Caterers protest the protests against biz events

Consider this scenario: Mega Screw & Trust, a New York bank, is teetering on the brink of insolvency until feds showed up with bags of greenbacks from the Troubled Assets Relief Program. It stays open, and even decides to proceed with the big party it was planning for 20-year veterans who met their cost-cutting goals. But the press finds out and makes a stink, prompting MST to cancel the five-figure fete.

Sunshine Bank & Kitten Saver, a medium-sized competitor that stayed financially fit, witnesses the fallout and decides it’d better pull the plug on a celebration honoring the employees who came up with the best give-back programs for local charities. It alerts Joe’s Neighborhood Grill that it won’t be taking the back room next Friday. The banquet’s off.

Edmund Schmoe III, a former Mega Screw & Trust VP who now works as a banquet waiter at Joe’s, finds out he won’t be needed next Friday. His first response is letting his brothers know they can’t count on a contribution from him for the catered party they were planning for their father’s birthday. The siblings decide to cancel.

That sequence of events, or at least a segment of it, has transpired often enough to prompt a muted outcry from the National Association of Catering Executives. Treading carefully, the group yesterday released survey results that indicate 90% of the nation’s caterers and meeting planners have lost business because of the outcry over businesses holding events in the current economic climate. Almost the same percentage of respondents say the public outrage has made that climate worse.

"While I understand that in these times it is important to spend carefully, the bashing of the catering, events, meetings and travel business is not only unfair and prejudicial to our industry, it is counterproductive to economic recovery," said Greg Casella, the San Jose, Calif., caterer who serves as president of NACE.

If the situation is that bad for caterers, imagine the fallout for restaurants. Not only are they losing party and banquet business, but even routine expense account meals.

The question is, what can be done about it? As Restaurant Reality Check previously reported, the National Restaurant Association quietly pushed back last month against federal legislation that would have mandated cuts in banquets, catering and other foodservice expenses by companies receiving bailout funds. How can any group publicly call for those types of expenses to continue when so many people are struggling to afford groceries, never mind a party?

Still, NACE deserves a lot of credit for spotlighting a facet of the situation that deserves consideration. As it noted in releasing yesterday’s statement, its membership extends to 4,000 businesses, which obviously must employ a big multiple of that number. Those people are struggling to eat, too.

Get real, unions

Restaurant employees’ union to Burger King: You’re cheating taxpayers.

Romeo to union: Oh, shut up.

Sorry, but I’m really tired of watching the Service Employees International Union and its fellow the traveler, Restaurant Opportunties Center of New York (and now Maine), try to manipulate public sympathy with their preposterous Grassy Knoll take on reality. They twist the facts to turn restaurant employers into the sort of mustachioed villains who once tied matrons to railroad tracks.

This time around, for instance, SEIU is hoping to convince the public that Burger King Holdings is siphoning off some of the federal bail-out funds that were channeled to banks. Follow closely, because this has more twists and turns than a day in Illinois politics.

One of the big stakeholders in BK, the union notes in a statement issued yesterday, is Goldman Sachs. And the one-time broker, now reclassified as a bank, was a recipient of some $10 billion from the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) kitty.

Up to this point, we’re still reality-based. But now the acid kicks in.

The Obama Administration and Congress want more accountability for how TARP dollars are used, notes SEIU. But an additional $273 million of taxpayers’ money is being siphoned off by BK. The Bernie Maddoff-like scheme: Not providing healthcare benefits and paying “sub-poverty wage levels.”

Let me review: BK doesn’t provide health care, which means employees have to find other ways of affording medical attention. A significant stake in the company is held by Goldman Sachs, which was given $10 billion in TARP funds. Ergo, Goldman and BK are cheating the American public.

Follow?

But it gets worse, SEIU says. BK CEO John Chidsey collected $5.4 million in 2008 compensation, including bonuses. Goldman Sachs paid out $6.5 billion in bonuses, the union says. If just the Goldman Sachs performance-based pay had been given instead to BK’s workers, SEIU says, all 360,000 of them would have collected $18,000.

Never mind that BK is a publicly owned company in which Sachs merely holds a stake, albeit a big one. And that BK’s employees aren’t paid by Sachs. Indeed, there’s no flow of money from Sachs to BK, never mind to Chidsey.

I’m not saying that Sachs should have paid big-buck bonuses when it’s collecting government bailout funds. But I’m not sure what that has to do with BK. Might it be because SEIU would like to enlist its employees as members?

Similarly, whether or not BK should provide some type of health-insurance support is a legitimate topic of discussion. If SEIU wanted to start a reality-based conversation on the responsibility of minimum-wage employers, we’d be in a whole different realm. But, here again, it’s just trying to look like the white-hatted cowboy who unties Snidely Whiplash’s knots and frees the maiden from the oncoming locomotive. It’s trying to curry favor by manipulating the facts to make it look like a bravo fighter for right.

Instead, it’s accusing BK and Sachs of “opposing efforts to stop rebuilding the economy” while “taking billions of dollars through taxpayers.”

Why not just accuse the pair of kicking puppies and trying to outlaw American flags?