International Smoke Worker Suspects She Caught COVID-19 on the Job

Welcome to p.m. Intel, your bite-sized roundup of Bay Area food and restaurant news. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.

• Becca Camping, a 24-year-old server at the San Francisco location of Michael Mina/Ayesha Curry collab International Smoke, tells the SF Chronicle that she fell ill after working “five dinner shifts a week, often serving people who had their masks off the entire time they were at their tables.” San Francisco’s had a rule that diners must cover their faces as servers approach since July, but it’s been inconsistently enforced and followed (and some restaurants that do enforce it face harsh Yelp reviews from angry diners). Camping says she has only left home to shop for groceries and work since the beginning of the pandemic, and took a COVID-19 test every two weeks. “You can do everything right and wear a mask and not go out, and you can still get it,” she says.
• Cult IPA Pliny the Younger dropped its annual limited release just weeks before the pandemic began, but fans of the brew won’t be gathering in 2021. ABC 7 reports that Russian River Brewing Company has announced that they “are hitting the pause button on our annual 2021 Pliny the Younger release” and they “fully expect to be back in business and better than ever in 2022.”
• A weekend article from the SF Chronicle said that California Gov. Gavin Newsom had an 11-12 percent chance of coronavirus exposure during his now-legendary mid-pandemic dinner party at luxury Napa restaurant the French Laundry. But by Sunday night, Newsom said he was quarantining for a different reason: Per Politico, the Governor’s entire family is isolating after “three of their children were exposed to a California Highway Patrol officer who has tested positive for Covid-19.”
• If you’re feeling constrained by the Bay Area’s current COVID-19 restrictions, consider this: In Los Angeles, Eater LA reports, all outdoor dining must shut down on Wednesday, and every restaurant must revert to a takeout or delivery model for the next three weeks.
• The closure of a Point Richmond Starbucks could harm every restaurant in the area’s small-business district. [KPIX]
• The non-profit Mission Food Hub is seeing an unprecedented demand these days. and now its organizers are doing everything they can to score 1,800 turkeys for residents in need. [Mission Local]
• Briefly shuttered by the pandemic, decades-old Cupertino landmark Bobbi’s Coffee Shop has been revived by its landlord, who says she loves the diner too much to let it close. [East Bay Times]