SF Supervisor Floats Idea of a Permanent Cap on Delivery App Fees

Welcome to p.m. Intel, your midday roundup of Bay Area food and restaurant news from publications near and far. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.

• Delivery apps won big at the box office Tuesday, as the passage of Prop 22 means companies like Doordash, Postmates, etc. won’t have to pay delivery drivers for all the hours they work or otherwise follow California employment law. But the city of San Francisco still dealt the apps a glancing blow Wednesday, as the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a move to cap the commissions the companies can charge restaurants at 15 percent. The cap will remain in place for 60 days after San Francisco restaurants resume indoor dining at 100 percent capacity, a date that appears very far away, indeed. According to the SF Business Times, the supes also discussed the possibility that the cap could be made permanent, with Supervisor Aaron Peskin saying that the temporary cap was a compromise, and “at some point [a permanent cap] might be the best practice for this industry.”
• City College of San Francisco, the free-to-attend community college with campuses across SF, has enlisted a trio of chefs for a series of cannabis cooking classes to be taught in spring of 2021. These are non-credit, remote courses — not classes one would take in pursuit of a degree — focused on “the practicalities of cooking with cannabis” and “the cultural significance and backstory of select dishes,” SF Weekly reports. Instructors will include The Art of Weed Butter author/chef Mennlay Golokeh Aggrey, restaurateur Miguel Trinidad, and personal chef/caterer Amanda Jackson.
• In San Francisco, Proposition H, a measure intended to speed up permitting for small businesses, passed with 61.5 percent of the vote, the SF Business Times reports. This is good news for the food industry, as it would make it easier for many bars and restaurants to open without the bureaucratic red tape long associated with doing business in the city.
• The social experience of eating yakitori has changed these days, as fears of COVID-19 make shared skewers of meat a risky proposition. Berkeleyside reports on three East Bay yakitori spots that have changed their business models to operate during the pandemic, flipping to bento boxes, catering, and sandwiches.
• Three-Michelin-starred restaurant Single Thread’s has purchased their “forever farm,” the restaurant said via press release Tuesday, buying a 24-acre property at which they hope to build a “working farm centered around sustainable agricultural techniques to also bring biodiversity to a predominantly grape focused area.”
• Saratoga vintners tell the Bay Area News Group that so far, they haven’t discovered any smoke taint in their crops, making for a promising 2020 harvest.
• A new grocery delivery startup called Buffalo Market has launched in SF, the SF Business Times reports, with next-day delivery of produce from area farms.