jdreyfuss

It certainly makes sense to try from the "influencer" side. The issue seems to be around the volume of requests and the extremely low bar to claim that you're an "influencer".

From the article: "The Jashita Hotel in Tulum has faced such an overwhelming number of inquiries from “influencers” over the past six months that the hotel has stopped working with them, said Abigail Villamonte, the front desk manager."

It's like giving your product away for free to a celebrity as a way of getting it seen in photos and such (can be a reasonable marketing effort for certain types of businesses), and then having a stream of random people asking for it for free too because people see them when they ride the subway or whatever.

Patagonia, more so than most brands, is the wrong target for a "virtue signaling" label. They've made many bets[0] and decisions[1] over the years that directly increased costs or decreased revenue to stay true to their mission. It's baked into their history.

[0]https://www.core77.com/posts/73853/Patagonias-Materials-Choi...

[1]https://www.patagonia.com/corporate-responsibility.html

Agreed. An insightful look into how company politics, culture, and processes can derail a big project. Very interesting to see a post mortem in the gaming industry.

But on the other hand, churn sparks more churn. So you don't pay your "good engineer" and she leaves. Other engineers start wondering why, and start looking around the market. Another one leaves, and then all of a sudden you have a ripple effect where several people follow suit and leave in a short time.

It's not smart business. It's often much more damaging to a company's bottom line to lose a strong performer and have to replace them than it is to pay them what they're worth. It's also damaging to culture when people just start disappearing because they got market-rate offers.

It is worth calling out that compensation is more than just salary however. But if strong performers are consistently leaving your company due to compensation, then you're doing something wrong.

The former head of talent at Netflix wrote a great article on hiring and compensation that touches on these points: https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-to-hire

If you contact support and say you don't have a phone number, they unblock your account as well. That worked for me.

Yeah that was my read too. Taking the MealPal offering (cheaper lunches in exchange for pre-ordering and limiting your selection) and adding group delivery to it (adding a bit of cost in exchange for convenience).

If they essentially do "MealPal, but delivered," then I could see it working. Noticeable price point difference from other delivery options, but maintaining a range of restaurant meal options for people to choose from.

But yeah, they look like sink or swim based largely on what price they can offer consumers

This is specifically about commercial vacancies. According to this article from the SF Chronicle[1], her approach to addressing commercial vacancies mirrors her housing strategy, but I'm not sure what's actually been implemented so far for either situation.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/With-SF-s-retai...

That is just a proposal, right? Did it pass? Last I heard, London Breed was looking at other avenues to tackle the problem (reducing bureaucracy, expanding multi-use space allowances, etc.)

If the ticketing system significantly detracts from the experience for you, then you shouldn't eat at those restaurants. That makes sense. But if you're arguing that restaurants that implement a ticketing system lead to a decline in quality or actual dining experience, then you'll have to provide some evidence.

I disagree that restaurants that use a ticketing system lose their incentive to deliver the best experience they can. These aren't one-off encounters. Repeat business, reputation, reviews, and word of mouth are all based on the actual experience. If the food or atmosphere is bad, then a fine dining place won't last, regardless of the payment dynamics they have.

People are calling out that your argument is pointing to the wrong step in the trust interplay. A ticketing system is not at all about a restaurant not trusting you to pay at the end of the meal and 100% about guaranteeing that you'll show up in the first place.

As you say, you're fine with restaurants addressing the reservation trust imbalance, but you apparently don't like the way a ticketing system accomplishes that. Why? Because you don't like the way it feels as an experience?

Ticketing systems like Tock are speaking to that mutual trust. Reservations are another form of mutual trust in the restaurant interaction. You're making a promise to show up and they're promising to hold a table for you. But that's a very uneven trust. You can bail with no consequence to you, while the restaurant gets screwed. I see no problem in leveling the playing field.

Besides restaurants are the outlier. Most experience-based services have a pay-up-front model: concerts, sports games, transportation, conferences, movies, etc. The reason restaurants generally don't is because the cost isn't usually predictable up front for each person. For fine prix fixe dining, it is.

Maybe it was the Electric Relaxation that did it

The store's reasoning in this anecdote isn't that they don't believe homeless people shouldn't have their drinks; it's that they don't want homeless people to spend time in their cafe. If they have drinks, they'll spend time in the cafe.

They're wielding a "cashless" policy here much in the same way states used to use things like literacy tests and poll taxes[1] as ways to disenfranchise minority voters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...

The article says as much. The takeaway isn't that bone-marrow transplants should replace today's standard courses of treatment, but rather the fact that there's been a second instance of such a cure means that there's hopefully some signal here that can eventually be leveraged in finding a more workable cure

That encourages making the drink orders simpler too, which means the bartenders can have a higher throughput