San Francisco's foodie scene suffers as its workers flee high cost of living

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

San Francisco's foodie scene suffers as its workers flee high cost of living

With the median price of a rental at $4,550, restaurant workers can’t afford to live in the city considered the epicenter of the foodie revolution

Erin McCormick in San Francisco
Mon 10 Dec 2018 07.00 GMT

The handwritten sign on the front window of the shuttered Blue Fig Cafe last month bade a sad farewell to the days when San Francisco could support an old-fashioned coffee house.

The problem that led the eight-year-old Valencia Street cafe to shut down wasn’t a lack of coffee drinkers in the trendy Mission district. Nor was it the sky-high commercial rents or the competition from the tech industry cafeterias. It was simply that it has become nearly impossible to pay anyone in San Francisco enough to make you a cup of coffee.

“It takes a lot to keep a place like this going, and lately we have found it hard to find great people to help us,” wrote the cafe’s owners on two sheets of printer paper taped to the door, reposted as a photo in the neighborhood news blog, Mission Local. “The type of folks who you have gotten to know over the years – students, artists, cooks – can no longer afford to live in San Francisco.”

With the median price for a San Francisco rental at $4,550, even hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour and requiring health benefits, as San Francisco has done, hasn’t been enough to maintain a healthy heartbeat in the restaurant industry labor market.

The fallout has hit restaurants throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, long known as the epicenter of the foodie revolution. The top-rated wine country restaurant Terra and the historic Berkeley fish house Spenger’s are among this year’s additions to the long list of area restaurants that have closed with owners saying it is nearly impossible to find staff.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/09/san-franciscos-foodie-scene-suffers-as-its-workers-flee-high-cost-of-living

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Fifteen bucks an hour for a 40 hour week

results in less than half of the money needed to pay for that median priced apartment.

I wonder if at least some people in SF are doubling and tripling up in apartments as so often happens in NYC. Dining room and living room turned into extra bedrooms.

People where I live (Santa Fe) think that housing is pricey in this city. They have no idea how really expensive it is in some other places.

[Me.]

2. Consequences, Consequences