About This Episode

How will the COVID-19 crisis transform the restaurant industry? Dirt Candy chef and owner Amanda Cohen and host Billy Shore discuss how restaurants will survive the pandemic. Cohen says she and other chefs are struggling with reopening their restaurants after the crisis has passed. “How are we going to reopen? What am I reopening to? Who is going out? Who still has money to go out in this city? And who wants to go to a crowded restaurant?,” she asks. She also stresses that the pandemic has clearly shown that the traditional business model for restaurants does not provide enough for workers. “If our workers need charity so badly, maybe owners weren’t doing this right in the first place,” wrote Cohen in a March 26th New York Times Op-Ed. She believes that the restaurant industry needs to make some changes to support higher wages and health insurance for its workers. “If we reopen the same way as we closed, we will have literally learned nothing,” she says. Join us for this critical discussion about the future of the restaurant industry.