boudreaulicious wrote:The biggest post-pandemic behavior change for me has been trying new restaurants. I go out so much less frequently, I find myself really only going to the few places I KNOW will treat me/us well and provide reasonable value for money and no surprises. Whether that’s at the low or higher end. That’s also a function of moving out to a more remote area but I’m not sure that’s the main reason. I just don’t have the patience for exploration the way I used to.

ronnie_suburban wrote:

boudreaulicious wrote:The biggest post-pandemic behavior change for me has been trying new restaurants. I go out so much less frequently, I find myself really only going to the few places I KNOW will treat me/us well and provide reasonable value for money and no surprises. Whether that’s at the low or higher end. That’s also a function of moving out to a more remote area but I’m not sure that’s the main reason. I just don’t have the patience for exploration the way I used to.

Well said, especially the part about exploration.

=R=

boudreaulicious wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:

boudreaulicious wrote:The biggest post-pandemic behavior change for me has been trying new restaurants. I go out so much less frequently, I find myself really only going to the few places I KNOW will treat me/us well and provide reasonable value for money and no surprises. Whether that’s at the low or higher end. That’s also a function of moving out to a more remote area but I’m not sure that’s the main reason. I just don’t have the patience for exploration the way I used to.

Well said, especially the part about exploration.

=R=

Or maybe we’ve just entered “old fartdom”

scottsol wrote:While it is not yet a post- COVID-19 world, the crowd (and it was a crowd) at Maple & Ash were certainly acting like it, with the full cooperation of the restaurant.

The packed patio was not set up for maximum seating, but had far less than six feet between tables. The inside bar was mobbed with non masked patrons, at least the employees were masked.

Apparently younger white sophisticated well off urbanites are immune from the disease, or at least the fear of it.

Estranged investors in one of Chicago’s most successful restaurants say they have proof the founders of the Maple & Ash steakhouse engaged in “rampant misappropriation” of federal pandemic relief funds and diverted millions of dollars into other accounts, according to newly unsealed court records obtained by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times.

lougord99 wrote:I stay at medium high end hotels regularly.

Almost every hotel I stay at has not brought cleaning and breakfast standards to pre-Covid standards.

Hotel management companies have used Covid to reduce their costs. It clearly will never go back to pre-Covid standards.

Frustrations Mount Over Restaurant Surcharges — But Owners Say Fees Are Necessary For Survival

HT70 wrote:I read that Block Club article and boy do some of the quotes get me fired up. I 100% understand rising labor and food cost necessitate higher prices. What I 100% don't agree with is crap like this...(a restaurant owner is talking about adding surcharges rather than just raising menu prices), "“It’s a constant battle: How do we present this properly without creating too much sticker stock?”. In essence, he's saying, how can we ensure the customer doesn't realize the price he/she is paying for a meal by adding a percentage to the total vs displaying full price on the menu.

If your business model is predicated on confusing your customer, you suck. And I don't really care how much you bleat that your surcharge is transparent. You're doing it because many times the customer doesn't recognize it. If that's your pricing model, why not just play around with lowering your menu prices and uping the "% surcharge" until you maximize your profit and the customer confusion.

Dave148 wrote:

Estranged investors in one of Chicago’s most successful restaurants say they have proof the founders of the Maple & Ash steakhouse engaged in “rampant misappropriation” of federal pandemic relief funds and diverted millions of dollars into other accounts, according to newly unsealed court records obtained by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times.

https://www.wbez.org/stories/investors- ... m=url_copy

CFDB press release wrote:Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres won a key decision on behalf of investors against Chicago restaurant management group Maple Manager LLC, the group behind the famed restaurant Maple & Ash.

The court sanctioned Maple Manager for its effort to sanction investors who claimed Maple Manager dissolved the company behind the restaurant to evade repaying the millions of dollars that the investors claim that Maple Manager wrongfully diverted from the restaurants to the detriment of the investors.

Maple Manager alleged that investors wrongfully disclosed information in violation of a prior protective order and their operating agreement. However, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Alison Conlon found that Maple Manager failed to provide detail specifying what information was disclosed, and that the motion was neither grounded in facts nor supported by existing law — making it subject to sanction itself.

Judge Conlon ruled that Maple Manager must pay the investors “reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs” for those incurred in responding to the management firm’s sanctions bid and the filing of their own cross-motion.

CFDB Partner Mike Layden, who represents the investors in the matter, said, “We are pleased that the court took a clear look at the facts and fairly applied the law in assessing Maple Manager’s meritless motion to sanction our clients. We look forward to bringing this matter to a close.”

at chicagobusiness.com, Jack Grieve wrote:The owner of embattled Gold Coast steakhouse Maple & Ash repeatedly lied under oath and failed to comply with court orders in discovery during an ongoing legal battle with investors, the judge presiding over the case said in a March 20 filing.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Alison Conlon sanctioned owner James Lasky for his noncompliance and ordered the defendant to cover the plaintiffs' legal fees that resulted from his withholding of information.

The sanction is the latest development in a lawsuit against Maple & Ash in which investors accuse management of engaging in millions of dollars of Paycheck Protection Program fraud and violating an operating agreement when it decided to dissolve itself last year.

In the March 20 filing, Conlon said the defense failed to disclose 45 payments totaling $1.6 million to Lasky. According to the judge, counsel "disavowed any personal knowledge because 'this is not my area of expertise, accounting principles.'"

The judge was not persuaded, writing that "neither accounting principles nor math were necessary to ensure that all ledger entries were included and a proper time frame was used."

Conlon also found that Lasky lied under oath about the existence of an account with Albany Bank. The defense offered "a litany of misplaced excuses" for the omission, according to the judge. Lasky also failed to disclose a $305,000 transfer to his brother, Jerry Lasky, that "should have been disclosed in the interrogatory answer but was not," the judge said.

marothisu wrote:I might be wrong about this, but it is truly funny to me reading all the legal saga of these people that they blamed foot traffic for closing 1 of their restaurants in town in the midst of this.