San Francisco Citizen

I don’t know, I think this is going to be it, here’s the best media smackdown for 2011.

So there I was on the Twitter and I saw this from John Birdsall:

“RT @jonkauffman: The Chron and the GGRA seem to be going after food trucks. What’s wrong with this story? http://t.co/WhjP1GLX“

Intriguing, non? So I click on over to read “The Chronicle and the GGRA Go After Food Trucks“

So then I’m all like yes, yes, yes, that’s exactly right, Jonathan Kauffman!

Go ahead, check it out, the “flawed” piece in the Chron: ”Restaurants want to put brakes on food trucks.”

OK then.

To Tempest Bar’s Tony Cooney:

Uh, gee, maybe your place isn’t so hot for lunch. Why not work on that instead of crying like a baby? Perhaps you should shut down or move? 

To “San Francisco merchants, property managers and restaurant owners”:

This is America, Land of the Free, right? (Cough, you’re just a bunch of rent seekers, cough)

To “opponents [who] complain that the law doesn’t limit the number of food trucks that can operate in a specific location”:

Tough cookies!

To Rob Black, “a lawyer and executive director of Golden Gate Restaurant Association”:

Lo-ser! (You gotta say that one the right way, as if harrasing Darryl Strawberry from the bleachers. I mean, c’mon, do you think that a nerdy, downtown-backed lawyer out of U.C. Hastings College of Law would ever have a prayer of becoming Supervisor of District Six?)

To “those motherfuckers at the Golden Gate Restaurant Association“:

FUCK YOU. Oh, wait a second, that’s not my line, that’s a direct quote from Chris Daly’s wife back in 2006. And at the time I thought, “Gee, what an odd thing to say.” But I’m starting to understand what she was talking about.

For example, Chris Daly wanted letter grades from the health department posted outside of San Francisco restaurants but the GGRA put the kibosh on that. Mmmm. Now, let’s take the time to explore this.

Check it:

“An overwhelming 83% of San Francisco surveyors say they agree that restaurants should be required to conspicuously post a letter grade reflecting the results of their health department inspection (as recently passed in NYC, taking a cue from LA).”

Consumers want this, but the GGRA doesn’t so guess what, we don’t have it. You know what GGRA? The bottom 20% of your members shouldn’t even be in business, so why do you spend so much time defending them?  

Hey, let’s see what Stanford Economist Phil Leslie has to say about letter grading:

“Sales at restaurants receiving an A grade rose 5.7 percent, or about $15,000 a year. B-level restaurant sales increased 0.7 percent, and sales at C-level establishments decreased 1 percent.”

So you don’t want that* for your members, huh, GGRA? 

I don’t know why restaurant owners in San Francisco expect so much. I don’t know why they don’t expect to ever have any competition.

Remember this earlier in the year, when a struggling restaurateur went apeshit and starting parking her SUV specifically to block a food truck?

I’ll put a credit in if you want, but I don’t think you do. She’s still out there. 

Oh, different day, different street, different truck, different obstructionist but the same purpose of parking vehicles in spaces to kick food trucks out of San Francisco.

I’ll put a credit in if you want, but I don’t think you do. That owner is still out there. 

Struggling restaurateurs go after food trucks for the same reason they go after Yelp, IMO.

Speaking of which, maybe this is the kind of thing what fuels the wrath of legacy restaurant owners?

“This review is completely devoid of the passion associated with the Japanese Curry truck fiasco.

Foodwise: Salads = 3 stars, (Mixt Greens / Working Girls/ Sellers Mkt and even Portico or Lee’s are better though). Sandwiches = 1 star (this has become an office joke.  $8+ for two pieces of meat, 1 teaspoon of sourkraut, and 1 piece of cheese.  Not prepared to order, sitting in a cooler behind the counter!

Service: meh.

Atmosphere: Awkward flow from left to right , pleasant enough tables outside

Price: Crap.  My salad was smaller than any of the choices above but cost more.  And I went simple.”

Could be.

In closing, let’s all give thanks to SFoodie Jonathan Kauffman.

Congratulations, JK, on winning MSM Media Smackdown of the Year, 2011.

*”This study examines the effect of an increase in product quality information to consumers on firms’choices of product quality. In 1998, Los Angeles County introduced hygiene quality grade cards to bedisplayed in restaurant windows. We show that the grade cards cause (i) restaurant health inspection scores to increase, (ii) consumer demand to become sensitive to changes in restaurants’ hygiene quality,and (iii) the number of foodborne illness hospitalizations to decrease. We also provide evidence thatthis improvement in health outcomes is not fully explained by consumers substituting from poor hygiene restaurants to good hygiene restaurants. These results imply the grade cards cause restaurants to make hygiene quality improvements”