Blood stains on NY's white tablecloths

Mumsy, Biff-ster, alert the help to prepare for class war. Turns out there’s a recession underway, and it’s cutting our New York dining options. Pizza from Ray’s just won’t do, old boy. If this keeps up we’ll be dressing in black and eating downtown at one of Keith McNally’s places.   

Lever House, Country and Atria have already closed. Now Tailor, that quaint place in Soho with all the crazy desserts and cocktails, has gone bankrupt. There’s talk of Le Bernardin hanging up the fillet knife, and even Sirio is complaining about business at Le Cirque. We should’ve suspected something when Per Se put in a bar menu.   

It seems hedge-fund managers and other hoi polloi just can’t afford to drop hundreds or thousands a night, and there aren’t enough of us sclerotics left to keep a starched-tablecloth place in the black.  

Landlords set their rents with the expectation that restaurant prices and spending could climb forever, much the way new money types bet all those houses between Park Avenue and the Hamptons would keep rising in value. But gravity won out.   

Now the places of the moment are burger joints, and people are getting the visas needed to dine in Brooklyn—out past Peter Luger! Could jaunts to Queens be far behind?   

So rally the staff to dress us for an old-time hurrah, a true blue-blood blowout on the town. And what’ll it be? Russian Tea Room, the Rainbow Room, or Tavern on the Green?

YouTube: Good for the soul?

Catholics use the confessional to ask for forgiveness. Restaurant executives seem to prefer YouTube.   

The latest mea culpa was posted Thursday by KFC, after it infuriated freebie hounds by suspending a much-ballyhooed giveaway of grilled chicken.  “On behalf of all our employees and franchisees, I just wanted to apologize to you. The response to our Kentucky Grilled Chicken has been overwhelming,” chain president Roger Eaton says in the video. “So we can’t redeem your free coupon at this time.”   

Translation: Our chicken was so good that the moochers scarfed up all the samples we were willing to give away. But here’s a raincheck and a promise of a soft drink for your troubles.   

He should’ve studied Domino’s handling of the employee shenanigans at a North Carolina unit to see what a regretful chain executive looks like. Patrick Doyle, the pizza chain’s U.S. president, came across as genuinely sorry and outraged that two knucklehead employees would mess with a restaurant’s food. “It sickens me,” says Doyle. “We sincerely apologize for this incidence…We are taking this incredibly seriously.”   

Let that be a lesson to any chain that’s considering a YouTube apology for lapses like, oh, maybe serving a snake’s head in some broccoli, or selling a Happy Meal with a condom inside.

That’s assuming T.G.I. Friday’s and McDonald’s will turn to the Tube for their make-nice efforts. Several other chains didn't use the video-sharing site to explain their big-time blunders. Instead, Quiznos just let its recent free-subs fiasco reek in public for awhile.  Crain’s Chicago Business quoted an official as charactering the Million Subs Giveaway as a marketing home run despite the fallout with some customers.   

Burger King apologized via more traditional media for its “little Mexican” depiction in a European ad campaign, but it has yet to address parents who are outraged by the chain’s SpongeBob SquarePants commercial for U.S. youngsters.   

Hey, it’s worth 15 minutes and the investment in a Flip video camera. 

Restaurant association to offer more flu resources

The National Restaurant Association will post a "tool kit" of resources on its website in the next 24 hours to help restaurateurs deal with the swine flu, a representative said this afternoon during a webinar on the epidemic. 

He did not provide details.

The association's website is restaurant.org. It also has a special page set up to provide information about the flu. 

The webinar also revealed that hand sanitizers can be an effective way of killing the swine-flu virus on hands, provided at least 60% of the type being used consists of ethanol. 

Bruce Cords, an infectious disease expert for webinar sponsor Ecolab, also noted that differentiating between swine flu and other forms of flu may become important when restaurants have to decide when to allow a recovered employee back to work. Viruses like norovirus can presumably last a lot longer and pose more of a risk. 

Among the other interesting tidbits:

--Encourage guests and employees to avoid a recontamination while washing their hands by leaving the water running. The hand washer should grab a paper towel, thoroughly dry his or her hands, and then use the towel to clean off the faucet.

--The swine flu virus only survives on hands for about five minutes.

--However, hard surfaces like kitchen counters can harbor the virus for up to 48 hours, and can be spread to hands on contact for 24 hours.

--The virus almost certainly cannot be spread via the surfaces of foods, like melons from Mexico, because it doesn't survive that long on porous surfaces.

Big names to profit from OpenTable stock offer

OpenTable should’ve pushed up the start date of its initial public offering and just auctioned off the shares at the Beard Awards. Many of the sellers were likely there, including Danny Meyer (selling roughly 69,000 shares, keeping around 124,000), Tim and Nina Zagat (selling all 155,000 of their shares), Rich Melman and Kevin Brown of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (selling about 26,000 shares through their partnership). 

Securities documents indicate the online reservation service expects to sell about 3 million shares for its stakeholders at an anticipated price of around $13 each.  

The filings show that OpenTable lost about $1 million last year on revenues of $55.8 million, after making more than  $9 million in 2007. Last year’s intake represented a 31% jump from the ’07 revenue figure.  The company was profitable during the first quarter of this year, according to figures cited in the prospectus. 

The coffee (plot) thickens

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get the jump on Dunkin’ Donuts, a concept that once advertised how ridiculously early it arises to make the doughnuts.   

McDonald’s is rolling its McCafe line-up of beverages into the Greater New York area. Starbucks announces that it’ll be selectively reducing prices in some markets, which means some stores in the Tri-State Area could be among the discounters. So what’s Dunkin’ doing? Rolling back its latte prices in a pre-emptive strike.   

The chain announced today that it’ll be permanently discounting the prices of “all sizes, flavors and varieties” of latte drinks by about 15%. No reason was given in English for the haircut, though there was some corpo-blather about the changes being consistent with the current “You ‘kin do it” ad slogan.  

Restaurants adjust ops to swine flu realities

Visits here are spiking as people search via Google for what restaurants are doing about swine flu. My hit-counter program shows what query terms are being input, but not who’s doing the seeking. Are these consumers looking for reassurance, or restaurateurs scouting for safeguards they could readily adopt? Presumably both camps have been active, since there’s surprisingly little information for either.   

A previous post provided a sampling of what restaurants were doing. Here are a few more responses that came to light in recent days: 

Golden Corral has reportedly changed its operating procedures to require handwashing by all restaurant employees three times an hour. According to a news story carried by a Greenville, S.C., TV station, a “Code 100” is called every 20 minutes. That mustering call requires every staffer to immediately wash his or her hands, the report says.

More intense attention is directed at employees who handle money, the story says. Hand sanitizers are positioned near cash registers, where patrons can also give their mitts a shot of disinfectant.   Of course, experts say hand sanitizers aren’t a magic bullet against viruses.

Steak-Out, the steak delivery chain, provides patrons with what amounts to FAQs about swine flu. Included on the handout is ample advice that has nothing to do with being a Steak-Out customer, a PSA of sorts that leaves he impression that the chain is on top of the situation. 

Also provided is this more focused assurance:  

Our commitment to our customers during this outbreak is to make sure Steak-Out employees are following all safe handling procedures including frequent hand washing, proper cooking procedures and making sure only healthy employees are allowed to work, handle, and deliver your meal.

The chain is also looking at ways of lessening contact with customers while fears of contamination still hover in the stratosphere.

Experts have given that general dynamic, evident everywhere from schools to sporting events, the label of “social distancing.”     It's being put forth as the prudent mindset as the tally of infections continues to rise.

And that’s posing a dilemma for the high-society greeters at some playgrounds for the boldfaced-name set: To air-kiss or not to air-kiss, as the New York Times recently put it. 

As James Barron writes…

Julian Niccolini, an owner of the Four Seasons restaurant on East 52nd Street, said there were signs of anxiety in the power-lunch crowd his restaurant is famous for. “For the first time, some people said, ‘I don’t think I should shake your hand’ ” on Thursday, he said, “but most of them shook my hand anyway.” And at a birthday party there that evening, he said, “Everybody was still kissing everybody.”  

 Indeed, some are not giving a kiss a second thought.

Re-thinking show etiquette in the swine-flu era

Rumors of exhibitors giving away logo’d face masks at the National Restaurant Association’s upcoming convention are completely unfounded. Ditto for the promise of free Tamiflu inoculations at one vendor’s booth.  I say that with complete assurance because I made up both notions. (Important note to vendors who now have a figurative light bulb above their heads: A copyright fee applies.)   

But more than a few of the social conventions evident at a trade show may well be reconsidered this time around. For instance, the convention is largely a series of awards ceremonies with several hundred booths, seminars and parties mixed in. A handshake is de rigueur for accepting whatever honor is being bestowed. Might that tradition become a victim of the outbreak?   

The same holds true for the obligatory grip-and-grin photo that accompanies each prize presentation. It’ll be a tough adjustment for photographers, so don’t be judgmental if you see a few shutterbugs sulking around the Jim Beam booth.   

You also have to wonder about the taxi line at McCormick Place, which can look around 3 o’clock or so like Section J of Wrigley Field.  Will people start leaving more space between themselves and the next person in the queue? That could extend the line by two or three more miles.   

My prediction: The Ecolab booth will be particularly busy this year as some attendees stop by and beg for a complete spray-down.