Welcome to p.m. Intel, your bite-sized roundup of Bay Area food and restaurant news. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.
Doordash’s Founders Are Billionaires Now
Also: Diners at Original Joe’s get aggro, and more news to know today
- It’s been quite a week for San Francisco-based food delivery app Doordash. The company went public Wednesday, with its stock soaring to $189.51 a share. That’s “about 17 times revenue,” CNBC reports, a valuation that one analyst described as “stone-cold crazy.” Of the naysayers, CEO Tony Xu told the Information from his home in SF that “everyone is entitled to their opinion,” and it’s probably easy to be laid-back about doubters when — as reported by Fox Business — the IPO “pushed Xu’s net worth to approximately $3.1 billion, with [cofounders Andy] Fang and [Stanley] Tang’s net worths each reaching roughly $2.8 billion.” That wealth doesn’t appear to be trickling down, though, as Eater Chicago reports that the company has tacked a new $1.50 fee to each order as that’s the only way the company can “continue to offer [customers] convenient delivery while ensuring that Dashers are active and earning.” That dissonance might be one of the reasons New York Times editorial board member Greg Bensinger says the company is helping “to gut the restaurant industry.”
- Despite the sit-down service shutdown, folks were still enjoying meals at a heated outdoor dining setup at North Beach’s Original Joe’s — and they got pretty peevish when asked what was up. [ABC 7]
- Owners of some of SF’s most popular restaurants banded together to write a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a request for support of the industry-supporting RESTAURANTS Act. [SF Chronicle]
- Vegetarian Chinese takeout spot Cozy Wok, which opened less than two months ago, is operated by a father and son out of ghost kitchen Jingletown Eats. [Berkeleyside]
- A new San Francisco law allows the city’s smallest businesses to exit their leases if landlords won’t negotiate pandemic-rate rents. [SF Business Times]
- Governor Gavin Newsom’s Plumpjack businesses got way more money in federal relief than we thought, reportedly cashing in about $2.9 million in paycheck protection loans. [LA Times]
- North Bay Assemblymember Marc Levine says his multi-household dinner date Monday wasn’t dangerous, as “I take health pretty seriously both for my family and for my community and I would never do anything to put that at risk.” [Bay Area News Group]
- California’s greater Sacramento region, which encompasses 13 counties and the Lake Tahoe area, must enter into the state’s stay-at-home order as of 11:59 p.m. tonight, closing down all tourism and shuttering outdoor dining. [NBC Bay Area]
- Monterey County has decided to shut down, too. [KPIX]
- The organizer of SF’s SantaCon event says that he’s heard people are planning a rogue gathering in Union Square this weekend, but he thinks that’s a bad idea. [KRON 4]
See More:
