San Francisco Might Push Grocery Stores to Give Workers $5 Raises

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

• At Tuesday’s meeting of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, the Supes mulled a resolution that would urge all “grocery stores in San Francisco to provide all employees an additional five dollars per hour in hazard pay,” as long as SF is in the purple, red, or orange levels of the state’s color-coded COVID-19 risk system. It’s a resolution, not a law, which means that all the Supes can do is ask for the pay raise — it’s not a mandate like the one currently under consideration by their counterparts in LA. But even the suggestion that their frontline workers should be paid more has upset the food store lobby the California Grocers Association, ABC 7 reports. CGA president Ron Fong warns of “unintended consequences” like “the effect of passing these costs on to our consumers through food prices,” and said “when you mandate a 30 percent...labor increase we have to pass that on to somebody.” Locally, Janet Tarlov, the co-founder of Glen Park’s Canyon Market, threatens that if her business is “pressured or mandated to pay all our workers $5 more per hour, we would have no choice but to conduct significant lay-offs for the first time in the 14 years we have been operating.”
• Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss told the region’s Board of Supervisors that the Bay Area stay-at-home order, which cannot be lifted until its hospitals’ ICU beds are at 15 percent availability, “will be continued” past its hoped-upon end date of January 8. [KPIX]
• While the rest of us subsist on takeout and delivery meals, visitors to Bay Area casinos can enjoy indoor dining at restaurants like local pizza icon Tony Gemignani’s namesake spot, Tony’s of North Beach. [SF Chronicle]
• After thousands of dollars in fines and “a lot upset amongst the neighboring restaurants that were complying,” Danville’s Incontro Ristorante was shut down by county officials over health order violations. [ABC 7]
• Meanwhile, a group of Monterey County restaurant owners claim that their Constitutional rights are being violated by health orders restricting their operation. [Bay Area News Group]
• SF’s Supes struggled over their confirmation of Mission cafe Manny’s owner, Manny Yekutiel, to the SFMTA board, as he has no experience with transportation or public transit. [SF Examiner]
• Local food writer Houston Porter has an idea on how to keep your favorite restaurants afloat: “We have picked a handful of favorites that we feel we really could not live without and...try to order from one of them each week and rotate through a couple of our secondary choices each month too.” [North Bay Business Journal]
• The SF 49ers are offering Jimmy Garoppolo jerseys to five lucky diners who submit proof that they’re eating at Bay Area restaurants. [Bay Area News Group]
• Today is the day to hit your local bakery for rosca de reyes. [Berkeleyside]
• SF Mayor London Breed says that a new program will waive up to $5 million in fees for the city’s struggling restaurants and other small businesses. [SF Examiner]