Tech is Killing Street Food (theatlantic.com) 141
In San Francisco and Bangalore, street-vendor unions and nonprofits are helping informal food workers eke out a living -- but their future is still uncertain. From a report: Bangalore and the Bay Area have a lot in common. They are the tech centers of the world's second- and third-most-populous countries, respectively, and they both sometimes feel like they're bursting at the seams. Some economists argue that when tech companies move to cities with rigid housing markets, the value of real wages goes down as the cost of living jumps. [...] In both places, many street vendors are migrants -- Bangalore's come from other parts of India, while in the Bay Area many hail from Latin America. They and their livelihoods offer a warning about the fate of immigrant service labor in the tech economy: When space is at a premium, the high-profile, high-margin industries tend to take it up, while the low-paid, already precarious jobs that keep them humming are threatened.
Bangalore is full of food vendors like Sukumar N. T. According to Aditi Surie, a sociologist at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements who specializes in the gig economy, Bangalore has limited licensed areas for people to ply food, so "across income groups" in the city, "informal food vending is valuable to all." But near the International Tech Park Bangalore in Whitefield, you won't see street vendors. Plenty are stationed immediately outside the ITPB's gates, however, which has led to some tension. Earlier this year, The Times of India called the street vendors near the office park "a huge menace" because they impede ITPB employees' passage in and out of the complex. Whitefield "is really illogically planned," Vinay Sreenivasa told me from his dusty office. Sreenivasa is a member of both the Alternative Law Forum, a legal-advocacy organization, and Bengaluru Jilla Beedhi Vyaapari Sanghatanegala Okkuta, a street-vendor union. "They planned only for tech parks and hotels," he explained. "In a way, those [informal] livelihoods are created by the poor planning." That generally doesn't bother rank-and-file IT workers -- they need to eat, too -- but according to Sreenivasa, some managers and officials think that the informal businesses undermine the area's air of modern enterprise.
Back in California, some of the Bay Area's massive tech campuses have become mini cities, complete with their own closed food systems. This is an understandable move for companies in remote suburban enclaves, perhaps, but less so for urban headquarters, where abundant free or subsidized food can allow tech employees to avoid engaging with local restaurants or vendors. Some tech offices do hire small catering businesses. And companies such as Zendesk choose not to offer free food, to encourage their employees to frequent local businesses. But many technology headquarters isolate themselves from the local food culture, and the people whose livelihoods depend on it.
Bangalore is full of food vendors like Sukumar N. T. According to Aditi Surie, a sociologist at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements who specializes in the gig economy, Bangalore has limited licensed areas for people to ply food, so "across income groups" in the city, "informal food vending is valuable to all." But near the International Tech Park Bangalore in Whitefield, you won't see street vendors. Plenty are stationed immediately outside the ITPB's gates, however, which has led to some tension. Earlier this year, The Times of India called the street vendors near the office park "a huge menace" because they impede ITPB employees' passage in and out of the complex. Whitefield "is really illogically planned," Vinay Sreenivasa told me from his dusty office. Sreenivasa is a member of both the Alternative Law Forum, a legal-advocacy organization, and Bengaluru Jilla Beedhi Vyaapari Sanghatanegala Okkuta, a street-vendor union. "They planned only for tech parks and hotels," he explained. "In a way, those [informal] livelihoods are created by the poor planning." That generally doesn't bother rank-and-file IT workers -- they need to eat, too -- but according to Sreenivasa, some managers and officials think that the informal businesses undermine the area's air of modern enterprise.
Back in California, some of the Bay Area's massive tech campuses have become mini cities, complete with their own closed food systems. This is an understandable move for companies in remote suburban enclaves, perhaps, but less so for urban headquarters, where abundant free or subsidized food can allow tech employees to avoid engaging with local restaurants or vendors. Some tech offices do hire small catering businesses. And companies such as Zendesk choose not to offer free food, to encourage their employees to frequent local businesses. But many technology headquarters isolate themselves from the local food culture, and the people whose livelihoods depend on it.
Forest fires and bird habitat (Score:5, Insightful)
After a forest burns they count birds. What they find typcially is like 80% of more loss of both birds and bird species. Sad. But not as sad as it sounds. The birds did not die. They moved. And while there was a huge ecosystem impact it wasn't like the birds were all killed off.
The street food vendors are not gone. THey just move to the next sweet spot in the food chain where there's an urban lower middle class that is being lifted up and is glad to have street vendors moving into their neighbor hoods finally.
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According to the summary, the places discussed are still "full of food vendors."
And here in the US, food cards are still a growth niche.
Stupidest ad ever. "Hi, we didn't have a story, so we just talked about food and lied in the headline."
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"food carts"
Also, whoever is running this mess, it made me wait to post this correction even though I've only commented once today.
If you don't let us comment, you'll stop getting the page views, too. And you'll actually go to zero comments from the affected users on most stories, because if we forced to leave after a couple minutes using the site, it might be days before we make it back.
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You don't speak for me.
I'm a retired IT guy so I grok that shit happens from time-to-time.
I'm not losing $100,000 an hour or any sleep.
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The tech empire is full of not-invented-here-so-it-sucks. For the money paid, most tech orgs want to keep focus and productivity on the task at hand, and so distractions must be evil.. especially when the dukes and earls of VC funding are breathing down the necks of startups.
San Francisco/Bay Area and Bangalore are exceptions, not the rule. Tech loves to flatter itself and think that all of its problems are brand new.
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And it's not even a story. 30 years ago most larger tech campuses had cafeterias, it's not a new phenomena. Smaller places often only had 1 place nearby that served sandwiches, and possibly a traveling roach coach. Street food was a non-existent item when tech was newer since that existed only in the city hubs and tech was not in the city hubs.
Re:Forest fires and bird habitat (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Street food is more common and better than ever before. TFA is just stupid. Office parks often have food trucks and carts around lunchtime. And office parks are not a "new" thing either, nor are they specific to tech.
Journalists just hate nerds because we make more money, drive Teslas, and get all the chicks. So they blame every problem on us.
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Street food vendors can't fly, dumbass.
In India yeah (Score:2)
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but TFA makes it clear that in California the big corps are making "Company Towns" with their own kitchens. This is especially galling since those corps often get massive tax breaks with the assumption that they'll be lots and low skill service sector jobs to support them. Those jobs exist, but not directly inside the community proper. Instead they're clustered in the suburb where the company set up shop.
They fixed this in France (when I was working there in y2k) by having a government subsidized meals program that (all) employers could opt-into where employees get coupons that subsidize their meals for local restaurants (naturally employees paid for these coupon books but it was more or less mandatory). Company/client where I worked also had a cantina, but it didn't qualify for the coupons... they were only for restaurants.
The food ecosystem was maintained, the local farms had produce clients and "centra
Re:In India yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems really stupid. If restaurant owners deserve to be subsidized by the taxpayer, why not just do it directly by giving them money? That way they wouldn't even have to make any food. They could just collect their subsidy checks while relaxing at home in front of the TV, and the tech workers could eat at the cantina which they obviously prefer. So everybody wins.
Doing it indirectly via vouchers just adds a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy, while giving everyone a suboptimal outcome.
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Unnecessary? I beg to differ. Bureaucrats have to do something to justify their salaries and perks. What better way than handing out free money? And not even their money - they get to hand out YOUR money to people who will vote for them next election.
A win-win situation, if you're a politician or government bureaucrat....
Re:Forest fires and bird habitat (Score:5, Insightful)
The birds did not die. They moved.
Isn't that an oversimplification? It could be nesting season, those eggs/fledglings didn't move. Some fires move faster then a bird flies.
Most importantly, many birds are territorial, there's some common ones around here that won't cross the road or a stream and others that hang around their territory all the time, no seasonal movements and very aggressive to their neigbours. The big thing with some of these species, is when they do move, the new territories are already occupied, causing lots of conflicts which the established bird usually wins as it isn't exhausted from escaping a forest fire and knows the territory. These territories can usually only support a certain population of birds as well.
The street food vendors are going to run into similar problems, families that make uprooting and moving hard. A percentage who are just not very predisposed to move and most importantly, moving into already occupied territory, which can often only support so many food vendors.
I think your conclusion that birds and street vendors happily move to a new area and do well without an affect on the current inhabitants is largely wishful thinking.
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Good thing most human cultures stopped practicing—thanks to the industrial revolution and the green revolution—exposing of newborns and starving fledglings to death when they have to move.
I don't think the OP suggested that there were no impacts on the street food vendors; they (and their young 'uns) didn't die—or be forced out of business en masse.
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You missed my point that many people, like birds, have families/children which makes moving not a simple get up and move thing.
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No, I didn't miss it, because I do remember how it was like dying when my family had to move when I was young.
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So do I. Hated it when I lost my friends, my neighborhood where I knew where everything was and how traumatizing it was walking into a different school not knowing anyone and being the object of bullying. I did my best to keep my son in the same school system from kindergarten to grade 12. My wife has similar memories of moving.
Perhaps you were the kind of person who found it exciting and easily adapted, we're all different.
Anyways, the biggest point was the territories part.
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I personally hated it back then as a kid, but now, three decades later, looking at people who never have moved beyond the town of their birth, I am grateful for the experience and the perspective it gave me.
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In the US, street food has evolved from pushcarts to today's food trucks. Which operate just as easily in high-tech parts of town as the pushcarts once did in the areas where people worked.
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The street food vendors are not gone. THey just move to the next sweet spot in the food chain
California has what, 56 counties? Something like that. And in order to do business as a food truck, you have to get re-licensed in each county in which you'd like to do business. If San Francisco makes it too hard to be a food truck vendor, then the owner is going to have to go through all of that rigamarole all over again. There's time, there's money, in many counties the systems are designed to fail food trucks to protect B&M restaurants, and overall it's expensive and time-consuming.
Of course, if you
Who can afford it? (Score:1)
Most people can't afford to eat in downtown SF restaurants. A "cheap" meal that isn't from a fast food chain is $15-$25. Sitting down will cost you significantly more. No one that values their health eats food from a street vendor, so I'll not include them.
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No one that values their health would live in San Francisco either.
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Please explain?
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Killer Muni busses.
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I find this hard to believe to be honest. Many restaurants in NYC (Manhattan) have "lunch specials" that are $10-11+tax (9%). With 20% tip, that's about $14.50. With 15% tip, just under $14.
And this is in a fairly wealthy part of the city, not on an outlying part of the island. Why would Austin be that much more expensive?
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Unless you're a senior citizen you shouldn't aim for 10% being normal.
If you are unhappy with having to tip at least 15%, then write your congressperson and fix the minimum wage for tipped employees.
It's worth mentioning that if tips plus cash wages don't meet the $7.25/hour minimum wage then the employer is required to make up the difference. When people say that waiters only get $2.13/hour it's not strictly true, because if they got zero tips they're legally entitled to compensation to at least hit minimu
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Americans are often way too cautious on the cleanliness of food. A street vendor vs a higher end chain restaurant, you have roughly the same shot on getting food poisoning. A clean stainless steel stove vs a semi-rusted cart really doesn't effect how well the food is prepared or its general safety. Often at the higher quality places, the food is actually more dangerous because the Chiefs will often strive to get the food right at the safe limit level where often you will get uncooked meat, or at an unsafe
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans are often way too cautious on the cleanliness of food.
An E. Coli outbreak every year or two, like in the romaine lettuce outbreak, tells me that Americans are rightfully cautious of the cleanliness of their food.
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Every year or two? It seems like once every month or two (although the last one I saw was listeria, and it was after the Romaine lettuce nationwide panic). That tells me that Americans are not cautious enough.
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No, it is over caution that causes the outbreaks.
You don't hear about these outbreaks in Africa, South Asia, or other places where filth is common, because people are constantly exposed to E. coli and other common intestinal and skin bacteria. So everyone's intestines are toughened up and resistant to infection. The only exception is very young children who often die of diarrhea from intestinal infections.
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Those places with filth have lower life expectancy for a reason. You don't hear about it because it's not news. It happens too often. Also, most US/European news tends to ignore what happens in Africa and South Asia unless it's the business section focusing on outsourcing. Lastly, you are, of course, just wring. Here's a quick-to-find example [nih.gov]
And
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They have less industrial food production too. With industry comes a need for higher standards.
But the real question is "did the US health improve when this changed" And it did.
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Those outbreaks aren't caused by unclean kitchens or not cleaning the lettuce, at that, short of cooking the lettuce, you can't clean it good enough to make infected lettuce uninfected.
That's caused by bad regulations and letting the invisible hand handle food production. Animal farms upstream from the lettuce fields releasing manure into the water that irrigates the lettuce and working conditions that don't include sanitary stuff like toilets with the means to wash hands after using or no time for the empl
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most of the life threatening cases of E. Coli in our food supply are the strain found in humans, not cattle. The sanitation on the farm site and processing facility is the issue.
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I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
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San Francisco probably smells like Bangalore https://www.npr.org/2018/08/01... [npr.org]
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1. People use public restrooms in stores and restaurants to shoot up, others smear feces everywhere, still others vandalize
2. Store owners put "customers only" and use some technological means to enforce (a buzzer, door code printed on receipt, in one place I saw a mall food court guard checking receipts and writing the door code for the day on the back).
3. Homeless have nowhere to "go", so fuck it, they defecate in the streets.
The irony is, cities "less friendly" to druggies and obviously homeless have les
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This is all true, and is one of the reasons that homelessness is such an intractable problem.
The homeless are attracted to big liberal coastal cities where they get the most handouts. But these are also the places with the highest housing costs, which makes it far more expensive to move them into housing, which means they are more likely to stay homeless.
This is another reason why giving handouts to the homeless is a BAD IDEA and is just exacerbating their situation. If you want to help them, donate to a
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What is the problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Good thing there are canteens in the affluent tech campuses, at least now we can begin to give the bus boys, bearers and waiters some decent wages, and treat them like human beings.
Re:What is the problem? (Score:5, Funny)
C.M.O.T. Dibbler is Indian?
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Re:What is the problem? (Score:4, Informative)
Almost ... May-I-Never-Achieve-Enlightenment Dhiblang
The canonical Dibbler run down -
Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala sold suspiciously fresh thousand-year eggs in the Agatean Empire (Interesting Times).
Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah sold disturbingly live yoghurt in Omnia (Small Gods). In Discworld 2, his name is wrongly spelt D'blah and gives secrets about pyramid power in Djelybebi.
Al-Jiblah, a merchant in Klatch (Jingo).
Fair Go Dibbler sold the archetypal pie floaters on the lost continent of Fourecks (The Last Continent).
May-I-Never-Achieve-Enlightenment Dhiblang is apparently from Hublands 'wisdom country', based on the name and his selling of disreputable yak-butter tea; mentioned in The Last Continent.
Dib Diblossonson sold bottomless smorgasbord in the Hubland barbarian fjords; mentioned in The Last Continent.
May-I-Be-Kicked-In-My-Own-Ice-Hole Dibooki apparently only gathered whale meat after a conveniently beached whale had exploded into bite-sized chunks of its own accord; mentioned in The Last Continent.
Swallow-Me-Own-Blowdart Dhlang-Dhlang sold green beer, location unknown but suspected to be tropical rain forest, possibly Howondaland; mentioned in The Last Continent.
Point-Me-Own-Bone Dibjla, an Aboriginal Dibbler from Fourecks in the Discworld 2 PC game.
And of course, the theme continues in really good fanfic like the works of AA Pessimal
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So they have Hotdogs in India too. Good to know.
On-site food service... (Score:4, Interesting)
But now providing such services are unfair to local businesses?
I know, logically you can't have it both ways, but arguments such as this are seldom based in logic.
Re:On-site food service... (Score:5, Insightful)
Occasionally you can even find articles from one of those perpetuate whiners that are at complete odds with each other and argue the opposite sides of some problem. It's almost as though they start with the conclusion and then fill in the remaining bits of their articles.
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I guarantee 99% of such articles are written by those under 40. Pampered, spoiled, self righteous kids who grew up into insufferable adults. They have almost no real life experience outside their enclaves and spoiled university educations. They feel guilty about their lives so they try to take up the cause of someone "wronged" by society, technology, government, or corporations. Usually this comes out in limp wristed publications like The Atlantic, or Salon, or elsewhere.
The fact that slashdot pushes th
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Journalism is dead. I watch ABC news with David Muir and every goffam night it's shit served up, word for word by every other goddam news outlet:
- Trump sucks
- Bad weather
- A story they covered last night
- A video that was viral all last week (almost free citizen journalism)
- Person of the week (also YouTube)
- Made in America showing a proud mom and pop selling 4 SKUs
Changing channels is futile.
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Have you tried getting your news from comedians?
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No. The comedians are all going after the conservative right wing Evangelical White Supremacist Christian batshit crazy Trump supporters.
The punch lines are all the same and I heard them back in 2016.
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Of course it's logical. There's some optimal number of people going out for lunch (this number may change over time). When Apple built it's campus, the change in lunch-seekers was would make there be too many too fast, so they wanted to reduce it. Now, there are too few lunchers.
See the iconic Republican example of "A 0% tax rate and a 100% tax rate both produce 0 revenue, but a middle point produces some
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This is not function of fairness, however. It is simply a function of how people get around. If everyone has a car, then they will more than likely drive to work, eat at work, and drive home, especially in a speed out place like Apple.
Street food is an artifact of walking culture, and people who need affordable quic
Similarities (Score:1)
San Francisco : piles of shit in the street, street food popularity declines.
Bangalore : piles of shit in the street, street food popularity declines.
Who woulda thunk it?!
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Everyone except dung beetles.
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s/Tech/Large campuses/ (Score:3)
All large corporate campuses ever have had this affect. "Street food" is not anything worthy of promotion or protection. On campus food service has been a thing for longer than the dipshit author of this article has been alive. The fact that it also happens in motherfucking California is meaningless.
Get this shit off Slashdot. I can't believe I wasted six sentences on such blithering idiocy.
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Am I the only one (Score:2)
... who brings a lunch to work most days?
I guess I'm killing off the street food vendors as well... although I don't live in either San Francisco or Bangalore.
There was never true "street food" in the Bay Area (Score:2)
You gotta be joking. I have been living there for about 20 years.
"Street food" - sold in buildings (Score:2)
Grubhub is probably a big part of this problem (Score:2)
Online ordering was the biggest story in the restaurant business this year-- if you're running a restaurant, you either adapted to the trend or you went broke, probably. Unless you're Thomas Keller or somebody like that. I'm sure it's hurting the food vendors too.
The best part? If you want to have any online sales, you have to sign up with a monopoly like Grubhub, which takes a whopping 13.5% cut of each transaction (on average). Suddenly the food vendor, who is trying to lift himself above poverty leve
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They just raise their prices 10%, boom done. Credit card companies already took 3.5%.
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I'm sure they're not on Grubhub, and I don't even know if you can sign up for Grubhub if you're a food vendor. The point though is that Grubhub has reduced the number of traditional restaurant visits so it's probably reducing sales for vendors as well.
Bullshit story (Score:2)
Yea, you aren't killing off street food vendors any more than you're killing off the homeless.
Reach harder, Slashdot. Maybe get some editors with brains.
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Anyone out after curfew will be culled by the hunter-killer robots.
Today, homeless harass poor robots/vending machines in Silicon Valley.
But soon... they will have their revenge!
Start with better food (Score:1)
Iâ(TM)d completely support the idea of having alunch in the local restaurant in Paris or London. But in the Bay Area, or even Seattle or Boston, finding good and not a too expensive place to eat within walking distance from the office is an unlikely event. Best you can hope for is a sandwich from the street vendor, or in the cafe at best. Compare this with the in-office cafeteria with an inexpensive three-course meal, and the choice is clear.
If local businesses want to feed tech workers, the first thin
Sounds like 'first-world problems' to me (Score:2)
How to fix this (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Build a canteen/cafeteria area as needed.
3. Have the best cooks with a food inspection program.
4. Healthy workers are productive workers.
Workers do not have to face the trash, crime and waste of the city outside.
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Health costs for the brand and days away from work are not "free".
Re "actually want to be part of our cities"
Thats great if the city is well policed and has enforced laws.
Who wants to pay off their loans in a city surrounded by crime and trash?
A good education and a great job should be the pathway to a better quality of life in a really great city. Not getting to walk around a city thats failed.
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The skilled and expensive tech workers face health risks and crime wondering around in a city for hours.
Skilled workers that then are too sick to work.
Then move to better much managed part of the USA?
The brand then has to attract people into that city.
What are the reviews of that part of the city? Parked RV, waste, trash and crime, tent cities? Taxes and housing costs?
Who wants to study for years and have no quality of
What's the issue? (Score:1)
There are some of us that prefer to work in the city. Even in the city, I don't want to pay street food prices for food, so if I have to choose, I'll walk to the grocery store an get food.
There's no reason we need street vendors. In fact, craptiques should go away too. Ever walk through London and after turning right onto Oxford St. from Reagent St. y
The Inner Platform Effect (Score:2)
Back in California, some of the Bay Area's massive tech campuses have become mini cities, complete with their own closed food systems.
For some reason, this made me think of the design of modern web browsers. Instead of using and supporting existing resources, they're internally re-implementing what they need.
BS. You can't kill a scene that didn't exist. (Score:2)
San Francisco never had a "street food" scene, the likes of which you'd find in Thailand, Vietnam, or the like, in the first place. We never even had Singapore-style hawker centers; though SOMA StrEATs and Spark Social may come close. We had the Tamale Lady, Virginia Ramos, who literally died. And she was in the process of opening an actual restaurant when she passed. So she'd no longer have counted as street food anyway. We have the bacon-wrapped hot dog vendors, who are far from dead; but can easily
What's so special about tech doing this? (Score:2)
Many, many large scale institution have their own cafeterias, often with partial or total subsidy of food costs. Universities do; many factories do; hospitals do; accountancy firm offices do; etc etc. I don't understand what makes it worse when it's a tech firm doing this.