Foodies Clan

Plus, hotel chains are eligible for small-business loans, and more news to start your day

Damn, Steak-umm, go off

Brand Twitter is often insufferable, whether it’s because a Vita Coco employee peed in a jar for social media clout, or the very existence of Baby Nut. Steak-umm, the sliced frozen steak company, has been a mainstay of brand Twitter for awhile now, with Nathan Allebach, Steak-umm’s social media manager, even writing an entire history of the existential humor common on brand Twitter and “brands making metacommentary as anti-marketing” for Vulture. Well, last night, Steak-umm reached a whole new level of brand awareness as the account started tweeting about media literacy and data.

In a thread, the company warned against sensationalist reporting around the COVID-19 pandemic, and how politicians and brands can manipulate data for their own ends. “[I]t can be difficult to know what to believe in a time when institutional trust is diminished and the gatekeepers of information have been dismantled,” the brand wrote, “but it’s more crucial now than ever before to follow a range of credentialed sources for both breaking news and data collection.” And of course, it provided metacommentary on how weird it was for Steak-umm to be the bearer of such truths.

Praising brands for being “responsible,” already a word with conflicting definitions, is like praising politicians for voting. It’s an incredibly low bar to clear, and it comes with the stinging knowledge that any time they do something “good” it functions to be at least a bit self serving. You maybe think higher of Steak-umm today than you did yesterday. Or maybe you’re thinking of the, period. For the brands, that’s a win. Though who knows? In a couple days, Steak-umm might be out here on Twitter, itself explaining this weird relationship between advertiser and buyer. Steak-umm bless.

And in other news...

• Beyond Meat announced a new initiative in which it will “donate and distribute more than 1 million Beyond Burgers over 30 days.” People can nominate causes for donation, and the company has already donated Beyond Meat to food banks and hospitals. [Beyond Meat]
• The new Paycheck Protection Program is aimed at “small businesses,” defined as those with 500 or fewer employees. But thanks to an exemption which focuses on unit size and not company size, hotel chains and chain restaurants can qualify, which has some small restaurant owners nervous. [WSJ]
• Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is stepping in to encourage banks to lend to smaller companies like restaurants through PPP. [NY Times]
• Chick-fil-A is adding handwashing stations to its drive-thru. [NRN]
• Some food trucks are pivoting to grocery delivery. [RH]
• School districts are feeding more people than local food banks in some areas. [Civil Eats]
• TGI Friday’s was going to go public, but those plans are on hold after an investment company backed out of the merger. [RBO]
• Area Xenophobe Never Heard Of Indian Food, Shocked People Like Sushi:

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

The chef visits Eater’s Digest to talk through the CARES Act

In March, 417,000 hospitality workers lost their jobs. Millions more are expected to file for unemployment this month and next. To battle this stark reality, Congress passed the CARES Act, providing stimulus payments, expansions upon unemployment benefits, and loans and grants to small businesses. But will it be enough to help independent restaurants get through the pandemic?

Tom Colicchio, the restaurateur, chef, and television personality who, with his network of friends, hired a lobbyist to push the interests of small restaurant owners, came on Eater’s Digest to discuss what the bill gets right, what still needs to be done, and how dire the situation really is out there for restaurant workers and owners.

Highlights:

• He calls September 1 a “realistic date” for restaurants to open up.
• He worries tax payers will see GoFundMe campaigns and takeout and delivery operations and not support bigger government initiatives.
• He expects 40 - 50 percent of restaurants will not reopen at the end of this.

After Colicchio’s conversation, we talk about the biggest stories of the week, including the shift away from delivery, Alinea’s takeout offering, and the latest scheme from Grubhub.

Listen and subscribe to Eater’s Digest on Apple Podcasts:

Since the 1920s, the coffee company has distributed more than 60 million copies of its now-iconic Haggadah

Passover Seder ends with the “festive meal” — matzo balls are ladled into broth, brisket is shredded, potato kugel sliced. A glass of wine is set out for Elijah. Before eating, however, guests read through their Haggadah, a booklet of prayers and practices that acts as a guide for the spiritual elements of the table’s Seder. Depending on how in-depth the host wants to get, this can last for hours. In its pages, typically printed in Hebrew and English, you’ll see when to dip herbs in salt water (before breaking matzo, after washing hands) and how often you should refill your wine glass (four times). You’ll also probably see Maxwell House Coffee’s logo smack dab on the cover.

Though Maxwell House is not a Jewish company, over the past nine decades the brand has distributed more than 60 million Haggadot, which remain the preferred version of the text at American Seders. “Consumers have changed over the years; some are less familiar with ritual practice and what goes on at the Seder. … They didn’t go to Hebrew school, or they didn’t listen when they were a kid,” says Eli Rosenfeld, CEO of Joseph Jacobs Advertising, the company that created the Maxwell House Haggadah, explaining that he continues to see an outpouring of emotion for the Maxwell House book. “This is a piece of Jewish Americana.” It’s also one of the most effective examples of direct marketing in history.

The brand’s Haggadah was born through a partnership with the advertising agency, which began working with Maxwell House in 1923 to run a campaign informing the Jewish public that coffee was kosher for Passover. Many ingredients are verboden during the holiday. Leavened grain products are the most significant category, hence a week of matzo brei and macaroons. Many people also avoid kitniyot, or rice, corn, seeds, and legumes. In the 1920s, some mistakenly characterized coffee “beans” as legumes; Maxwell House’s ad changed that perception.

“The original ad had it written in Hebrew and English, ‘It is a mitzvah to tell you that Maxwell House coffee is kosher for Passover,’” says Rosenfeld, who handles Maxwell House’s Haggadot ideation and marketing. The surge in coffee sales from the Jewish market inspired Joseph Jacobs to pitch a branded Haggadah in 1932, free with the purchase of Maxwell House coffee at grocery stores. It proved incredibly successful.

“You don’t have to go to synagogue or ask your rabbi. It’s a comfortable thing. You buy matzo at the supermarket, you buy coffee, the book is right there,” explains Rosenfeld, also noting how successful the concept proved for grocery stores. “Passover has become a very important piece of business.”

Following the success of Maxwell House during Passover, nondenominational companies like Jack Frost Sugar, Borden Dairy, and Crisco released cookbook pamphlets to remind consumers that their products were also kosher for Passover: “Mr. Peanut recommends: recipes for knoeidlach [sic], chremsel, latkes, knishes,” reads one book published by Planters to promote peanut oil in the 1940s.

Still, few brands (Jewish or otherwise) have published haggadot: ShopRite Supermarkets created several editions as recently as 2012 to promote its robust kosher product department, but most others are decades old. Manischewitz, which produces matzo, gefilte fish, and macaroons, as well as the infamous wine, put out a number of Haggadot in the 1960s through the ’90s.

“Manischewitz is the leader in kosher food… an ad ran calling us ‘the official sponsor of Passover.’ You can’t have Passover without a Haggadah,” says Shani Seidman, Manischewitz’s marketing director. According to Seidman, two companies now owned by Manischewitz’s parent company, Kayco, Horowitz Margareten (a matzo company) and Rokeach (a kosher food and products company), also released Haggadot in the 1940s, just a few years after Maxwell House’s first edition. Streit’s, an independent kosher foods company, published at least one, in 1961.

But when Manischewitz was sold in the 1990s, it stopped publishing Haggadot. “You don’t need to remind anyone [that Manischewitz is a Passover brand]; the perception is already there,” Seidman says. In recent years, Manischewitz has instead partnered directly with Maxwell House, giving out copies of Haggadot with the purchase of large matzo boxes. “Two Passover icons — it makes sense,” says Seidman.

It’s not surprising that Manischewitz prefered to leave the Haggadot to Maxwell House: It’s hard to get users to switch from their favorite brands, particularly for an item steeped in ritual custom.

Jake Cohen, editorial director at the food website Feed Feed and author of the forthcoming cookbook Jew-ish, grew up using the Maxwell House Haggadah: “To quote Fiddler, ‘tradition!’ When my grandparents hosted, we used them,” he says. “When my aunts hosted, we used them. When my mother hosted, we used them. Now that I host, I use them. This is the first year I’m entertaining veering from tradition.” Cohen also appreciates the ease with which one can obtain the book. “It’s hard to buy and store [Haggadot] for an entire family. It’s very easy to get 20 [from] Maxwell House for free and know that if they get ruined, you can get a new set next year.”

Maxwell House remains the prevailing brand to publish the text. Rosenfeld says Haggadot are still available for free with the purchase of coffee during the Passover season at grocery stores all over the country, in areas where Joseph Jacobs has identified a large population of Jewish consumers (he noted one would be more likely to find the haggadot at grocery stores in Chicago than North Dakota). They’re also available for purchase sans coffee on Joseph Jacobs’s website as well as Amazon. “Maxwell House made this program a hallmark of their brand and stays committed to it,” Rosenfeld says. “Some brands change marketing focus and lose patience for such long-term programs.”

To entice new customers, the company has made some changes. In 2011, Maxwell House edited the text’s section regarding the four “sons” to read “the four children,” and it changed “leavened or unleavened bread” to “bread or matzo” to modernize the language. In 2019, the company collaborated with Amazon to create a Marvelous Mrs. Maisel-themed Haggadah. Unlike other Maxwell House Haggadot, this one contained a recipe card for “Midge’s Brisket.”

The Maisel version is similar to other playful Haggadot centered around pop culture or political phenomena printed in the past few years. These books are usually published by writers and educators, however, not brands: Martin Bodek published an emoji Haggadah (printed almost entirely in the colorful hieroglyphs) as well as the “Festivus Haggadah,” celebrating the sitcom Seinfeld; Dave Cowen wrote another Seinfeld haggadah, as well as a Trump-themed political parody version of the book. In 2017 Rabbi Moshe Rosenberg published “The (Unofficial) Hogwarts Haggadah,” putting the religious story in the context of Harry Potter. Haggadot.com lets people design their own version of the book, all of which are saved in an archive for anyone to use.

Like the authors of alternatively themed Haggadot, Maxwell House is honing in on the prominence of cultural Judaism. Many who identify as Jewish don’t keep kosher or attend temple, yet they engage with their background through ceremonial meals — a 2013 study found that while 70 percent of adult American Jews participated in a Seder in the year prior, only 31 percent are members of a religious congregation. And even with sitcom, hip-hop, socialist, and LGBTQ interpretations of the text, there’s steadfast loyalty to Maxwell House. When presented with a copy of the New American Haggadah, a well-regarded modernized translation of the traditional text, President Barack Obama (who is not Jewish, but who enjoyed hosting Seders during his time in the White House) flipped through and replied, “Does this mean that we can’t use the Maxwell House Haggadah anymore?”

Rebecca Firkser is a New York City-based freelance food writer and recipe developer.

“We are not looking for a bailout,” says Tom Colicchio. “We just want to make sure we all have a business to return to.”

The Independent Restaurant Coalition (IRC) is calling on Congress to rectify the recently passed $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package in order to better ensure the survival of independent restaurants across the country in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently founded by independent chefs and restaurateurs, the coalition is spearheaded by well-known industry figures such as Tom Colicchio, Naomi Pomeroy, Kwame Onwuachi, Andrew Zimmern, and José Andrés.

In a letter sent today to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the IRC laid out four proposed policy changes to the stimulus package, otherwise known as the CARES Act.

“Although the CARES Act attempted to provide a temporary lifeline, it unfortunately does not provide adequate resources or the right tools to ensure the survival of the independently owned restaurants nationwide that contribute nearly $1 trillion to the economy annually,” the letter states. Independent restaurants already run on a unique business model, with extremely tight margins, the letter continues. “These unique circumstances must be addressed independently of other small businesses seeking relief from the CARES Act.”

More than 12 million people work in restaurants in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and industry estimates put the number even higher. As Eater’s Hillary Dixler Canavan wrote earlier in March, “Restaurants are not only a cultural backbone of America’s small-town main streets and its biggest cities, they’re an economic one, as well.” Much of that backbone is formed by independent restaurants: the corner mom-and-pop joints, the immigrant-owned restaurants, the neighborhood spots. Independent restaurants were left out of the White House’s early conference call to discuss coronavirus in the restaurant industry; that meeting with President Donald Trump largely consisted of executives of fast-food and chain restaurants. The IRC, which claims to represent nearly 5,000 chefs and owners of independent restaurants, was formed partly in direct response to that call, according to founding member Colicchio.

“We are not looking for a bailout,” Colicchio said during a press briefing. “We just want to make sure we all have a business to return to. Not just for the sake of having a business, but because we know restaurants are the anchors of so many communities.”

The coalition’s letter requests the following changes to the relief package to better address the needs of independent restaurants:

Fixing the flaws within the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the portion of the bill that offers federal relief in the form of $350 billion in loans to small businesses like restaurants. The PPP in its current form allows businesses with fewer than 500 employees to apply for government-guaranteed loans capped at $10 million, or 2.5 times a business’s average monthly payroll expenses, excluding the salaries of employees making more than $100,000, plus loan forgiveness if a business rehires or maintains its full-time workforce by the end of June. The IRC wants to increase the maximum loan amount to cover three months of expenses after a restaurant can reopen and operate at full capacity.

“By the time we’re allowed to open … we’ll end up having to lay off those workers again,” said chef Naomi Pomeroy about the current bill during the briefing. Furthermore, if a restaurant has to spend the bulk of the loan on labor in order to qualify for loan forgiveness, there will be little left over to pay for rent or utilities — a conundrum especially salient in expensive cities like New York, Colicchio pointed out on the call.

Additional PPP changes sought by the group include increasing the loan repayment from its current two years to 10 years, instating a $500 million gross revenue cap that would prevent well-funded businesses from potentially taking up funding, and increasing the size of the $350 billion pool amid reports that banks and lenders have seen a flood of loan applications, with fears that the funding will run out in just a couple months.

Creating a restaurant stabilization fund to the tune of $50 to $100 billion in grants that would help restaurant owners pay vendors, reopen, and better position themselves for long-term survival.

Creating new tax rebates, including a “job provider rebate” and a “rent rebate,” to provide relief when business is slow throughout the course of the pandemic and its aftereffects. “Assuming we have enough resources to reopen, business will likely be down by at least 30% through 2021, which could mean running out of cash and forcing massive layoffs and possible closures,” the letter states.

Requiring business interruption insurance to cover COVID-19, which largely isn’t happening right now because of an exclusion many insurers added to avoid paying out business-interruption claims due to viruses.

Many of the IRC’s proposals are geared toward pushing Congress to include plans for long-term recovery, not just short-term relief. It’s still unknown how long this pandemic will continue, with some experts predicting that the virus could rebound in the winter or last more than a year until a vaccine is produced.

“The benchmark of a great restaurant is in how busy it is,” said chef Kwame Onwuachi during the briefing, adding that there will now be clear obstacles in dealing with public fears of being around other people, as the virus spreads via respiratory droplets. “That’s what our business is: it’s in gathering. It’s going to take a huge toll on us reopening.”

“Restaurants have always been the first responders,” Colicchio said. “We’re always there, and right now, we need help.”

Tweaks to the paycheck protection program could prove financially devastating to New York restaurants

If you find yourself not finishing the whole thing in one night, Kismet beverage director Kae Whalen has some tips

Beaujolais wines are often summed up as “light, drinkable reds” — an enticing description that may partially explain their recent popularity. The fruity red wines from France’s Beaujolais region, often made from pinot or gamay grapes, are popping up as more folks embrace such “chuggable” wines, at wine bars and also at home.

But climate change is putting a damper on such wines, says Kae Whalen, beverage director at LA’s Kismet and 2019 Eater Young Gun. Certain grapes “are starting to see things like water stress,” Whalen explains, meaning less water and dryer, hotter temperatures — which means more sugar and more alcohol. “[For] pinot’s thin-skinned, delicate grapes, it can be a lot more difficult to handle these sorts of weather shifts,” says Whalen. “It’s about people adjusting their expectations of what’s coming from a place and adjusting what their idea is of a ‘typical Beaujolais’ — or a typical anything.”

Still, if there were ever a moment for chuggable wines meant for immediate consumption, now — as so many people have been forced inside by the novel coronavirus — is it. If you find yourself not finishing the whole thing in one night (as many of us have), Whalen has tips on how on keep that bottle good for more than a day, shared at our Beaujolais-themed Eater Wine Club, part of the Eater @ Home virtual event series.

Invest $5 in a vacuum pump. “I have one of them at home. I don’t always drink an entire bottle of wine, so it’s nice to be able to preserve it by taking the oxygen out of it. That’s honestly a big factor: how much oxygen a wine sees.” A few options:

• VacuVin Wine Saver ($10 from Bed Bath & Beyond)
• EZBASICS Wine Saver Vacuum Pump with 4 Bottle Stoppers ($15 from Amazon)
• Oxo Vacuum Wine Preserver with Two Stoppers ($17 from Target)

Or use a plastic cork. “If you know you’re not going to drink all of it right away, pour yourself a glass, vacuum-seal it or cork it with one of those little rubber corks — they’re really easy to find online.” A few options:

• All-Plastic Reusable Tasting Corks ($10 for pack of 25 on Amazon)
• VacuVin Wine Saver Vacuum Stoppers ($5 from Bed Bath & Beyond)
• Rabbit Bottle Stoppers ($9 for four from Sur La Table)

Put it in the fridge. “[After you] cork it, put it in the fridge.”

Find out if your wine is made to last (or specifically get wines that are). “Some wines do better [the next day], but there’s no guarantee something’s going to be amazing the next day. Get to know wines and ask your wine professional what they think; a lot of shops are still open and doing delivery and pickup and have different ways you can engage with them.”

Whalen’s last tip, unrelated to saving your own wine: Consider supporting those makers and retailers who bring you the wine (and other booze, and food) you love. Their recommendation is the Service Workers Coalition in NYC, which is raising money for sick or quarantined workers in the hospitality industry and has already disbursed thousands of dollars.

Tune into the full Wine Club below and check out upcoming virtual events:

Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. For more information, see our ethics policy.

The coronavirus pandemic will drastically reshape the holiday that, by definition, is about families coming together

On the afternoon before their Passover Seder last spring, Liz Alpern and Shira Kline’s Brooklyn garden apartment was crowded with furniture that the couple had gathered for the evening ahead. A giant bowl of mole sat out on the counter, while in the fridge, packets of lamb stew meat were Jenga-stacked next to containers of homemade gefilte fish. Kline and Alpern, who co-owns the artisan Jewish food company the Gefilteria, had been planning the event for months. Invitations had been sent out seven weeks in advance, and 27 people would be joining them that evening. It was the first time, says Alpern, that “all of these different sides of these families were in the same place.”

That Seder was a success. And so this year, the plan was to go even bigger, with 28 people. But in late March, two weeks before the holiday, Kline and Alpern were still sorting out their Passover plans. “I think there’s this part of me, maybe unrealistically, that thinks that there will be some solution in which some of us can be together in person,” Alpern said at the time. “Whether that’s being in a giant room together [where] we’re six feet apart or whether that’s doing something outside.”

Alpern and Kline weren’t alone in the uncertainty of their last-minute planning. This year, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to interrupt every aspect of daily life, Jews across the country are scrambling to remake tradition in time for Passover Seder, an elaborate dinner hosted on the first and — outside of Israel — second nights of the holiday, which this year begins on April 8. The ritual, which is sometimes referred to as Jewish Thanksgiving, is often cited as the most widely observed Jewish custom. During the meal, the story of the Exodus is retold, freedom is celebrated, and a matzo-fueled feast is served to the family and friends, both Jewish and not, who gather around the dinner table.

“By definition, Passover is about family coming together,” Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen co-owner Evan Bloom says. “The thing that makes this crisis and this Passover unique is that despite needing to come together, we can’t.”

That is particularly true for traditionally observant Jews, who abstain from using electricity during part of the holiday and thus won’t have the option to celebrate together virtually. But less traditionally observant Jews are using Zoom and other platforms to connect with loved ones in different cities and neighbors across the hall. Passover kits have been hawked online by the likes of Wise Sons, Oh! Nuts, and Chabad, and made by parents to be shipped to their offspring. Some people are rewriting their Passover menus, swapping traditional large-format dishes like brisket for simpler recipes and even takeout.

For Francine Cohen, the Seder meal will take the form of a socially distant potluck with a handful of neighbors in her Upper West Side Manhattan apartment building. One neighbor is handling the matzo ball soup, and another a green vegetable, while Cohen herself will prepare her grandmother’s brisket with apricots and prunes. The dishes will be portioned, packed up, and left at each neighbor’s doorstep on the morning of the meal. In the evening, everyone will sit down and connect for a Seder on Zoom.

The plans for the building’s Seders, which will likely take place both nights, were hatched in late March when a 60-something neighbor told Cohen she was craving human connection. With this arrangement, Cohen explains, “neighbors will not be without a way to celebrate Passover with other humans.”

Justin Feldstein says that his family’s plan for a Zoom Seder means that he doesn’t have an excuse not to show up. In recent years, Feldstein, who grew up on Long Island and now lives in Boston with his fiancée, hasn’t been able to get back to Long Island to attend his family’s mid-week celebration, which is overseen by his 90-year-old grandmother. But even though Zoom means their attendance is certain, their menu remains a question: While New York-based family members will receive care packages of matzo ball soup, stuffed cabbage rolls, and mandlebread that Feldstein’s grandmother made and froze before the pandemic hit the U.S., Feldstein himself lives out of the delivery range. After asking himself what an “appropriate” meal would be for the occasion, he settled on Chinese food. “At least there’s no leavened bread that I know of,” he says. “And I’ll stay away from moo shoo pancakes.”

In keeping with tradition, the family’s dinner will include a discussion of the 10 plagues, a central part of Seder. This year, it will have a timely spin. During a phone call with his grandmother, Feldstein recalls that she said, “Now we just have two plagues: the first being Trump and the second being the virus.”

In 2020, the script for a modernized, darkly humorous Passover text seems to write itself. Consider the case of Gal Beckerman, a New York Times Book Review editor who flew to Southern California with his wife and kids in order to be closer to his parents and sister. Their 14-day quarantine at a house next door to Beckerman’s parents is scheduled to end on the eve of Passover. “It’s a weird serendipity,” Beckerman says. “We’ve joked that it’s not just the freedom of the Jews from slavery, it’s our freedom from this house that we’ve been stuck in.” When the quarantine ends, they will walk next door for a family Seder.

Back in Brooklyn, Celia Muller, a media lawyer, has found that the Passover holiday tradition and her Jewish heritage have offered a sense of grounding during the pandemic. In recent weeks, she’s been “thinking about the fact that if it weren’t for a whole ton of perseverance from the time of Exodus down till now... I would not be here,” she says. “I’m drawing on that strength of the past. So to me, it became really important to have Seder.”

Muller is planning to host a second-night Zoom Seder where she will use a card deck version of the Haggadah, the book that guides the evening’s festivities. In her emails to attendees (full disclosure: myself included), she attached cards for each guest and wrote, “The Haggadah we’re using explicitly contemplates a soup/salad break, so definitely have some nosh on hand even if you don’t go for matzo ball soup.” She offered snack suggestions including gefilte fish—“(shhh some of us like it)”—and links to a few recipe possibilities for the meal.

Muller also reminded her friends of the elements of the Seder plate, which sits at the center of the Seder ritual. An edible guide to the evening’s retelling of the story of the Exodus, it includes an egg, a roasted lamb shank, bitter herbs, and a sweet paste made from fruit and nuts called charoset, along with other edible symbols. For participants who can’t or don’t want to track down the items, Muller says, “I will make sure that I have everything and everyone can participate symbolically.”

And for those who don’t relish the prospect of trying to source Passover ingredients, there is the Passover kit. In New York, La Newyorkina owner Fany Gerson has been selling Mexican Passover meals whose options include Mexican-style gefilte fish and matzo ball soup, roasted carrots with harissa, brisket tamales, and flourless chocolate chipotle cake. Over in the San Francisco Bay Area, Wise Sons is selling kits with “everything you need on the Passover [Seder] plate but the plate,” Bloom says. They include candlesticks and a full meal including brisket, matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, and chopped liver; the Haggadah that Wise Sons uses at its annual Seder at the Contemporary Jewish Museum will be available for free online.

Passover kits also ensure that Seder hosts won’t miss any of the essentials, particularly matzo, which was rumored to be sold out weeks before the holiday. “Retailers were calling, frantic, three weeks ago — everything got wiped out,” says Aaron Gross, the owner of Streit’s, a 95-year-old matzo manufacturer that produces some 2 million boxes of matzo each Passover from its factory outside of New York City. But now, he adds, some of those retailers are calling and saying they no longer need those orders.

Even without a shortage of matzo, some are planning to make their own. Before California’s shelter-in-place order went into effect, Vicky Zeamer, a design researcher in San Francisco, tried to find yeast but found that stores were already sold out. She recalls thinking, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to make bread without yeast?” And then she realized that bread without leavening is the definition of matzo. “Between [the lack of yeast] and the plague, it’s feeling too much like Passover,” she quips. Although Zeamer isn’t planning on joining a Seder, she may watch the 1995 cartoon episode “A Rugrats Passover,” which is considered a childhood touchpoint for many millennial Jews.

Across the country in Brooklyn, Alpern and Kline are also planning to bake matzo. A week before the start of Passover, the couple had settled on hosting a Seder using the platform Seder2020. They’ve invited a large group of family “and a few of my friends who couldn’t have fit in my house,” Alpern says. This year, there will still be a big Seder and a busy kitchen, but the living room won’t be full of furniture. Instead, it will be crowded with voices, beamed in from Passover tables near and far.

Devra Ferst is a Brooklyn-based food and travel writer. Follow her on Instagram @dferst.

The National Restaurant Association predicts 5 million to 7 million hospitality service workers will lose their jobs in the next three months

Of the staggering 701,000 American jobs lost in March, the majority came from restaurants and bars, according to a U.S. Department of Labor Statistics monthly report released Friday. Americans lost about 417,000 jobs in food service and drinking places, roughly 60 percent of the month’s total losses.

Up until the COVID-19 pandemic closed bars and restaurants across the country, 15.6 million people worked at about one million restaurants in the United States, according to numbers from the National Restaurant Association. And before the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted service, the hospitality sector was growing quickly. But “this employment decline nearly offsets gains over the previous two years,” the Bureau of Labor statistics reports. The National Restaurant Association now expects to see between 5 and 7 million hospitality service workers lose their jobs in the next three months — numbers that the Bureau of Labor Statistics report begins to corroborate.

Out-of-work cooks, bartenders, servers, and dishwashers are expected to rely on unemployment checks — but even the most generous benefits are unlikely to cover workers completely. And actually getting unemployment will be an added challenge. State unemployment websites and phone lines have been slammed with claims, and undocumented workers — who made up at least 20 percent of cooks and 28 percent of dishwashers in a 2008 Pew Hispanic study — won’t be eligible at all.

Of course, restaurants and bars weren’t the only employers to lay off workers in March. Health care and social assistance, professional and business services, retail trade, and construction were also heavily affected areas. March’s unemployment rate increase, 0.9 percent to 4.4 percent, was the largest sharpest uptick since 1975. The number of unemployed Americans is now 7.1 million.

• Restaurant and bars account for more than half of the US jobs lost in March [Quartz]
• Bureau of Labor Statistics [Official]
• The Livelihoods of Food-Service Workers Are Completely Uncertain [Eater]

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, cities and states are increasingly limiting restaurants to takeout and delivery only. Here’s how you can best avoid health risks and support your favorite local eateries.

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread across the United States, many states and cities have ordered all bars and restaurants to shut down except for takeout and delivery. But even in areas where dine-in service is still permitted, the responsible thing to do is forgo a sit-down meal in favor of to-go or, preferably, delivery options. Public health experts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the White House have called for the population to curtail mass gatherings and personal interaction — like the kind that can take place in crowded food and drink establishments — in an effort to help “flatten the curve” by slowing the transmission of COVID-19, preventing a spike in cases that could overwhelm hospitals.

For those who are fortunate enough to be able to follow the recommendation for social distancing by staying home or otherwise limiting their contact with others, the idea of ordering food delivery may raise a couple of questions: First, is it safe? Second, is it ethical to expose a delivery worker to the risks you seek to avoid?

The answer to the first question is generally yes, with some stipulations. There is currently no evidence of food being associated with COVID-19 transmission, according to both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), although Vox reports that there’s “growing evidence of fecal to oral transmission, meaning you can ingest the virus shed in feces, through inadequate hand washing or contaminated food and water.” It’s worth noting, however, that restaurants have long been required to follow food safety rules, in addition to extra measures now put into place in the wake of COVID-19. If you’re unsure about a restaurant’s food-handling standards, you can check its score on your local health department’s website. When it comes to the virus, the greater transmission safety risks are largely associated with interacting with other people.

The answer to the second question is a little more complicated. Yes, you should be conscious of the reality that many delivery workers currently face: a physically demanding job, theft and crime, low wages, a lack of employee benefits, and, amid this pandemic, higher exposure to customers who may be sick. But at the same time, workers rely on those delivery orders to pay their bills and support their families. “Everyone has said the same thing: If you are sick, just stay home,” one gig worker told Wired’s Arielle Pardes. “But if I stay home, I don’t get sick leave, and I don’t get paid.” In those cases, customers not ordering food could end up hurting delivery workers more, not to mention the restaurants that prepare the meals.

In a pandemic, there are no clear-cut, perfect solutions, but there are ways you as an individual can make choices that will mitigate transmission risks for both you and the workers you rely on to get your meal and let you order with a clearer conscience. Here are some suggestions:

Consider which ordering method is right for you

If your favorite restaurants have in-house delivery options, consider ordering through them directly instead of going through third-party apps, which not only take commission fees that can cut into restaurants’ already razor-thin margins, but have also been called out for questionable tactics that frustrate restaurant owners, as Eater’s editor-in-chief Amanda Kludt wrote in 2019.

But in the event that your preferred restaurants only deliver through platforms like Grubhub or Uber Eats, there are other factors you can take into consideration. For example, which companies are providing protections for at-risk delivery workers or helping restaurants whose business is plummeting? Here’s what some of those apps are doing:

• Uber Eats said it would provide up to two weeks of paid sick leave for couriers who are diagnosed with COVID-19 or who are quarantined by public health authorities, with the stipulation that workers must have done at least one Uber Eats delivery in the 30 days before March 6 (the policy is effective until April 6). The company also said that it would provide drivers with disinfectants for workers’ cars. In addition, the company said it would waive customers’ delivery fees for more than 100,000 “independent” restaurants across the U.S. and Canada in an effort to drive sales, and has added a feature allowing customers to donate to restaurants directly in the app.
• Postmates launched a relief fund to support medical checkups and to cover two weeks of paid sick leave for couriers who test positive for COVID-19, with the stipulation that those workers must have completed at least one Postmates delivery since February 25. The company also said it would temporarily waive commission fees for businesses in the Bay Area.
• DoorDash (which also owns Caviar) said it would provide up to two weeks of paid sick leave for couriers who are diagnosed with COVID-19, are quarantined by a doctor or public health authorities, or are housemates with someone who fulfills one of those criteria, with the stipulation that those workers must have been active on DoorDash for at least 60 days, and must have completed at least 30 deliveries in the last 30 days. The company also said it would distribute hand sanitizer and gloves to workers in affected areas. In addition, the company said “independent” restaurants could join the platform and pay zero commissions for 30 days, that existing restaurant partners wouldn’t have to pay commission fees on pick-up orders, and that there would be “additional commission reductions for eligible merchants.”
• Instacart said it would provide up to two weeks of paid sick leave for couriers who are diagnosed with COVID-19 or who are quarantined by public health authorities, with the stipulation that those workers must have been active on Instacart in the last 14 days, and must have been working with Instacart for a minimum of 30 days. The company also said that customer ratings of workers wouldn’t affect access to orders — a real concern — and that low ratings would be automatically forgiven during this period. In light of an ongoing worker strike, Instacart also announced it would be manufacturing its own hand sanitizer and distributing free safety kits — with a mask, hand sanitizer, and thermometer — to full-service shoppers.
• Grubhub (which also owns Seamless) said it would offer up to two weeks of paid sick leave for drivers who are diagnosed with COVID-19, ordered by a doctor or public health authorities to self-isolate, or have had their account due to risk of spreading COVID-19, with the stipulation that those workers must have completed at least one Grubhub delivery in the last 30 days. The company also said it would defer the collection of $100 million in commissions that it charges to independent restaurants. Note that deferral isn’t the same as waiving fees; as Eater’s Nick Mancall-Bitel reports, after the end of the deferral period, “restaurants will have four weeks to repay the deferred commissions, after a two-week grace period in which they make the regular commission payments of between 15 and 30 percent.” More fine print includes “a stipulation that restaurants agree to keep Grubhub as a delivery service for one year after signing onto the program,” per Mancall-Bitel.

Minimize human contact

As Michael Knight, an assistant professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, told Eater in early March, “it’s the people, not the food, that is the issue” when it comes to COVID-19 transmission in the context of eating. When you have prolonged contact with others, the CDC’s recommendation is to maintain a distance of six feet to avoid exposure to respiratory droplets that may carry the virus.

If you opt to pick up a to-go order from a restaurant, avoid peak hours so there are fewer people to potentially come into contact with in line at the restaurant.

But if you’re sick, at high risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19, or otherwise able to stay at home as a social distancing measure, choose delivery instead of takeout to avoid interacting with more people outside.

When ordering delivery, request contactless delivery — in which couriers drop off the food at your door or at a designated location without any personal interaction — to reduce the risk of person-to-person transmission for both you and the delivery worker. Some third-party apps, like Postmates, have introduced no-contact delivery in easy dropdown options, while others are encouraging customers to type in a note specifying drop-off requests when placing an order.

Discard or disinfect surfaces that may be contaminated

According to the CDC, “It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”

That said, you should still take the precaution of either immediately throwing away packaging materials that come with your food delivery (e.g., paper or plastic bag, receipts, menus, etc.), or be prepared to disinfect the surfaces in your home that they come into contact with. Researchers have found that the virus can survive on surfaces for a few hours to a few days, depending on the surface material.

Wash your hands and maintain good hygiene practices

Hand washing remains one of the single most important things people can do to protect themselves and others, Amy R. Sapkota, a professor of applied environmental health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, told Eater earlier. After touching potentially contaminated surfaces, and before and after eating, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water aren’t available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Other recommended hygiene practices include not touching your face with unwashed hands, as well as making sure to cough or sneeze into a tissue (or, if that’s not available, into a bent elbow) and then immediately washing your hands afterward.

Refrain from sharing

In Sapkota’s words: “In general, it’s wise not to share drinks or utensils. Particularly in this current situation, I think it would be wise not to share food.” If you need to split a shared takeout order, divide up the food onto separate plates before eating with your own utensils.

Tip generously and rate highly

The absolute minimum acceptable tip for any food delivery, as Helen Rosner wrote for Eater in 2016, is $5. In an honest-to-god pandemic, consider doubling, or even tripling that, depending on how much you ordered and your financial situation. Think of it this way: Another human being risked exposure to a highly infectious virus so that you could eat without taking a single step outside. That has to be worth something.

Another way to show your gratitude to the workers feeding you is to leave high ratings, since so many gig workers’ livelihoods depend on maintaining good ratings to be able to access their work. As Pardes wrote for Wired: “Workers with higher ratings get preference on orders, which means they get to work more. And many platforms have a threshold of how low ratings can get before a courier is bumped off the service altogether.”

Consider also leaving a nice review for the restaurant, since they, too, can be helped or hurt by what customers say on sites like Yelp and Google.

Support restaurants, staff, and gig workers in other ways

Restaurants, already notoriously difficult to operate in the black, are facing a huge loss in business, and with it, the ability to keep staff employed. If you’d like to help your favorite restaurant weather this storm, some have suggested buying restaurant gift cards or merchandise like shirts and cookbooks to help free up cash flow at this critical time. Others may consider contributing to funds for bartenders, servers, and other members of the service industry, whether through organized relief funds or by directly Venmo-ing workers in need.

The more advocacy-minded may take this crisis as an opportunity to press companies and the government to better address the issues that restaurants and workers are facing on a structural level. Mounting pressure from the public has coincided with companies like Instacart and Postmates introducing sick pay and other measures to support workers. Lawmakers, restaurant owners, and the public are calling for federal aid and relief. “We are so fucked if the federal government doesn’t immediately pass a massive stimulus bill for the hospitality sector and small business in general,” chef David Chang tweeted on March 16.

After all, if the restaurants that cook your food cease to exist — along with the millions of jobs they provide — then what are you going to get delivered while you’re in self-quarantine? As Eater’s Hillary Dixler Canavan writes: “Independent operators need a major infusion of cash — cash that’s more readily available from the government than from their stressed-out customers — to make it. They need rent alleviation, eviction protection, and tax deferrals, at a minimum, to live through this body blow.”

Now go wash your hands.

This post was last updated at 10:25 a.m. on April 6, 2020.

Plus, the sourdough wars are beginning, and more news to start your day

Everyone is cottagecore now

Suppliers of chicken hatchlings and vegetable seeds are being overwhelmed with orders from those newly homebound because of COVID-19 quarantines and shelter-in-place orders. NPR reports that hatcheries have been getting a wave of new customers who want to grow chickens for eggs in their backyards, and can barely keep up. Nancy Smith, owner of the Cackle Hatchery in Missouri, says, “We’ve never seen anything like this and I’ve been here since 1964.”

Online seed stores have also experienced a massive increase in orders, says Modern Farmer, leading some retailers to to shut down due to lack of supply. Seed companies say the demand is twofold: anxiety over food supply, and the boredom of being at home all the time. Which raises the point that there isn’t actually a food shortage—just a massive imbalance in where food is being allocated. Farmers are dumping a glut of milk down the drain, and vegetables are left to rot in fields without orders from restaurants and industrial kitchens. Meanwhile, food banks are having a hard time keeping up with demand.

And in other news...

• Grocery orders through Amazon are up about 50%, but employees say Amazon continues to ignore their health and wellbeing. [NY Times]
• Fergie went to Taco Bell. [Daily Mail]
• The USDA gave a poultry plant permission to speed up processing, sparking concerns about food and worker safety. [The Counter]
• Please do not cough on produce at the grocery store, we live in a society. [KIRO7]
• Two kids in Utah were reportedly hospitalized after eating THC gummy candies they got from a food bank. [Kake ABC]
• You know what’s fun to complain about during these trying times? Fondant. [Vice]
• Everyone’s making sourdough, which lead to the sourdough backlash, which inspired a backlash to the backlash. Anyway you have to choose a side now:

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

Looking for something delicious to watch this weekend? We’ve got you.

Like most people living under shelter-in-place orders or voluntarily socially distancing because of COVID-19, Eater staffers are watching a lot of TV right now. Coming from series past and present, here are the best food-related scenes, episodes, and shows that we used to cope this week.

Party Down (Seasons 1 and 2 streaming on Hulu)

The gist: The failed dreams and enduring delusions of a Hollywood catering company’s employees are all on excruciating, glorious display in this criminally underwatched 2009 comedy series, which ran for two brief but glorious seasons on Starz. Each episode is set at a different function where the crew has been hired to sling hors d’oeuvres: a funeral, a college conservative union caucus, a preschool auction, a singles seminar, Steve Guttenberg’s birthday party, and one spectacularly unsuccessful orgy night.

While food and booze give the show its reason for existence, it’s the personal struggles of the caterers — and often their clients — that provide its brand of satirical, irreverent, and often very biting humor. Almost all of the company’s employees — the failed actor, the aspiring screenwriter, the stage mom, the struggling comedian — have been chewed up (or at least teethed on) by the Hollywood system, which lets the show examine and skewer the industry’s class struggles and pretensions with a hilarious lack of remorse. That said, Party Down wouldn’t be nearly as effective without its cast, which includes Jane Lynch and Megan Mullally, along with the then-relatively unknown Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, and Martin Starr. Watching them grimly work a room armed with cheese platters and shrimp puffs is one of life’s more specific pleasures, and also among its most reliable. —Rebecca Marx

The original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (available to purchase on Amazon Prime)

I’ve been getting real joy out of watching Ted Allen on the original run of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which upon second watch is hilariously antagonistic toward the straight guys. Unlike Antoni, who tries to meet these men on their level by having them make avocado toast or pancakes, Allen basically cooks everything himself and gives his subjects busywork. Men can assemble crudite, if they want, or whip egg whites while Allen has already infused cream with vanilla beans and has it melting with expensive chocolate on the stove. In one episode, Allen orders his subject $50 jars of kosher foie gras to make armagnac-infused mousse, to be served with shaved black truffle, because “people are pretty accustomed to” pâte (???). And then, when the guy’s girlfriend doesn’t seem to like it, he bemoans “that’s $150 of foie gras!” like it’s everyone else’s problem for having bad taste. This is not about teaching men a new skill. There is nothing practical about most of Allen’s cooking, and it’s thrilling to watch men who have never set foot in their kitchens pretend like this is the sort of entertaining they’ll be doing from now on. —Jaya Saxena

Project Runway (Season 10, Episode 2, available on Hulu)

I’m going to admit outright that I had embarked on a journey to rewatch all the Project Runway seasons available on Hulu even before this pandemic started, but now that a lot of us are confined at home for the indefinite future, there are few better background-television choices I can recommend than the original drama-filled fashion competition reality series. One standout episode is the second in Season 10. In “Candy Couture,” the designers raid boutique candy store and New York City staple Dylan’s Candy Bar, snagging licorices, gummies, and jelly beans to create outfits that range from “wow!” to “not bad” to “that?” To hear snatches of catty comments and catch glimpses of a lively, bustling NYC in between footage of designers burning their fingers with hot glue guns — ah, different times. —Jenny Zhang

ZeroZeroZero (Season 1, Episodes 7 and 8, available to stream on Amazon Prime)

ZeroZeroZero, an Amazon Prime series that follows a shipment of cocaine through four countries, has some predictable drug cartel narrative arcs — double crossing, violence and cruelty, me softly saying “it’s just not worth it” over and over again — but one nice change was the Calabrian mob’s dining table mainstays: a hunk of cheese, salami, bread, and wine. When the going gets tough for these guys, they just need a hit of carbs, cured meat, and some salty, creamy dairy, washed down with adult grape juice. Who among us can’t relate?

I wonder who out of the mob grunts makes sure they’re stocked. Are there wheels of cheese in the trunk of their car? Salami hanging from the coat hooks in the back seat? Are they kneading their own sourdough, letting it rest, firing up the wood oven that they just built after feeding some poor sod’s corpse to the pigs? Who cares! These guys are committed to the “simple ingredients, done well” philosophy, and for that, I commend them. — Pelin Keskin

Playtime (available to screen on the Criterion Collection)

I cannot say that I’ve ever experienced a true restaurant shitshow. The closest I’ve come is perhaps witnessing a bartender slip and fall at a restaurant where I received no service for an hour and then got up and left. I sometimes envy my colleagues in New York, who used to regale readers with tales of ninja servers and tunamatos during their annual Shitshow Week (may it rest in peace). But now I can safely say I’ve experienced a shitshow, thanks to the 1967 Jacques Tati film Playtime, currently streaming on the Criterion Collection. This movie is, on its surface, toying with sound editing (if you’re into that sort of thing) and poking fun at the strangeness of midcentury aesthetics and American tourists in Paris. But it’s the second half of the movie where Playtime really hits its comedic stride, at a restaurant opening where just about everything goes wrong. The kitchen runs out of food. The air conditioning stops working. The harsh metal chairs leave marks on the backs of the patrons and rip the pants of servers. The ceiling falls in. While it’s billed as a comedy, it’s the Criterion Collection, so we’ll file it under amusing. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this for anyone missing restaurants — even truly bad ones. What I wouldn’t give for an uncomfortable metal chair right now. — Brenna Houck

Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 10, available to stream on HBO GO)

Absurdist times call for the comedy of Larry David, so I’m particularly grateful that he brought back his HBO hit Curb Your Enthusiasm just in time for an election year and global pandemic. Season 10, which premiered in January after a two-year-plus hiatus, is a comedic buffet of food riffs: Larry reignites his rivalry with coffee-slinger Mocha Joe when he opens a “spite store” called Latte Larry’s directly next door to Mocha Joe’s cafe; Larry realizes he’s consistently seated in the “ugly section” of a trendy Italian spot with a condescending host (played to smarmy perfection by Nick Kroll); Larry and Jon Hamm fight with Richard Lewis about the appropriate allotment of appetizers; Larry wears a MAGA hat to lunch so that his dining mate will cut the meal short; Larry gets a sweaty server (Abbi Jacobson) fired after she shamelessly declares that she’s suffering from diarrhea, then gets diarrhea himself from his favorite licorice; Larry offends the staff of a Catalonian restaurant when he knocks out his tooth and pronounces everything with an unnecessary “th” sound. Then, of course, there’s the season-long debate: What makes a good scone?

If you worry that Curb Your Enthusiasm would seem particularly trite while the world is figuratively on fire — well, it is trite. And it always has been. Nitpicking on life’s small annoyances to the point of embarrassment is kind of the point. — Madeleine Davies

John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (available to stream on Netflix)

John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch is a very tender and funny one-hour comedy special on Netflix lightly satirizing Sesame Street, and everyone with a soul should let it gently touch them. Mulaney stars alongside a cast of impossibly cute child actors and guests like David Byrne, and it’s all built around musical numbers like “Grandma’s Boyfriend Paul,” which will probably make you cry, and “Sacha’s Dad Does Drag (and the Act Needs Work!),” which might also make you cry. There are two great food tie-ins, not including the sack lunch of the title. There’s a brief stub of a song called “Let’s Play Restaurant,” in which — when Mulaney plays along — the restaurant is closed for a private event, sorry, you should have checked their website. And then there’s an instant classic of a song that’s near and dear to my heart as a once-upon-a-time very plain-eating child, called a “Plain Plate of Noodles,” in which Orson Hong, a little boy, explains his gastronomic limitations in song and dance. The lyrics! The choreography! Thirty out of 10. — Caleb Pershan

The Mozza chef is maintaining isolation at home

Under orders from the Mexican government, Modelo has stopped making beers, including Corona

Constellation Brands, the U.S. distributor of Corona beer, can stop worrying about reported customer confusion between the novel coronavirus pandemic and its Mexican lager with a similar name. Grupo Modelo, which produces Corona and other beers in Mexico, announced that it will halt production in accordance with a government order to suspend all nonessential businesses in the country.

Corona — the beer — made headlines in late February, when a phone survey conducted by a public relations firm purported to show that many Americans had mistakenly associated the brand with COVID-19. 38 percent of respondents reportedly said they “would not buy Corona under any circumstances now.”

Constellation Brands, however, says sales of Corona were not affected by the virus in the U.S.. In fact, beer and all alcohol consumption in the U.S. is way up: beer, cider, and malt beverage purchases had increased by 42 percent, year over year, for the week ending March 21st.

All this to say that stories of coronavirus killing Corona beer were premature, but not altogether wrong.

• Corona Beer to Halt Production Amid Coronavirus Outbreak [NYT]
• Mexico declares health emergency as coronavirus death toll rises [Reuters]

Calabama is feeding fans from four stories up

As an additional blow to small-business owners, interest rates have been raised to 1 percent

Today, the Small-Business Administration is due to start doling out $350 billion in loans allocated by the $2 trillion coronavirus relief stimulus. But banks and other lenders responsible for administering those loans say they aren’t yet prepared to do so, and interest rates are already different than initially proposed.

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), as it’s called, represents the bulk of federal relief efforts for small-businesses like bars and restaurants. Businesses of fewer than 500 employees can apply for these government guaranteed loans from banks and other lenders to help them cover payments like utilities, rent, payroll, and mortgage interest. Loans are capped at $10 million, or 2.5 times the average monthly payroll of a particular business, not counting salaries of workers making more than $100,000. In short, PPP loans are a potential lifeline, much larger than separate SBA disaster grants of $10,000, which are also available to small-businesses harmed by COVID-19.

In a press conference yesterday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin promised that the PPP loans “will be up and running tomorrow,” while also announcing that the program would increase the interest rate that banks and other lenders could charge: That’s now 1 percent after banks reportedly balked at an initially lower rate of 0.5 percent — though prior guidance had called for 4 percent cap instead. PPP loans can also be forgiven, especially if they go toward covering payroll (though the SBA hasn’t issued final guidance on loan forgiveness).

But after Mnuchin’s remarks last night, JP Morgan Chase — the country’s largest bank — emailed customers to admit that it would “most likely not be able to start accepting applications on Friday, April 3rd as we had hoped.” The Treasury department only released its “Interim Final Rule” laying out the program guidelines late Thursday, leaving banks little time to prepare tools like web portals ahead of a midnight start to the program.

“30 million small-businesses will be beating down the doors for capital tomorrow,” tweeted Brock Blake, CEO of a small-business loan marketplace called Lendio. “It’s a DISASTER waiting to happen.”

• U.S. Doubles Small-Business Loans’ Rate to 1% After Lenders Balk [Bloomberg]
• White House says small business lending will begin Friday, but JPMorgan says it’s not ready [CNBC]
• Everything to Know About How the $2 Trillion Stimulus Helps (and Fails) Restaurants [Eater NY]