretini and Michele Massimo have been offering a 25 percent discount at their Bay Area Italian eatery for each excoriating Yelp review, the Richmond Standard reports. Here are some recent entries from Botto Bistro’s Yelp page:

Yelp has for years been accused of soliciting money from mom-and-pop restaurant owners in exchange for hiding negative customer reviews. In response to a lawsuit over the alleged practice, a court recently ruled that Yelp has the legal right to manipulate reviews and engage in “hard bargaining”—practices restaurant owners have called extortion. Yelp denies that it accepts money to alter or suppress reviews.

According to Inside Scoop SF, Yelp’s only response to Botto Bistro has been a boilerplate email from its customer service division (see below), to which the restaurant sent a tongue-in-cheek rejoinder:

Inside Scoop SF

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This Restaurant Is Trying To Be The Worst One on Yelp

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