Restaurants
Six Feet Apart with Alex Wagner
Six Feet Apart with Alex Wagner
4.8 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2020
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a moment of profound unrest and unprecedented chaos, Americans are wondering what comes next. For citizens and businesses alike, this is a period of questioning, rethinking and rebuilding -- sentiments that have been reflected in many conversations we've had over the last ten weeks. For the very last episode of Six Feet Apart, we look at what the pandemic has done to one of our social institutions, the American restaurant, to better understand what went wrong, how it might get fixed, and what happens to everyone in the meantime. First, Alex talks to Riley, a server in Nashville who is working shifts at recently re-opened local pub. Then she speaks with to Danny Meyer, the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, about what re-opening might look like in the country's hardest-hit city, and the implications for the restaurant business on whole. And finally, she talks to Naomi Pomeroy, the chef and owner of the tiny, critically-acclaimed Oregon restaurant Beast, about what might happen to an independent restaurant surviving on tight margins in a moment of crisis and reinvention.
For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/sixfeetapart.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to six feet apart. I'm Alex Wagner. |
| 0:05.5 | Humanity is in a state of upheaval. On top of a global pandemic that shuttered economies around the globe, there are now protests for justice across the country and widespread civil unrest. |
| 0:18.4 | Americans especially are seeing systemic injustice, and now they're asking, |
| 0:23.1 | how do we fix it? What comes next? If there's one feeling that's been common in all of the |
| 0:29.0 | interviews for this podcast, from rabbis to basketball stars to carrot growers, it's a profound |
| 0:34.8 | sense of uncertainty about what the future holds. But also, universally, there's a profound sense of uncertainty about what the future holds. But also, universally, |
| 0:40.2 | there's a real sense of responsibility to make sure that whatever we build next is a lot better |
| 0:45.4 | and more equitable than what we have today. This is our last episode of six feet apart. Before |
| 0:53.1 | you shed a tear, it was never going to go on forever, and let's be real. |
| 0:57.5 | A lot of people ain't staying six feet apart these days. |
| 1:01.3 | We're choosing to end the series focused on a part of our culture that very directly tells that story about uncertainty and resilience. |
| 1:09.7 | Restaurants. |
| 1:10.8 | For some perspective, eating out is a $4 trillion industry in this country. |
| 1:15.5 | That is 4% of America's GDP. |
| 1:18.6 | And COVID-19 has decimated restaurants. |
| 1:21.2 | One quarter of the unemployment claims in April were for restaurant jobs. |
| 1:26.2 | But more than that, restaurants are part of our social fabric. |
| 1:30.4 | They're where we relax and connect, where friendships are made and relationships are cemented. |
| 1:36.0 | They are escapes and they are necessities. From the local burger joint to the white linen |
| 1:41.5 | birthday dinner, they're part of our American way of life. |
| 1:44.9 | And it's unclear what will happen to them, or at least a lot of them. |
| 1:49.1 | How do restaurants survive in cities that remain shuttered? |
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