2021年5月6日 星期四

On Tech: One restaurant’s new digital life

The pandemic forced small businesses to adopt new digital habits, and many are now here to stay.

One restaurant's new digital life

Sean Dong

What does a post-pandemic restaurant look like? At Glasserie, a Mediterranean restaurant in Brooklyn, sales are stellar, the staff is stretched thin, and the owner is excited about technology — but only on her terms.

Last year, I wrote about Glasserie and how technology was both helping and hurting it adapt in the pandemic. I checked back this week with Sara Conklin, Glasserie's owner, to find out how the restaurant is faring in (fingers crossed) the early phase of coronavirus recovery in the United States.

Glasserie's experience is a hopeful sign that digital habits forced on us in a crisis may help build a brighter future not only for the corporate tech titans but also for smaller businesses.

Conklin told me that the pandemic forced her to become more tech savvy in ways that she believes will help the restaurant in the long run. She remains frustrated by some technology that caters to restaurants, particularly food-delivery apps, but is thrilled about others, including smartphone software that she plans to use for customers to pay the bill on their phones.

Those are the kinds of digital services that Conklin said will make Glasserie more efficient and more profitable. "These are things I'd like to keep whether there was a pandemic or not," she said. "We want to keep pushing ahead."

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Most of the last year, though, was all about muddling through. Glasserie's dining room was closed or capacity was seriously limited. It tried to make up for lost business by opening an online minimart selling items like bottles of wine and toilet paper. It started selling alcoholic drinks and snacks through a new takeout window, and staff members cranked out emails to tempt diners with meals created for eating at home.

All of those pandemic adaptations are over. As other restaurants are reporting, people are eager to eat out again, and Glasserie is happy to serve them. "We're busier now than we've ever been in our almost 10 years of existence," Conklin told me. That's even with capacity limits on indoor dining in New York.

Conklin also said that the pandemic converted her from a skeptic of technology for Glasserie. "I have always been resistant," she said, not necessarily to all technologies but to those that she believed got in the way or ruined the atmosphere. "It didn't feel right to me." But now she's excited about technology — at least some of it.

In 2020, Glasserie had no choice but to start using more delivery and takeout apps including Seamless, Grubhub and DoorDash. Like other restaurant owners, Conklin complained about what she felt were confusing terms and high costs.

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Recently, Glasserie has been using a feature from Square, which sells digital cash registers and other technology to restaurants, to take delivery orders directly on the restaurant's website. Conklin uses a feature to hand off those orders to couriers working for Postmates or DoorDash for an additional fee.

She said this was a way for Glasserie to offer deliveries but on the restaurant's own website and with more control. If the kitchen is slammed, Glasserie can temporarily pause the delivery option.

Conklin still doesn't like costs for deliveries. She said she didn't really know what Glasserie paid to delivery providers, showing how complicated the app companies' charges were. "For me to find that out would take me a good hour or two and some real math," she said.

It also bothers her that Glasserie has no way to keep tabs on delivery orders and often doesn't know about late deliveries or botched meals until it's far too late to fix the problem.

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But Conklin's biggest headache isn't technology. It's finding enough workers. Glasserie has advertised for staff on Craigslist and on restaurant job boards, and has gotten in touch with former employees. It's been slow going.

I asked Conklin how it feels now that she and Glasserie have shifted past emergency mode to this new phase. She said she felt optimistic and uncertain, but mostly in a good way. "It feels very much like we are opening a restaurant from scratch," she said.

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Before we go …

  • More on Facebook and Trump: Adam Satariano and Cecilia Kang wrote about Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister who is steering how Facebook handles the account of former President Donald J. Trump. And my colleague Kevin Roose said that Mark Zuckerberg is the one and only decider at Facebook.
  • Watch this court case: The parents of a teenager who died in a car crash say that Snap bears some responsibility because of a speeding feature in its Snapchat app that they say encouraged his reckless driving. NPR explained why a judge's ruling in the case may chip away at a law that protects internet companies from liability for what people post.
  • Those Amazon workers don't work for Amazon: The people driving Amazon-branded blue vans are independent contractors. But the company dictates how they drive and orders them to keep their fingernails clean and refrain from obscene social media posts, Bloomberg News reported. The question is whether Amazon controls so much of these people's work that they are effectively employees and the company should be legally responsible for their wages and liabilities in crashes.

Hugs to this

Misneach, a Bernese mountain dog, just couldn't help himself from demanding attention while President Michael D. Higgins of Ireland did a live TV interview.

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2021年5月5日 星期三

The T List: Five things we recommend this week

Parker Kit Hill's beauty routine, James Barnor's first major retrospective — and more.

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we're eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. And you can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com.

STEP BY STEP

The Model Parker Kit Hill's Beauty Regimen

Left: Parker Kit Hill. Right (products, clockwise from top left): Lord Jones Royal Oil, $95, lordjones.com. Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle Portrait of a Lady, $390 (100ml), fredericmalle.com. Dior Addict Lip Maximizer #004 Coral, $35, Dior.com. Everyday Oil, $48, everydayoil.com. Lush Cosmetics Renee's Shea Souffle Hair and Scalp Oil, $30 (6.7 oz), lushusa.com. Youth to the People Superfood Cleanser, $36, youthtothepeople.com.Portrait: Eric White. Product photos: courtesy of the brands

Interview by Megan Bradley

T Contributor

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For this month's installment of the T List's beauty column, which details the products and treatments that creative people swear by, Parker Kit Hill speaks about his daily routine.

My line of work is all about my face, so I need to take care of my skin as much as I can. After I wake up, I rinse it with water, then I use the Superfood Cleanser from Youth to the People. It's superlight. After that, I'll use its Kombucha + 11% AHA Exfoliation Toner or the Yerba Mate Resurfacing + Exfoliating Energy Facial, which brightens me up and takes away the dead skin. I finish with Lord Jones's Royal Oil. It feels so nice. My hair is a process. I condition and dry it in the evening. Then I apply Lush's Renee's Shea Souffle, put my hair in twists and put my cap on. The next morning, I release the twists and put more Shea Souffle on, separate the ends and comb it out, then blow-dry it and brush it into a style. After that, I'll use Everyday Oil: My hair loves it. My whole makeup routine has changed in quarantine. I used to do a full face all the time. Now, I only really apply makeup in my T-zone. I use Dior's Forever Skin Correct concealer under my eyes, and then sometimes I'll use Diorshow Mascara in Blue, but I always curl my lashes before I leave the house — it totally opens your eyes up. When it's cold, my eyes get super red, so I use Lumify eye drops — they're great for when I'm meeting up with friends and don't want to look like I was just crying. I like a bold lip, to add some drama for when I take off my mask, and use Dior's Addict Lip Maximizer in Coral. Every two weeks, I get my nails done by Nails by Mei. I love to play around. Sometimes I'll do a mosaic, sometimes a simple nude. But scents are really number one for me: Over anything else, I want to smell good. One of my go-tos is Frédéric Malle's Portrait of a Lady. Before quarantine, I attended Rihanna's Paris Fashion Week Fenty party. I went up to her and was like, "Oh my God, you smell so good. What is that?" And she was like, "Oh, it's Portrait of a Lady." After that, I was hooked.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

BOOK THIS

Secluded Guesthouses in the South of Portugal

The first two properties from the Addresses, a collection of new private guesthouses in southern Portugal. Casa Um (left) and Casa Dois (right) were renovated by the Portuguese architecture firm Atelier Rua, with interior design by the Belgium-based Studio Stories.Francisco Nogueira

By Gisela Williams

T Contributing Editor

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For years, friends of Bert Jeuris and Ludovic Beun — two Flemish business partners who founded the Madeira Collection, a Portuguese wine company, in 2011 — have hounded them for advice on visiting Portugal, where the pair have traveled for both work and play for the past 20 years. "Everyone would ask us where to eat, where to stay, where to find the hidden beaches," Beun says. "They all wanted to experience the authentic Portugal that we know and love." And so the duo conceived the Addresses, a newly launched hospitality brand that offers intimate stays in a series of private guesthouses throughout the rural Algarve. Renovated by the Portuguese architecture firm Atelier Rua, with interior design by the Belgium-based Studio Stories, the homes are minimalist and modern, with whitewashed exteriors that give way to rooms decorated in neutral tones of amber, terra-cotta and olive green. The first two properties to be completed were Casa Um, a former shepherd's house set amid orange orchards near Tavira, and Casa Dois, a onetime fish warehouse that is now a light-filled two-bedroom with an open kitchen and roof terrace, in the port of Olhao. This month, a third property — Casa Tres, a former early 20th-century merchant's home in Vila Real de Santo Antonio with a tranquil garden and swimming pool — will open, and two more houses, one of which will be designed by Pedro Domingos Arquitectos, will debut in 2022, with more to follow. Guests can request special services like a personal chef or masseuse. And, of course, each rental comes with a list of the owners' favorite local spots. theaddresses.com.

SEE THIS

A Retrospective of James Barnor's Photography

From left: James Barnor's "Sick-Hagemeyer Shop Assistant, Accra" (circa 1971) and "Studio X23, Accra" (circa 1975).© James Barnor, courtesy of Autograph

By Will Fenstermaker

T Contributor

At once a singular portraitist and an enchanting documentary photographer, James Barnor has spent 60 years capturing African life both at home and abroad. Now, London's Serpentine Gallery has assembled the first major retrospective of his work, "Accra/London," which will open this month. Culled from nearly 40,000 photographs, the featured images span three decades, beginning in the 1950s, when Barnor ran Ever Young, a portrait studio in Accra, Ghana, that moonlighted as a social club. Photographing athletes, musicians and other residents of the city, he developed a reputation that rivaled those of Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta, who were based in Bamako, Mali. Later, Barnor became the first Ghanaian photojournalist, documenting the country's independence from Britain in 1957. Two years after that, he moved to London and spent a decade photographing expats for "Drum" — Africa's premier glossy magazine — before returning to Accra to open Ghana's first color processing lab. But he was back in London by 1994, where he's lived ever since. If there's a connective thread between the images in this show, it's that each is "an assertion of an emergent Black global citizen," as the artist David Hartt writes in the exhibition's catalog. Indeed, Barnor's pictures — whether of Ghana's first prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, kicking a soccer ball, or of Mike Eghan, the BBC's first Black presenter, with his arms spread wide at Piccadilly Circus — convey a sense of movement, freedom and possibility. For the photographer, who's waited nearly a lifetime to get his due, the only frustration is that there weren't even more images to choose from: During one of his stints in London, his brother tossed out nearly a decade's worth of exposures. "If that bulk of work were available, it would show another part of me altogether," he says. "Accra/London" will be on view from May 19 to October 24 at the Serpentine North Gallery, West Carriage Drive, London, serpentinegalleries.org.

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Table Linens That Offer a Touch of Escapism

A blue-and-white linen tablecloth, with matching napkins, from Summerill & Bishop's latest collection, Stripe, a playful invocation of sunny climes from the South of France to the Amalfi Coast.Nicole Hains

By Aimee Farrell

T Contributor

Few patterns instantly evoke summer like thick, vibrant stripes. "Everyone has their own memories of the motif," says Seb Bishop, a co-owner of the London home goods store Summerill & Bishop. "But for me, it's the striped towels on the beaches of southern France, near Aix-en-Provence, where my mother grew up." That image was at the front of Bishop's mind when he sat down with his in-house design team last year, under wintry skies and during lockdown, to create a collection that might provide some escapism. The resulting series of Stripe linens — a quartet of tablecloths and napkins printed with bands of sky blue, rose pink, avocado green or lemon yellow against a white background — underscores the transportive power of a lovingly arranged table, an idea that has been the cornerstone of the brand since 1994, when Bishop's mother, Bernadette Bishop, founded the company with her friend June Summerill, the store's co-owner. In the years following Bernadette's death in 2014, Bishop has built on her legacy by creating pieces that elevate the tablecloth to an impactful work of art, bringing in collaborators such as the artist and interior designer Luke Edward Hall, the jewelry designer Carolina Bucci and the chef Skye Gyngell. "It's a way to slow things down," he says of the daily ritual of table dressing. "The more beautiful the table, the more time you spend there." summerillandbishop.com.

VISIT THIS

In a Midcentury Home, an Art and Design Exhibition

The Gerald Luss House in Ossining, N.Y. Left: Kiva Motnyk's "Afternoon Light — Multi" (2021) in the window and Alma Allen's "Not Yet Titled" (2020) on the floor. Right: Green River Project's aluminum chair and round table (2021); glass vessels by Ritsue Mishima (2007-12); micaceous clay vessels by Johnny Ortiz (2021); and, on the wall, Matt Connors's "Short Tom (Tuned)" (2021).Michael Biondo

By Alice Newell-Hanson

The modern, cantilevered house that the architect Gerald Luss built for his young family in Ossining, N.Y., in 1955 has remained largely unchanged in the intervening years. The carport where Luss would park his yellow Corvette on returning home from Manhattan, where he was overseeing the interior design of the Time-Life Building, is gone, and subsequent owners added a pair of bedrooms. But otherwise, the house is mostly still true to his exacting vision. It was this quality, along with the fact that Luss, who is now 94, could be an active collaborator in the project, that attracted Abby Bangser, the founder of the art and design fair Object & Thing, to the space as a venue for the latest exhibition she has co-organized with the galleries Blum & Poe and Mendes Wood DM. Like the show the collaborators put on last year at the 1954 home of the architect Eliot Noyes in New Canaan, Conn., this one uses the house, in Luss's words, "as an easel" for works by a range of contemporary artists and designers. A weighty round dining table and three-legged chair by the New York studio Green River Project — forged from aluminum in a nod to the material's prominence in the Time-Life Building — now sit in the entryway. In the main bedroom, a vibrant 8 by 6 foot abstract canvas by the Brooklyn-based painter Eddie Martinez echoes some of the shades — lemon sorbet, pine green and soft cornflower blue — of the colored laminate panels that recur throughout the house as sliding doors and cupboard fronts. And in the large, light-filled living room, amorphous glass sculptures by the artist Ritsue Mishima cast shifting refractions across the original 12-foot-long tufted sofa that Luss created for the home. But the room I've been daydreaming about since my visit is the bathroom, where a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows provide a view from the sunken tub — enormous and lined with delicate shell pink tiles — of the Japanese artist Kishio Suga's installation "Dispersed Spaces" (2015/2021), a meditative assemblage of 24 strung fishing rods that surrounds a flowering crab apple tree in the garden just beyond. "At the Luss House" will be on view by appointment from May 7 to July 24, object-thing.com.

FROM T'S INSTAGRAM

A Good and Very Short Read

Collis Torrington's "Window Shopper" (2017).Collis Torrington

For #TMicronovel, we ask writers to create a very short work of fiction, exclusive to T and inspired by a specific image. And for this installment, Nana Nkweti — whose story collection, "Walking on Cowrie Shells," is out June 1 — looked to Collis Torrington's "Window Shopper" (2017), and came up with "Three Bags, Full," below.

My African mother has been Swedish death cleaning. Döstädning. Unsentimental purges, black plastic parceling her past, to spare us the task when …

In my trunk are her charitable donations. Three bags, full.

Yesterday, my artist-sister shopped piles on my mother's shag rug, mom's molting fashion her new skin. Today she is my mother circa 1978 — in hip huggers and moonshine hoops. I flash to teensy-me peering up at my fierce mother at an ERA march, her chants, her 'fro so high it like to eclipse her sign and the sky.

My mother, 80 years young now. Sitting near dressing rooms, pretending no pain, rubbing the bad knee when she thinks we can't see.

"Fluffer?" my mother snorts. "Na lie! It's Fluffy or Fluffernutter. Something cutesy like that."

"Right?!" my sister rejoins. "Who names their kitty after a porn job?" She is stroking the thrift-store calico, charmer to his cobra-coiled form, nestled atop a round rack, tail twitching twixt penny loafers and lime Lucite heels. Size 9s.

She lifts an eyebrow and the pet tag — proof. They laugh.

I shake my head, wondering how my sister does it. She, my mother's namesake child, forever finding laughter in nooks and crannies of life. Its LOL absurdities. When the pains came, she'd purchased hemp salves, said, "Mom, rub this banga for ya kanda. Let your knee get lit."

They'd laughed.

Ever the practical one of we three, I'd called specialists.

In my trunk are three bags, full.

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