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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Here's how we'll end for this week. There's no such thing as a free lunch, even not this week for a lot of Grubhub users in New York City who were promised a free lunch. On Tuesday, maybe you were part of this, maybe you've not heard about it, the food delivery service ran a free lunch promotion for New Yorkers and that's when the problems began.

The $15 credit from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM caused such a surge in demand that many restaurants had no choice but to cancel people's orders. According to Eater at its peak, as many as 6,000 takeout and delivery orders were being placed through Grubhub in the greater New York area each minute. 6,000 takeout orders a minute. Multiple media outlets started using the phrase "the free lunch fiasco."

Who's got a story of being a restaurant or a delivery worker caught in the madness? Let's remember this moment through the eyes of those of you who work in the biz. If you are a Grubhub orderer, sit this one out if you did get your free lunch or if you didn't get your free lunch. We really want to hear from people who work in the business, 212-433-WNYC. What happened here? Was it something that you liked the idea of at first?

Was it something that they didn't even tell you they were going to do and you were like, "What? We're getting 1,000 orders for lunch in the last 10 minutes?" Tell us your stories if you work in the restaurant industry. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. We can also expand it and use this little food app delivery debacle for a broader check-in with those of you who work in restaurants, line cooks, food delivery drivers, restaurateurs, anyone else.

Things may seem better now that we've moved beyond the worst of COVID but how much better are they? Let our listeners know. 212-433-WNYC. Have all the eaters come back, that is, come back at pre-COVID rates? 212-433-9692. What challenges remain in your industry if you work in the restaurant biz? 212-433-WNYC. 433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer if you want to tell us a quick story on Twitter.

Maybe you do want to weigh in on the Grubhub situation and talk about whether or not restaurants are still at the mercy of food delivery apps. We know that's a tortured relationship. You can shed some light on that. Also, if you're a delivery driver, maybe who uses an eBike, maybe you heard the reports on this station yesterday about how old, worn-out batteries are at a high risk for catching fire. Are you able to make changes and update or upgrade?

Or if anyone's listening from the Collective Los Deliveristas Unidos, what issue is your community talking about right now? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Open phones for the last 15 minutes of the show today for people in the restaurant industry, any aspect of the restaurant industry, tell us your Grubhub delivery debacle story, or give us more of a general report.

We started the show today talking about how this COVID surge with a high alert designation in New York City is upon us but people are pretty much going about their business as if before the pandemic. Is that true in your restaurant? 212-433-9692. What else on COVID? How have you handled the recent rise in cases in the city, especially since Mayor Adams will not be reinstating indoor mask mandates at the government level?

What are you doing as an individual restaurant owner or restaurant worker? Are workers still asking customers to mask up? Are you, if you are a server? Any employers telling employees to mask up? Or do you leave it to everyone's individual discretion? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Last thing I'll throw on the fire here, how about inflation? Restaurateurs, anybody working in the restaurant biz, how have rising costs of certain food items impacted your business?

Did you decide to raise your prices? At one point, did you make that decision, and are starting to see whether it's affecting people's willingness to pay? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Are you gearing up for open streets, open dining? I'll throw that one in. With the 90-degree weather coming this weekend and the summer season coming upon us, how has your restaurant gearing up for open streets and for summer? Is there still an employee shortage like we reported about this time last year?

Open phones for people in the restaurant biz on the Grubhub delivery debacle or just what's going on right now. One of our occasional restaurant industry check-ins that we've done throughout the pandemic. John in Bushwick, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi, how's it going?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What do you do?

John: I am a beverage director for a restaurant group.

Brian Lehrer: And?

John: As far as it goes, you're asking what the state of the industry is in general. Obviously, all of the restrictions have been dropped and people are able to dine out essentially whenever they want, but we are, as a whole, still struggling entirely with COVID, with staffing, with the fact that the majority of the people that we are able to hire, which is difficult are new to the industry, and need a lot of guidance.

I think there's a lack of empathy or a recognition that it's still very, very hard. The number of people that we come into contact with every day, COVID is a consistent issue. We have positive and people from those heart of house, in the front of house unable to work for five days and that does affect the service that people receive in the restaurant, especially as busy as it is.

We are incredibly grateful for the majority of our guests who are incredibly lovely, and thoughtful, and caring, and generally recognize all of the hard work that we're putting into them enjoying a great dining experience out, but it is still very, very hard, not only from the staffing perspective but also supply chain issues are still a major, major problem. We can't get machines fixed in a timely fashion.

We can't get certain wines or liquors or whatever because they're stuck in container ships coming across from Europe. It's very, very hard. We can't get diet coke in glass bottles because there's no glass.

Brian Lehrer: That is a bracing report from the front from John's restaurant in Bushwick. John, thank you very much. Wow, on all those levels too. Let's go next to Jackie in Prospect Heights. Jackie, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Jackie: Hi, Brian. My husband and I opened The Social, an ice cream shop in the very end of July of '21. We leaned into the idea that it's going to be like the roaring 20s and we were going to have ice cream socials and people are going to come in and just put sum in the notes to the term social distancing, and that wasn't quite the case. We're still trying to figure out how to bring the ice cream social outside, create safe spaces, and sourcing, of course, is also an issue.

Getting ice cream cups, for example, are taking longer than expected so I had to actually order on Amazon for that. There are a number of issues that we faced over the last year, and we're hoping that this summer is going to be bustling and wonderful, but it's a very different place.

Brian Lehrer: Environment than you expect. What a great name for an ice cream place though, The Social. You'll probably get a lot of business this weekend since it's supposed to be in the 90s both Saturday and Sunday.

Jackie: Yes, ice cream weather.

Brian Lehrer: Jackie, good luck out there. Thank you so much. Michael on the Upper West Side, you're on WNYC. Hi, Michael.

Michael: Hi, Brian. Long-time listener, first time calling.

Brian Lehrer: Glad you're on, what do you do?

Michael: I'm the general manager of two restaurants on the Upper West Side. I'm not going to be saying who just because I cleared this with my managing partner before I [inaudible 00:09:46] but happy to talk to you.

Brian Lehrer: Sure. What do you want to report on? Inflation it looks like?

Michael: Absolutely. Across the board, we've seen prices rise on pretty much any one of our disposable goods, also some of our dry goods, in particular, things like animal proteins. We do serve a lot of vegetarian food as well but even things like tofu have gone up, but I'm going to give you one specific example. Chicken fillet like boneless chicken breast, which is a backbone of many, many, many, many restaurant dishes, we've had cost increased from 40% to 50%, and while we're willing to sell something like that, essentially at cost, as a loss leader, as an incentive to continue to get guests in the door, we did finally have [inaudible 00:10:35] not have that is something that was going to force us to close our doors.

Brian Lehrer: You just dropped out for a second there. I think you were saying, you finally had to raise the price of your chicken dishes. 40% increase in the cost of chickens.

Michael: Yes. We understand that it's a combination of supply chain, pandemic challenges, and whatnot. It's no one's individual fault, of course, but it does at the end of the day, force us into a Sophie's choice of, "We can try and cut back in other areas, find what's expensive for vendors, or eventually, we're going to have to pass that cost on to our customer." That finally did come to pass. So far they've been understanding-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Is it affecting the number of customers you have?

Michael: It's difficult for us to say because we're relatively close to Columbia University, so I can't necessarily correlate that drop strictly or if it's just the cyclical nature of them being-- A lot of them are gone for the summer.

Brian Lehrer: School just ended.

Michael: We do see some of our regulars certainly have noticed, and while they've been, for the most part, understanding, there was some haranguing but that's okay.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, thank you very much for your call. Good luck out there. For demographic fairness, now that we took Michael's call from the Upper West Side, Roberto on the Upper East Side, you're on WNYC. Hi, Roberto? Oops. Let me get him back on here. Can we put Roberto's line on? Let me try to do that. Now, I think we have you. Roberto, are you there?

Roberto: Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Hi. Now, we have you. I apologize.

Roberto: My fault. I love your show. First time calling, though. I own a restaurant on the Upper East Side. I actually just opened another bar, and I guess I couldn't agree more with the previous caller. The chicken cobbler's price is just crazy going up to 45% to 50% up, and I have been refusing to increase prices, but eventually, I will have to and that will affect business, I guess.

Brian Lehrer: How else do you compensate in the meantime? He talked about using some of the protein dishes as loss leaders while they make profit on other things.

Roberto: I try. I try to do the same thing. I actually was having trouble, we sold a lot of skirt steak, and that was like crazy, a hundred and something percent a little earlier in the year increase. I was actually trying to make it up on chicken but now chicken went up. It's a Mexican restaurant, so we do a lot of fresh-made guacamoles. That was always profitable but now the price is crazy, crazy high as well.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. Good luck out there, Roberto. It's interesting, I invited people first to talk about the GrubHub fiasco, and then the state of the industry generally, and we hear what we're getting, we're getting staff shortages, staff COVID, inflation, more than anything else. Julio in the East Village is going to get our last 30 seconds on this. Julio, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Julio: Hi. Good morning, sir. It's always a pleasure to be on. You guys have been so helpful throughout this entire period. We thank God I don't use GrubHub anymore, or any of these other platforms, because it would just affect the level of the quality of our food as far as traveling and also the fact that you're sitting at a restaurant, you now have to wait because we have to cook food for it to go. During the pandemic, we did to not only help ourselves but also help our clients, they had to stay home because of quarantining and so forth. We did again over the wintertime when we had that spike, but thank God we're no longer-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: We're just about out of time, but do you want to recommend that people just call the restaurants directly and avoid the apps?

Julio: I can recommend all of these things, but it's the convenience factor for people, we order--

Brian Lehrer: Right. Julio, I'm sorry to cut you off, but now the show is completely over, you got the last word. Have a great weekend, everyone. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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