U.S. Catholic bishops voted on Wednesday to officially declare a ban on gender transition treatment for transgender patients at Catholic hospitals.
The bishops, gathered in a Baltimore hotel ballroom, overwhelmingly approved revisions to their directives for the thousands of Catholic health care institutions and providers in the country, formalizing a yearslong process for the U.S. church to address transgender treatment options.
Bishops will have autonomy in putting the new directives into law for their dioceses.
More than one in seven patients in the U.S. are treated each day at Catholic hospitals, according to the Catholic Health Association. In some areas, Catholic hospitals are the only medical centers available.
Rev. Michael J.K. Fuller, Archbishop Timothy Broglio and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore conduct the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops plenary assembly in Baltimore, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025.(AP)
Most Catholic health care institutions have not offered gender transition treatment, including hormonal, psychological and surgical treatments.
“With regard to the gender ideology, I think it’s very important the church makes a strong statement here,” Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota’s Winona-Rochester diocese said during the public discussion of the revised directives.
The Catholic Health Association thanked the bishops for incorporating much of its feedback into the new directives.
“Catholic providers will continue to welcome those who seek medical care from us and identify as transgender,” the organization said in a statement. “We will continue to treat these individuals with dignity and respect, which is consistent with Catholic social teaching and our moral obligation to serve everyone, particularly those who are marginalized.”
The new directives incorporate earlier documents on gender identity from the Vatican last year and the U.S. bishops the year before.
In the 2023 doctrinal note titled “Moral Limits to the Technological Manipulation of the Human Body,” the bishops stated that “Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex, or take part in the development of such procedures.”
But some parishes and priests welcome transgender Catholics, while others are less accepting.
Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota’s Winona-Rochester diocese said it was “very important” the church make a strong statement on gender identity.(Getty Images)
“Catholic teaching upholds the invaluable dignity of every human life, and for many trans people, gender-affirming care is what makes life livable,” said Michael Sennett, a transgender man who is active in his Massachusetts parish and serves on the board of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic Church.
New Ways Ministry arranged a meeting last year with the late Pope Francis to discuss gender transition treatment.
The group’s executive director, Francis DeBernardo, said that for many transgender Catholics he has spoken to, “the transition process was not just a biological necessity, but a spiritual imperative,” adding: “That if they were going to be living as authentic people in the way that they believe God made them, then transition becomes a necessary thing.”
Also on Wednesday, as U.S. Catholic bishops were discussing gender identity, the heads of several progressive religious denominations issued a statement in support of transgender people.
“During a time when our country is placing their lives under increasingly serious threat, there is a disgraceful misconception that all people of faith do not affirm the full spectrum of gender – a great many of us do. Let it be known instead that our beloveds are created in the image of God – Holy and whole,” reads the statement from the 10 signers, including the heads of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Episcopal Church, the Union for Reform Judaism and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
In addition to the Catholic bishops’ discussion on gender identity, they overwhelmingly approved a “special message” condemning the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.
Catholic leaders have criticized the president’s mass deportation agenda, as fear of immigration raids has slashed Mass attendance at some parishes.
The federal government earlier this year reversed a Biden administration directive for immigration agents not to carry out enforcement operations at sensitive areas such as churches and hospitals.
Most Catholic health care institutions have not offered gender transition treatment, including hormonal, psychological and surgical treatments.(Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images))
“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement,” the bishops’ statement on Wednesday reads. “We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”
Several bishops also stood up to speak in favor of the statement during the final afternoon discussion.
Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich even recommended stronger language around mass deportation, and his fellow bishops agreed.
“That seems to be the central issue we are facing with our people at this time,” he said.
The updated text now affirms that U.S. Catholic bishops “oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”
Vice President JD Vance spoke at length during a large Turning Point USA gathering at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in honor of Charlie Kirk, during which he shared the slain conservative activist’s impact on his faith and told students that “a properly rooted Christian moral order” is key to the future of the country.
After the audience heard from Kirk’s widow, Erika, Vance took the stage and spoke for a brief time before taking questions from the audience on a range of issues from immigration to National Guard deployments and the Second Amendment. But several of the questions revolved around Vance’s faith and the impact it has had on how he governs as Vice President. Some asked about his views on religious liberty while another questioned how he was raising his family in a dual-religion household where his wife is Hindu.
“I make no apologies for thinking that Christian values are an important foundation of this country,” Vance said when responding to a question about the separation of church and state. “Anybody who’s telling you their view is neutral likely has an agenda to sell you. And I’m at least honest about the fact that I think the Christian foundation of this country is a good thing.”
Vice President JD Vance speaks during a “This Is the Turning Point” campus tour event at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, Miss., Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Meanwhile, Vance railed against contemporary liberalism in his comments about faith Wednesday night, calling it a “perverted version of Christianity.”
“There’s nothing wrong, of course, with focusing on people who are disenfranchised, for example. That’s the focus of liberalism. But if you completely separate it from any religious duty or any civic virtue, then that can actually become, for example, an inducement to lawlessness,” Vance said while responding to a questioner. “You can’t just have compassion for the criminal. You also have to have justice too. Which is why I think that a properly rooted Christian moral order is such an important part of the future of our country.”
Vance went on to say that he does not think God must be kicked out of the public square, adding he did not believe that is what the founders intended.
“Anybody who tells you it’s required by the Constitution is lying to you,” Vance argued. “What happened, is, the Supreme Court interpreted ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’ to effectively throw the church out of every public place at the federal, state and local level. I think it was a terrible mistake, and we’re still paying for the consequences of it today.”
In addition to taking tough policy-oriented questions about faith and religion, Vance was also asked at one point about living in an interfaith household. Vance’s wife is Hindu.
Attendees listen as Vice President JD Vance speaks during a “This Is the Turning Point” campus tour event at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, Miss., Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Vance noted how when the pair met he was not a Christian, but over time he and his wife, Usha, decided to raise their boys Christian. Vance said open communication and respect for each other’s beliefs played a part in his marriage and his family’s decision to raise their kids Christian.
“Most Sundays she will come with me to church. As I’ve told her, and I’ve said publicly, and I’ll say now in front of 10,000 of my closest friends, ‘Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly, I do wish that.’ Because I believe in the Christian gospel and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way. But if she doesn’t, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me.”
Vance also spoke about the impact Kirk has had on his faith during the Wednesday night event honoring the slain activist. Vance said that, at least in part, Kirk moved him to be more vocal about his faith.
Signs with a photo of Charlie Kirk are seen before Vice President JD Vance speaks at a Turning Point USA event at the Pavilion at Ole Miss at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)
“This is another way in which Charlie has affected my life – I would say that I grew up again in a generation where even if people had very deep personal faith, they didn’t talk about their faith a whole lot,” Vance told the crowd while remembering his late friend.
“But the reason why I try to be the best husband I can be, the best father I can be, the reason why I care so much about all the issues that we’re going to talk about, is because I believe I’ve been placed in this position for a brief period of time to do the most amount of good for God and for the country that I love so much. And that’s the most important way that my faith influences me.”
On August 3, 1970, prosecutors in Los Angeles were in the second week of presenting their murder case against Charles Manson and three young women accused of killing the actress Sharon Tate and six others. A thousand miles away, at the Federal Building in Denver, President Richard Nixon was attending a conference on crime control for federal and state officials. Nixon, with Attorney General John Mitchell standing at his side, worried aloud that the Administration’s “batting average” in convincing Congress to enact crime legislation had been “very poor.” He mentioned that he had just watched “Chisum,” a new John Wayne movie, and mused about why Westerns were so appealing. “One of the reasons is, perhaps—and this may be a square observation—is that the good guys come out ahead in the Westerns; the bad guys lose,” Nixon suggested.
Then Nixon shifted to the Manson trial, and what he believed was a contrary tendency, especially among the young, to “glorify and to make heroes out of those who engage in criminal activities.” That attitude, Nixon lamented, had been on display in the front-page coverage of Manson. “Here is a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason,” he said. (One murder was tried separately.) “Here is a man yet who, as far as the coverage was concerned, appeared to be a rather glamorous figure, a glamorous figure to the young people who he had brought into his operations.”
Chaos ensued. The sitting President had done something that then seemed an unthinkable breach of ethics: he had opined on the guilt of a criminal defendant. As Jeff Guinn described it in “Manson,” his 2013 biography, “Within moments, Nixon’s remarks flashed across national wire services.” The jury for the Manson trial was sequestered and prohibited from reading newspapers or watching TV news, Guinn explained, “so prosecutors felt reasonably certain that the jurors wouldn’t immediately learn what the president said.” That didn’t stop defense lawyers from demanding a mistrial; surely, they argued, jurors would see the front-page headlines: “MANSON GUILTY, NIXON DECLARES,” blared the Los Angeles Times; “NIXON’S TATE TRIAL FUROR,” said the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Ronald Hughes, a lawyer for one of the women accused alongside Manson, said, “When the President of the United States finds it necessary to comment on the guilt or innocence of a defendant, it indicates that defendant is past the point of getting a fair trial.” (The judge overseeing the case said that he saw no basis for declaring a mistrial.)
For their part, Administration officials scrambled to walk back the gaffe. As the New York Times described the events, minutes after “the assembled newsmen rushed to file their reports,” the White House press secretary, Ronald Ziegler, summoned them to a damage-control session. The President, Ziegler insisted, had intended to use the word “alleged”; he hadn’t meant to express a view on Manson’s guilt or innocence. Mitchell, the Attorney General, weighed in, asserting that Nixon had not “made a charge or implied one.” The President, en route back to Washington, had Mitchell and the White House counsel, John Ehrlichman, draft a statement backing down even further. “We had quite a time on Air Force One trying to work out a correction,” Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, wrote in a diary entry. The plane circled while the President’s men hashed out the language. “The last thing I would do is prejudice the legal rights of any person, in any circumstances,” Nixon’s statement read. “To set the record straight, I do not know and did not intend to speculate as to whether the Tate defendants are guilty, in fact, or not. All of the facts in the case have not yet been presented. The defendants should be presumed to be innocent at this stage of their trial.”
The Manson episode surfaces now and again, when a President oversteps in commenting on pending cases. It came up in 1988, when Ronald Reagan was criticized for saying that he expected two former national-security aides indicted in the Iran-Contra affair, Oliver North and John Poindexter, would be acquitted. “I still think Ollie North is a hero,” Reagan said. “I just have to believe that they’re going to be found innocent because I don’t think they were guilty of any law-breaking or any crime.” (North and Poindexter were both found guilty of multiple charges, but their convictions were vacated on appeal.) Even in that situation, with the President speaking out on behalf of his own aides, the White House was rattled. Chief of staff Howard Baker, playing cleanup, said that Reagan was volunteering only “personal views” and that his “official position is that the system must operate.”
Democratic Presidents have made similar blunders—and faced some backlash. When the Obama Administration was under fire for seeking to return the accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the United States for trial, in 2009, President Barack Obama offered a blustery defense: “I don’t think it will be offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.” Former law professor that he was, Obama quickly backpedalled. “What I said was people will not be offended if that’s the outcome,” he clarified. “I’m not prejudging.” (Mohammed is facing charges before a military commission in Guantánamo Bay; the case is still pending.) In 2021, during jury deliberations in the trial of the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was ultimately convicted of murdering George Floyd, President Joe Biden said that he was “praying the verdict is the right verdict, which is—I think it’s overwhelming, in my view.” Biden took pains to add, “I wouldn’t say that unless the jury was sequestered now, not hearing me say that.” When quizzed about the appropriateness of the remarks, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, claimed that Biden was not “weighing in on the verdict.”
All these loose-lipped Presidents, of course, look like models of reticence compared with Donald Trump. He has opined on prosecutions with relish, at length, and with no evidence of being hamstrung by presumption-of-innocence niceties. Nixon’s point about the problem of casting Manson as a celebrity was, at bottom, a paean to the importance of an orderly judicial process. His language, in retrospect, was milquetoast. And, of note, Nixon was commenting on a state-level prosecution. Trump, by contrast, has demanded that his own Department of Justice pursue individuals whose guilt he has pronounced obvious in advance.
A Clemson University student was caught on camera distributing fliers, dancing and appearing to mock Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk following his assassination last week.
In the video, posted to X by Jackson Heaberlin, the woman is confronted by a man off camera who asks why she felt the need to make jokes about the incident.
“Why do you support the public execution of Charlie Kirk? Do you feel proud in your ideology, ma’am? At least look me in the eye and talk about it. I’m open to talking about it,” he says.
A flyer from a Clemson University student is seen during a video posted online after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.(Jackson Heaberlin via X)
At first the woman refuses to engage, but instead of backing down she eventually begins mocking Kirk’s death.
“Because he’s a terrible person, and he deserved to die,” the woman said as she made a crying gesture with her hands to mock the man questioning her and Kirk’s supporters.
A Clemson student caught on video mocking Charlie Kirk’s death sparked outrage after the clip went viral.(Jackson Heaberlin via X)
She then escalates the incident, breaking into a chant-style rap and repeating, “f— yo homie he dead.”
The video exchange has gone viral since it was posted, with many conservatives criticizing the incident and using it as an example of rising hostility on college campuses toward free speech and political differences.
Clemson University is an American public, coeducational, land-grant, sea-grant, research university located in Clemson, South Carolina.(Getty Images)
Kirk, who was brutally murdered last week during a campus event in Utah, was one of the most recognizable conservative activists in America. His memorial service, scheduled for Sunday in Glendale, Ariz., is expected to draw thousands.
Earlier this week, Fry the Coop owner Joe Fontana, took to Instagram to show customers how an upcoming Raising Cane’s could harm his business at 2404 N. Lincoln Avenue, just down the street from the busy Halsted, Lincoln, and Fullerton intersection.
“No hate to Raising Cane’s, buuuut we wish they weren’t opening right across the street,” Fry The Coop’s Instagram post reads.
The post brought out legions of fans to praise local chicken shops like Parson’s Chicken & Fish and Red Light Chicken. They also lauded Fry the Coop’s heat levels as the chain specializes in Nashville hot chicken fried in beef tallow.
Three weeks ago, Raising Cane’s plastered its coming soon signs outside the former home of DePaul’s White Elephant. The thrift store closed in 2012 after 93 years of operation, and the new restaurant at 2376 N. Lincoln Avenue could open in February or March. Raising Cane’s arrived in Chicago with a Rogers Park location that opened in 2018.
Fontana founded Fry the Coop in 2017 when he opened in suburban Oak Lawn. He opened in Lincoln Park in October 2023, joining a number of affordable restaurants geared at students at DePaul and nearby Lincoln Park High School. That includes Ghareeb Narwaz and Chipotle. When Fontana hears stories about high school students with short lunch periods sprinting to Fry the Coop, coming into the restaurants out of breath and sweating, so they can grab lunch and make it back to class in time, he’s happy.
But he says “it’s a bummer” that he’ll lose chicken tender business to Raising Cane’s, a national chain that can afford to undercut Fry the Coop’s pricing. A three-piece tender with fries at Raising Cane’s costs about $11, depending on location. At Fry the Coop, a similar combo costs $15. That’s a big difference for students, Fontana says.
Though Fontana is a big fan of rising tides — he notes neighborhood additions, like Parson’s Chicken & Fish, bring more foot traffic and customers to the area — sometimes there’s only room for so many chicken tender slingers. Raising Cane’s is aggressive in opening stores near college campuses. The original debuted near Louisana State University and the Rogers Park location is near Loyola University. Building that brand awareness at a young age is critical, Fontana notes. It even extends to high school students, he adds. Some schools allow advertisements inside their buildings, which helps deep-pocketed companies, like Raising Cane’s — the same company that paid actor Chevy Chase to reenact his Christmas Vacation movie role in the suburbs. There are more than 800 Raising Cane stores across 41 states.
There are eight Fry the Coops around Chicago. A ninth is set to open on October 29 at 274 S. Weber Road in Bolingbrook, near the McDonald’s spin-off, CosMc’s. Fontana has plans to open more, but the Villa Park native knows that the opportunities aren’t as robust as the competition’s. For example, Chick-fil-A just opened a location at Terminal 5 at O’Hare.
“I don’t think we have anybody really pounding on our door,” Fontana says.
One of Eater’s 15 Best New Restaurants in America in 2022, owner and chef Mona Sang closed the restaurant after construction dust at an upcoming Starbucks next door contaminated her restaurant. “Our dining room, our kitchen, and everything was covered in dust, top to bottom,” Sang says. Debris seeped into coolers and contaminated glassware. Sang says she feared that she might never reopen again, noting that a financial advisor estimated it could cost $400,000 to cover lost revenues and cleanup efforts at 6580 N. Sheridan Road.
Sang says construction workers at the neighboring business initially “brushed me off,” and continued work despite the dirt and dust that forced her to throw away $10,000 of food. She says she’s not 100 percent sure how the dust made its way from Starbucks to the restaurant. It may have been the HVAC system or through two holes in a wall between Khmai and the coffee shop. Apparently, a demising wall, a type of structure used to partition sections of a building, was put up by the university and hid the holes from Starbucks’ general contractor. The holes weren’t patched when construction began on August 12. Sang says the contractor told her that their work would not affect her business. But on August 13, she arrived to chaos.
“We couldn’t even breathe, so at that point, I told everyone just to finish up putting things away and put on a mask — I had to have my mom put on a mask, she was having a hard time breathing,” Sang says. “And then basically I was like, I cannot serve people. I cannot do this.”
Sarom Sieng and daught Mona Sang at their original restaurant in Rogers Park.Jack X. Li/Eater Chicago
She announced the closure in an Instagram post on August 14 and then went into more detail with a video shared on August 23. Now that she’s announced a reopening date, Sang says she hopes Starbucks will halt construction, or at least be considerate, while her restaurant is open. Loud construction noises have a habit of ruining any ambiance in the dining room.
No one has taken accountability for the mess with the unnamed general contractor, Starbucks, and Loyola blaming each other. Sang is caught in the middle after pursuing a fresh start with the university. The restaurateur left her original Rogers Park location near the Evanston border in late 2023 due to trouble with her landlord.
Starbucks maintains that since Loyola is the landlord it’s their responsibility to deal with Sang’s concerns. Sang has written emails and spent countless hours trying to find answers.
“Everybody is going to be pointing fingers,” Sang says. “At this point, I don’t care whose fault it is.”
Sang, who got her start with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, called the decision to close heartbreaking. The restaurants had only been open in the location since June, near the campus where Sang’s daughter attends college. Inside a bigger and more modern space, Sang unveiled two restaurants, a casual space similar to her original, called Khan Khmai. A second dining room housed a different menu, meant to showcase Cambodian cuisine in a more upscale manner. Just before the shutdown, the city had granted Khmai a liquor license and the restaurant had begun serving cocktails. Alcoholic drinks can be a huge revenue generator for restaurants that can help sustain them.
“I put all my hard-earned money into it — all of our savings, creating everything — so that we have just to open up this place and for like, within like, you know, less than two months,” Sang says.
Sang says Loyola was helpful during the closure, but only after she wrote a letter to Loyola CFO Wayne Magdziarz telling him that she needed assistance or her dream restaurant would permanently close. Sang says the school responded to her by offering a loan that could help her quickly reopen. The terms of the loan haven’t yet been finalized so Sang can’t say how much money she’ll borrow. She calls the money “the bare minimum” amount so she can once more serve customers. Sang will also have to dip into her personal savings to keep the restaurant afloat. Loyola did not respond to Eater’s request for comment.
The Starbucks should open sometime this fall. Last week, a Starbucks rep provided a statement on the matter.
“Starbucks is committed to being a good neighbor, and we strongly encourage all parties to find a resolution that works for everyone, so that our soon-to-be neighbor can reopen right away,” the emailed statement reads.
The juxtaposition of a small family-owned restaurant being impacted by the actions of one of the world’s biggest companies isn’t lost upon Sang. She says there’s no way Starbucks would care about her business. Regardless of whose fault it was, Sang says she’s disappointed that no one from Starbucks made contact with her: “Just reaching out and asking if there’s anything we can help you with” would have been nice, Sang says, “Just to say ‘I’m sorry this happened.’”
Khmai’s famous egg rolls.Jack X. Li/Eater Chicago
Beyond lost revenue, Sang is concerned with broken trust. She feels guilty about canceling reservations — diners had booked tables to celebrate special occasions. Workers left the restaurant needing income while the restaurant remained closed. Some of her mother’s favorite employees won’t be returning, and that’s a difficult conversation Sang had to have. Before closing, Khmai employed about 40 people. Sang says Khmai is hiring for all positions if any service workers have an interest.
On the bright side, opening day will take place on Sieng’s birthday. Though a lot of records and history were lost as they fled Pol Pot’s regime for America, Sang says she believes her mother will turn 82. Cooking Cambodian food proved therapeutic for Sieng and was one of the reasons that made Khmai special. It goes beyond the stellar egg rolls that Sang made for her church before opening her restaurant. Sang also trains workers on the history behind her dishes so they can share with diners.
Sang says when Khmai opens they’ll launch happy hour specials from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. with the hope that will help them pay off the loan. Later this fall, Khmai will also launch weekend brunch.
Starbucks’s general contractor and Sang’s restaurants shared the same insurance company. Upon learning that, Sang says she wasn’t surprised when the company denied her claim. Sang says friends have recommended attorneys, but right now she’s not pursuing a lawsuit.
“It’s not about even the money,” she says. “The reason we opened up this place was because we wanted to educate Chicago about Cambodian food. We wanted to make sure that we had a place for our community.”
Correction, Monday, September 16, 9:12 p.m.: A previous version of this story misstated that the opening day was Thursday when it is on Wednesday, September 18.
As the new owner of Etta Collective attempts to distance itself from the bankruptcy filings of former owner David Pisor, the banks are pressing forward with efforts to collect debts. Records show Pisor has defaulted on the $1.4 million mortgage for the West Town building that houses Aya Pastry.
Wintrust Bank has filed a lawsuit against Pisor and also lists his former business partner, Jim Lasky, in the complaint. Lasky’s attorneys have reiterated that their client has been long removed from Aya’s operations stemming from an acrimonious split between the parties in 2023. The two also founded Maple & Ash in Gold Coast and Etta. The latter had multiple locations while a Bucktown restaurant remains open under the new ownership of a Texas tech company. Johann Moonesinghe is the founder of InKind and took over Aya Pastry earlier this year after he won an auction for Etta Collective’s assets. Moonesinghe is now the tenant at 1332 W. Grand Avenue and tells Crain’s he’d be interested in buying the Aya building if it were made available. In Scottsdale, Arizona, an Etta outpost was recently sold to RDM Hospitality, an Austin, Texas company. The restaurant will relaunch in late September with renovations and a new modern Italian menu, according to a news release.
Back in Chicago, Aya Pastry’s namesake, acclaimed pastry chef Aya Fukai, left the bakery in 2023, but her name remains on all the branding. Fukai, who worked with Laksy and Pisor at Maple & Ash, opened the bakery with the pair in 2017. Her recipes also remain and several local coffee shops stock their pastry cases with doughnuts and croissants from the bakery. Fukai isn’t listed as a defendant in Wintrust’s lawsuit, filed Tuesday, September 10 in Cook County circuit court. Pisor kept Fukai’s departure quiet while dealing with the fallout from separating from Lasky. Over the summer, Lasky and chef Danny Grant announced expansion plans for the bar inside Maple & Ash, called Eight Bar. There’s hope of opening multiple locations across the country, and the duo has plans for Maple & Ash and Eight Bar combo in Miami. The steakhouse holds the cachet of being one of Restaurant Business Online’s highest-grossing independent restaurants in the country and tops in Chicago.
Last year, several former Etta workers protested, citing lapses in healthcare coverage and other operational concerns with Pisor. Meanwhile, Pisor tells Crain’s that he looks forward to resolving the matter concerning Wintrust quickly, describing the bank’s lawsuit as a baseless attack and a “technical default.”
The Illinois beer industry is rallying against legislation in Springfield that, if passed, could make making low-dose THC beverages illegal. The brewers claim the dispensary lobby is ramrodding a bill through the state Senate and House that would mandate breweries and distilleries that produce drinks like THC seltzers to operate under the same (and more costly) licensing requirements as dispensaries.
Introduced in April, the Hemp Consumer Products Act (Senate Bill 3926) presents far-reaching regulations that impact bars and taprooms, which began serving hemp-derived products in February. These products are derived from hemp rather than cannabis. Licenses would come with a $5,000 application fee and a July 1, 2026 deadline to apply.
An amendment to that bill, filed on Tuesday, May 9, which brewers say goes beyond the scope of public safety, and adds stricter guidelines for hemp-derived products. In a statement, the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild describes the legislation “as short-sighted and the monopolization of THC under the guise of legislation” and claims that the measures would “immediately prohibit thousands of Illinois businesses manufacturing hemp-based products, including craft breweries.”
The regulations would administer a big blow to the state’s breweries, which are searching for ways to boost sales since the industry’s peak at the start of the pandemic.
“As craft beer has leveled out, a bunch of brewers in Illinois have seen sales of craft beer replaced by the sales of hemp-derived products,” says Ed Marszewski, co-owner of McKinley Park-based Marz Community Brewing. Marz sells the most THC drinks in Illinois. These are non-alcoholic; the state forbids selling drinks mixed with both THC and alcohol.
About 30 Illinois breweries — roughly 10 percent of the industry — make THC-derived drinks. Marszewski accuses lobbyists of stealthily “slipping in some pork.” There’s a feeling the bills were designed to get through the Senate with minimum discussion, part of larger omnibus legislation. The fear is the bills would be bundled with other legislation and arrive on the House floor for a concurrence vote where representatives could only vote “yes” or “no” without scrutiny.
Choom Lite is a non-alcholic sparking drink with THC.Central Park Bar
“The high-level goal, which is certainly applaudable — and I support 1,000 percent — is public safety,” says Glenn McElfresh, a cannabis lobbyist, advocate, and owner of Perfectly Dosed, a Chicago company that makes emulsions so breweries can manufacture THC drinks. (Hopewell Brewing in Logan Square is one of its clients.) “The secondary part of this, the part that hurts is it’s protecting the economic interest of existing cannabis business owners.”
Brewers, like Marszewski, point to bills introduced in February (Senate Bill 2790 and its House companion, House Bill 5306) as evidence they aren’t opposed to regulation.
McElfresh will testify Wednesday afternoon in front of state senators in Springfield to share his insights. Reps from the Hemp Beverage Alliance and Illinois Craft Brewers Guild will assemble on Thursday morning at Hopewell Brewing for a news conference to discuss the latest news.
The beverage industry argues that cannabis companies want to be the ones selling them to customers and controlling the market. There’s also disagreement about how the bills came into existence. Brewers believe that one organization, the Cannabis Business Association of Illinois, is behind the legislation. CBAI is a lobbyist group representing dispensaries and labs around the state.
“We share Leader Lightford’s goals to protect children, empower consumers, and strengthen our state’s legal cannabis industry,” CBAI executive director Tiffany Chappell Ingram says in a statement to Eater. “We appreciate her leadership on this important issue and look forward to continued conversations about the best way to rein in the proliferation of synthetic THC intoxicants that are currently sickening children, confusing customers, and undermining our state’s carefully crafted cannabis market.”
Tiffany Chappell Ingram, executive director of the Cannabis Business Association of Illinois speaks in April in Springfield.Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
The bills’ sponsor, state Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Maywood) tells Crain’s that legislators are in the process of negotiating with the hemp and cannabis industry to design a bill that “all sides can agree upon while ensuring our common goal to have a fair, just and safe industry remains.”
While McElfresh commends Lightford’s commitment to public safety, he claims that the CBAI and other cannabis industry lobbyists have failed to engage with brewers: “How many times have you included the Craft Brewers Guild or the beer industry in discussions?” he says. “The answer has been zero’”
Dispensary owners undergo a detailed background check and are subject to strict security requirements. There’s resentment within the cannabis industry that breweries aren’t held to equal standards and don’t pay the same in taxes.
Breweries feel the amendment would effectively crush any growth in their sector while allowing massive cannabis companies to thrive
“So far we are setting these huge companies coming into the space that have seemingly unlimited funds,” says Samantha Lee of Hopewell Brewing, comparing cannabis with the early, scrappier days of the craft beer industry. “It’s a very different approach and feel.”
Lee says Hopewell began serving THC drinks in February after collaborating with Fair State Brewing Cooperative in Minnesota. Minnesota has already been a battleground for low-dose THC drinks, as the state has seen the market soar. Marszewski notes that more than 100 breweries in Minnesota manufacture THC-infused drinks. So-called “Big Cannabis” doesn’t want to see the same success unfold in Illinois, Marszewski and Lee say.
The Illinois Brewers Guild notes that Minnesota generated $1.5 million in tax revenue from $15.4 million in sales from hemp-derived drinks two months after that state began regulating the industry in June 2022. The guild claims the state “could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue if we follow Minnesota’s model.” Minnesota’s law does have loopholes.
The state’s beer distributors — often seen as representing the big breweries that compete with the smaller craft breweries — seem united with their smaller siblings. McElfresh says that’s uncommon.
“This is like getting dogs and cats to agree that loud noises are scary,” he says.
On a balmy Saturday afternoon in March, a crowd gathers in the parking lot as Dirk Fucik, owner of Dirk’s Fish & Gourmet Shop, presides over his customary seafood sampling event. Amidst the alluring scent wafting from the grill, Fucik invites eager onlookers to savor an array of oceanic delicacies, including salmon, shrimp, tuna, and fish cakes.
“Try these copi cakes,” Fucik urges, introducing the unfamiliar fish cakes to some intrigued guests. Their puzzled expressions accompany inquiries about the nature of the fish. “They used to be known as Asian carp,” he adds.
In 2022, Illinois launched a marketing campaign spotlighting the invasive carp, which have gained infamy for displacing native fish in the Mississippi River and its surrounding streams. The Chicago Tribune reported that the federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative earmarked $600,000 for a five-year promotional drive to boost the fish’s consumption. Concerns over the unappetizing name “carp” led to a rebranding initiative. Its new name, “copi,” is derived from “copious,” symbolizing its abundance in state waters.
Esteemed restaurants in Chicago such as Ina Mae Tavern and Gaijin joined the cause to popularize copi as a food source, crafting enticing recipes and leveraging their influence to amplify the campaign. Spearheading the promotional efforts is Tetra Tech, a consulting firm, that manages a dedicated webpage and an Instagram account. The latter regularly features upbeat promotional videos with catchy rhythms and slogans proclaiming, “An invasive species that is delicious!”
But two years into the campaign, enthusiasm among chefs and restaurants to promote the fish has waned. Except for Dirk’s, all participating restaurants and fish markets in Chicago have quietly removed copi from their menus.
“Nobody bothered to order them,” says an operations manager at one of the partnering restaurants, who requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their relationship with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). Despite having a pleasant, mild flavor, the fish is very bony and hard to process, the manager says. Converting the fish into chopped or ground form was an alternative, yet selling patties at a profitable price point proved challenging. According to the manager, copi was removed from their menu within two weeks of promotion.
At Dirk’s Fish and Gourmet in Lincoln Park, they’ve turned copi into patties.Xuandi Wang/Eater Chicago
Brian Schoenung, program manager at the IDNR overseeing the copi campaign, acknowledged challenges in maintaining partnerships. In addition to supply chain disruptions and manufacturing failures, the campaign has had to navigate diminishing media interest along with lukewarm consumer reception.
“We had a dip, and that dip has not been insignificant,” Schoenung says. “We got a lot of media right off the bat. As things fall out of the spotlight, you’re going to see a little bit of a backslide.”
Emblazoned with promotional materials featuring the slogan “Choose Copi,” Dirk’s introduced copi burgers in salsa and teriyaki flavors, and it continues to offer chopped and ground carp.
However, the persistent negative stereotypes surrounding carp make it a hard sell. Fucik says that many consumers mistakenly associate copi with common carp, imagining them to be bottom-dwelling creatures with a muddy flavor. On the contrary, the four species designated for consumption primarily inhabit upper water regions, feeding on algae, wetland flora, and, notably for black carp, mussels, and snails. Fucik frequently finds himself explaining the distinction to customers, emphasizing that copi, unlike their European counterparts, are mild-flavored and boast high levels of omega-3 fatty acids while maintaining low levels of mercury and other contaminants.
Due to its relatively low demand, copi doesn’t grace the menu at Fucik’s restaurant. Sales of frozen fish patties notably lag behind seafood staples like salmon and tuna. On average, about 100 pounds of copi move in a month, compared to the rapid turnover of salmon, with 100 pounds often selling out in a single day.
“I don’t sell a ton of it, but I don’t mind buying it,” Fucik says. “It’s a good cause, and it’s a good fish. And it would be nice to figure out a way to eradicate [them].”
Invasive carp found their way into American waters through deliberate introduction, as detailed in the 2017 book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Egan. In 1963, researchers at a federal lab in Arkansas advocated for importing these bottom-feeding fish as a natural means of water purification, aiming to reduce reliance on chemical treatments. Amidst growing environmental awareness spurred by Rachel Carson’s influential book, Silent Spring, which illuminated the dangers of widespread herbicide and pesticide use, there arose a pressing need for alternative, environmentally friendly solutions. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Fish Farming Experimental Laboratory imported three cardboard boxes of juvenile grass carp, native to Asia and renowned for their insatiable appetite for seaweed, with hopes of them cleaning up weed-choked rivers and irrigation ditches across the Southern United States.
Dirk Fucik hangout in the parking lot outside his seafood shop.Xuandi Wang/Eater Chicago
Within a decade of the grass carp’s introduction, an Arkansas fish farmer, in pursuit of his own batch of exotic weed-eating fish, accidentally imported three other Asian carp species: black, bighead, and silver carp. However, these carp didn’t fulfill their intended purpose. Silver and bighead carp, as filter feeders, depleted plankton and other nutrients from the waters they inhabited, while black carp sustained themselves on mollusks. Recognizing the potential ecological threat posed by these species, the fish farmer handed them over to the government. State fishery workers attempted to breed the carp in a laboratory but were unsuccessful. So they released the fish into the river and expected them to perish. To their surprise, the carp thrived and rapidly reproduced.
As reported in Egan’s book, the carp began proliferating in the wild, with baby bighead and silver carp appearing in rivers and streams throughout the South. They starve out their competition by stripping away the plankton upon which every other fish species directly or indirectly depends. Bighead carp can grow larger than 100 pounds and consume up to 20 pounds of plankton daily. The invasive carp biomass in some stretches of rivers in the Mississippi basin is thought to be more than 90 percent.
Silver carp, slightly smaller than bighead carp, have gained notoriety as YouTube sensations due to their tendency to leap out of the water like aquatic missiles when disturbed by the sound of a boat motor. This makes them a significant concern for recreational industries and water sports. Their disruptive behavior, coupled with their impact on the fish market, make them a primary target among interest groups for government intervention.
“The Great Lakes provide a lot of jobs and bring a lot of money into the region,” says Molly Flanagan, chief operating officer at Alliance for the Great Lakes, who works on invasive species policies. “If invasive carp get into the lakes or get into the rivers that feed the lakes, it could have devastating consequences for our $7 billion a year fishing industry and our $16 billion a year recreational boating industry across the region.”
Around 2010, the invasive carp crisis gained high-level policy attention. Following the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in 2009 (there were concerns fish would jump over to the other lake due to the hurricane), policymakers rushed to devise strategies to prevent the intrusion of carp into the Great Lakes, according to Flanagan. A study conducted by the Great Lakes Commission explored various measures to impede carp from migrating northward, including a proposal to reverse the flow of the Chicago River (again) to sever the connection between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Basin — an essential conduit for invasive species movement. However, the exorbitant costs associated with this plan rendered it unfeasible, Flanagan said. Nevertheless, the study prompted Congress to urge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct its own investigation.
Among the options explored is the inclusion of the fish on restaurant menus. The White House had appointed a special committee to address the invasive carp issue, and it was keen on exploring the possibility of turning them into a food source. To test the market, they enlisted out-of-state chefs to prepare complimentary samples, offering them frozen carp at no cost.
In 2010, Fucik received a call from the White House. Initially dismissed as a scam, the phone call proved to be legitimate when Fucik got in touch with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Fucik’s lifelong passion for fish stems from memories of growing up in a Catholic household where fish was a dietary staple, plus regular summer fishing trips with his uncle. After working in the fish market for several years, he opened his store. So when it turned out the call really was from the White House, Fucik immediately embraced the invitation and began to experiment with new recipes incorporating the fish.
The same year, Fucik showcased hundreds of carp burgers at Taste of Chicago, a summer food festival in the city. Despite initial hesitation from some diners, many found themselves pleasantly surprised by the taste. As word of mouth spread, eager patrons quickly formed lines in front of his venue.
Then, Fucik noticed a decline in the momentum of the campaign. He attributes this downturn to an incident in Minneapolis, where an Asian business delegation arriving at the airport was confronted with a sign urging them to “Kill Asian Carp,” a well-intentioned plea aimed at curbing the spread of the invasive species. The visitors found the message off-putting.
In 2014, Minnesota state senators successfully passed a measure mandating that Minnesota agencies designate the fish as “invasive carp.” This move was adopted by other government agencies during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in response to the surge in anti-Asian hate crimes. According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service changed its designation to “invasive carp” in 2021.
In Illinois, the main concern is the infiltration of carp into Lake Michigan via the Illinois River, which connects to the Great Lakes through the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. To counter this threat, the state has implemented a series of measures — electronic barriers, locks, and dams strategically positioned at key choke points along the waterway –– to prevent the fish from swimming upstream into Lake Michigan. By deploying multiple barriers, policymakers hope that even if an invasive carp could bypass one, it would encounter another barrier, the DNR’s Schoenung says. The state also implemented contracted removal efforts, paying 10 cents per pound to fishers to incentivize commercial harvesting. According to Schoenung, since the autumn of 2019, approximately 22 million pounds of carp have been removed through these initiatives. Targeted removal has reduced the fish’s population by half and successfully prevented invasive carp from establishing a population in Lake Michigan. In the South of Joliet’s Brandon Road Lock and Dam, the carp population has decreased by nearly 90 percent, according to Schoenung.
Johnny Zheng sits at A Fusion in Chinatown.Xuandi Wang/Eater Chicago
Following the earlier marketing attempts, the copi campaign emerged as a pivotal initiative to provide an outlet for commercial fishers to offload their catch. A majority of the harvests find their way into fertilizers, pet meals, and bait for lobsters and crayfish in Southern states. However, recognizing the nutritional value of carp — high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids — and its status as one of the most consumed fish worldwide, there’s a compelling case to diversify the use of these fish by incorporating them into the domestic food market. The high costs of transportation hindered efforts to simply export the fish.
“By doing so, you’re making the best use of a valuable resource, and you’re also incentivizing harvest,” Schoenung said.
In other regions, particularly in Asia, copi is an essential part of the culinary culture. Historical records trace Chinese consumption of carp back to the Tang Dynasty, according to the U.N. During this period, the family name of the emperor sounded similar to the Chinese name for Eurasian carp, or common carp, the only fish cultured in China at the time. To avoid potential political innuendo, the royal family prohibited the sale and consumption of common carp by the public. This restriction led farmers to turn to alternative species for aquaculture, including bighead carp, silver carp, grass carp, and black carp. These species thus thrived in China and became significant protein sources, symbolizing fortune.
Many ethnic groups are bewildered by Americans’ aversion to the fish. The phenomenon even caught the attention of a Korean television outlet that dispatched a crew to interview Fucik. Schoenung noted that the fish’s name change has little impact on the international markets in the U.S. Many foreigners are accustomed to eating carp and indifferent to the stigma around its former name.
Johnny Zheng, an established entrepreneur based in Chicago’s Chinatown, has become an organic participant in the campaign in recent years. Hailing from China’s Eastern Fujian province, he fondly remembers eating carp cakes and carp fish balls during his childhood. Propelled by a strong sense of cultural pride, he says he has made it his mission to challenge the negative perceptions surrounding carp by introducing it to mainstream markets.
In his role as president of the Mid-America Restaurant Association, Zheng discovered a factory specializing in repurposing carp into fertilizers and animal feed. Frustrated by how his cherished childhood delicacy was underutilized, he took over the factory and resolved to transform the fate of the fish by redirecting them to the dinner table.
“When Asian carp make headlines, the coverage is always negative. It’s reminiscent of other narratives about things from China such as its technology — a portrayal of invasion into mainstream American society and driving out its local supply,” Zheng says. “I know this narrative is wrong and want to prove that Asian carp are not mere ‘trash fish.’ They can be delicious and serve as a valuable source of protein.”
Zheng’s primary customers are Chinese, and not the average American. To reshape the fish’s public perceptions, Zheng invested substantial capital in transforming carp into packaged goods. His factory produces fish heads, as well as fish balls and fish noodles. These products have gradually found their way onto the shelves of numerous Asian groceries. In 2022, he opened another restaurant, A Fusion, in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, to prominently feature the fish on the menu. By creating a dedicated supply chain and culinary outlet for carp-based delicacies, Zheng says he hopes to promote their consumption while honoring their culinary potential.
Despite waning media attention to the cause, Zheng says he remains committed to popularizing copi among U.S. customers. While his investment has yet to yield a noticeable outcome, he says he is faithful that his investment will soon generate an impact.
The window at Dirk’s features a sticker reflecting the new branding of the fish.Xuandi Wang/Eater Chicago
Schoenung says he expected the campaign to be a marathon. Creating a market for something unfamiliar to many U.S. diners will take more than an overnight operation, but he remains confident that it will eventually take off.
“We’ve got the right pieces in place — we’ve got the marketing, we’ve got the stories, and we’ve got the fish supply,” Schoenung says. “Just building those other pieces, and linking it all together, I am very hopeful and very confident that we’re going to be able to do that.”
For now, Fucik plans to continue to sell copi in small amounts, holding onto hope for future funding that would allow him to host more events promoting the fish. He remains optimistic that public perception of the fish might change through continuing media exposure. Perhaps a headline reporting an injury caused by carp leaping out of the water could reignite interest in consuming the fish, thrusting it back into the news cycle, he says.
“I’m sure we’ll have another surge in interest at some point in time when something comes up,” Fucik says. “Somebody will get hit by a carp in the head in their boat and it’ll make the news. Then all of a sudden they’ll get resurrected again, and they’ll be showing all the videos and then it’ll trickle down to me again. Things get recycled because there is always a new generation of people who haven’t heard about it.”
On the first official weekend of farmers market season in Logan Square, a report about food and produce vendors being shunned in favor of non-food vendors has many questioning the direction organizers are taking the massively popular event which returns Sunday, May 12 at a new site.
In years past, many non-licensed non-food vendors, or vintage sellers, have set up shop outside the boundaries of the market, capitalizing on the crowds without paying the Logan Square chamber vendor fees. Police fielded complaints about these unsanctioned vendors, as neighbors cited traffic and safety concerns. Quietly, many farmers market vendors questioned if it was fair for them to pay fees while the vintage vendors — selling goods like clothes and art — took advantage.
Block Club Chicago’s story from earlier in the week shared publicly what many Logan Square vendors had thought for years, that market organizers cared more about creating a summer festival vibe. This distorts the focus of a traditional farmers market. For example, Green City, the not-for-profit organization that holds markets in Lincoln Park, West Loop, and Avondale (in the winter), has a mission statement in which they pledge to secure “the future of food by deepening support for sustainable farmers, educating our community, and expanding access to locally-grown food.”
But not every shopping mall is upscale with a Coach store. The neighborhood often defines a shopping center or farmers market. That philosophy is consistent with responses from the Logan Square chamber. Eater sent questions to Nilda Esparza, executive director of the chamber — she also organizes the market. Esparza, with the aid of the chamber’s board, emailed responses.
“We love our farmers, and we serve more and more farmers every year,” a portion of the chamber’s emails reads. “While there may be a broad-based understanding of what farmers markets are supposed to do in general, the Logan Square Farmers Markets specifically is organized by the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce.”
The chamber also argues that having more non-food stalls better serves the community.
“The Chamber supports farmers by connecting them to the city dwellers in Logan Square — and many other Chicago neighborhoods — because it believes that this in turn supports businesses and residents in our community,” the chamber’s email continues. “The inclusion of non-food vendors serves the dual purpose of bringing more business to farmers and exposing more people to all that Logan Square and Avondale have to offer.”
While acknowledging the effort to put on the market, vendors feel Logan Square could still be better organized. Vendors tell Eater they feared retaliation for criticizing Esparza’s decisions, including seemingly being arbitrarily moved around the market to give up prime space to non-food stalls. Hunting around for a stall is hard in a crowd, which impacts sales: “It’s hard to scramble last minute,” one food vendor says.
Several vendors shared frustration with Esparza about erratic scheduling and said she should take cues from what other markets do. A vendor mentioned they’d like to trade dates with other vendors, but felt they couldn’t even propose the idea thanks to Esparza’s demeanor. Vendors echoed Block Club’s report, that vendors were told not to speak with the media with any concerns. They weren’t threatened with retaliation, but say it was implied.
The loss of the nearby Discount Megamall, razed in 2016 to make room for a building that includes Andros Taverna and Target along Milwaukee Avenue, may have impacted the farmers market. “Vintage sellers,” or as the chamber calls them, “bazaar vendors,” lost space to sell their wares. Some who might have found a home at the Megamall set up shop in the park next to the market.
The chamber found itself in a tricky position with safety and traffic concerns mounting. The market was already congested enough. The city’s licensing departments, often criticized in the restaurant world for being slow in recognizing a problem, aren’t helping.
“We believe that the safest and most productive way to operate the farmers market in the neighborhood, in which we all live and work, is by including non-food vendors under the Logan Square Farmers Market umbrella,” the chamber board responds. “We intend to do this at least until the city provides a licensing rubric for these informal economies.”
Chef Sarah Stegner is a co-founder of Green City and recalls the story of Judy Schad, who founded Capriole Goat Cheese. Schad sold goat cheese at Green City Lincoln Park about seven years ago but found a home at Dom’s — customers can also find the cheese at Whole Foods and other retailers. The farmers market served as an incubator for Capriole.
The role of incubator is one that Logan Square’s farmers market wants to play, but not just for food vendors. One vendor disparagingly compared the market to a “glorified food hall.”
Back in 2008, legendary chef and writer Alice Waters visited Chicago and heaped praise on Green City’s mission. Chef Art Smith remembers Waters’ words, particularly her mention of Paris, and the impact the moving of its massive outdoor market, Les Helles, had on the city and its food culture. American dynamics are different, but he sees a similar transformation taking place in Fulton Market, where development has long displaced the meatpacking industry. There’s danger in rupturing connections with foodways in favor of so-called neighborhood revitalization.
The Logan Square chamber, in a news release, said it’s thankful for Block Club’s report and tried to save face with the public.
“We can’t comment on the accuracy of peoples’ feelings,’’ a portion of the chamber board’s emailed response to Eater reads. “We trust that they feel and believe that the market is fundamentally unfair. While this saddens us, we remain optimistic. We do know that while we strive constantly for both fairness and transparency in pursuit of our mission to support the business and community of Logan Square and Avondale, we will inevitably disappoint some people along the way.”
Last week, Asian Americans — including Chicago’s Anna Desai — felt knots of frustration while processing the condiment controversy instigated by Momofuku Goods, the grocery arm of celebrity chef David Chang’s empire. In March, Momofuku’s attorneys sent cease-and-desist orders to companies that used “chili crunch” and “chile crunch.”
It turns out that the terms chili crisp and chili crunch are sometimes interchangeable, something Momofuku didn’t know. The popularity of these condiments — used on ice cream, eggs, noodles, etc. —has skyrocketed in recent years. Momofuku filed for a U.S. trademark in 2023. Some argued the letters were ploys to seize control of the market. Others, including Momofuku CEO Marguerite Mariscal, countered saying Momofuku needed to show the government they were willing to defend their trademark or risk losing it. In the end, Momofuku lost the goodwill of several members of the AAPI community, including Desai. For years, Desai has used her Instagram platform to champion small and local businesses, many owned by BIPOC women. It may remind Chicagoans of the poke incident of 2018, where Aloha Poke made national headlines for sending cease and desists to restaurant owners who used “aloha” in their names. A difference is Chang is a member of the AAPI community, while the owners of Aloha Poke are not. But the similarity comes from two entities wanting control of a seemingly generic cultural term.
The backlash led to Chang backtracking, describing the letter as a misunderstanding. He explained what happened in a podcast late last week in which he apologized and announced Momofuku’s attorneys would stand down.
Desai, who was born in Hong Kong and moved to southern Illinois with her family as an infant, listened to that very special episode of The David Chang Show and says she was glad he apologized, though she still holds mixed feelings: “How do you claim this term when it really belongs to the culture?” she says.
After hearing about Momofuku’s legal shenanigans, Desai launched a four-partseries of “brands to support right now” spotlighting vendors who sell Asian condiments including Tasting India, Maa Maa Dei, and Guiz. She says she didn’t want to vilify Chang, but felt she needed to respond in an uplifting way. The posts received an outpouring of support across the country.
Desai’s parents are ethnically Chinese and were born in Vietnam. They ran a Chinese restaurant in St. Louis, which is how Desai’s interest in the restaurant industry grew. She established Over the Moon, a fundraiser where bakers created mooncakes filled with more approach fillings; Desai says her children weren’t so excited about traditional flavors, the kind her father bakes and sends annually to celebrate the Moon Festival. It’s not about brainwashing her kids into tradition, but rather, instilling in them an appreciation for original flavors. She refers to her parents’ love of spicy foods, something that wasn’t passed along to her. While heat isn’t her forte, she can still appreciate time-honored recipes that were passed along.
Inspired by Desai’s work, here are a few local vendors selling chile concoctions.
Tasting India, the company founded by Jasmine Sheth, explores India’s diverse culinary traditions by offering a series of goods that amplify any home cook’s pantry. The Bombay Chili Crunch demonstrates this with a cumin-forward condiment that transports eaters to Chinese restaurants in India, where food tends to be spiced to the tastes of locals. It’s a contrast to Sichuan cooking and carves out a unique niche among chili crunch brands. It’s particularly tasty on Chinese American foods taking dishes like Mongolian Beef to new heights. Mushrooms give the blend a punch of umami.
Chefs and spouses Sebastian Vargo and Taylor Hanna are best known in Chicago for their impressive and ever-evolving lineup of lacto-fermented pickles and krauts, but the duo has also earned a sizable following with their chili crisp. Made with smoked shiitakes and four types of chiles, it’s rich and fragrant yet balanced enough to serve in concert with delicate flavors. Vargo and Hanna recommend using a spoonful to punch up eggs, fried chicken, fish, and even pizza.
Second-generation Korean American James Lee and wife Sufei Zhan cite two primary inspirations behind their local brand Chilee (pronounced “shy-lee”) Oil: Lao Gan Ma (literally the “old godmother” of chili oil brands), and Lee’s nonagenarian grandfather, who immigrated from South Korea to Chicago in the hope of greater opportunity. The couple even came up with their own riff on Lao Gan Ma’s packaging, swapping out a grainy photo of a grandmother for an illustration of Lee’s grandfather grinning up from the label. Packed with aromatics, it plays on a traditional flavor profile with a touch of sweetness from caramelized shallots.
Co-op Sauce, a favorite among Chicago’s hot sauce aficionados since its founding in 2003, leans heavily into the crunchy side of things with its pungent garlic chili crisp. Every spoonful of zingy oil is accompanied by crispy mounds of garlic, which translates into a flavor bomb that’s great for doctoring up a boring snack or bare-bones meal. It’s also nut-free, and thus more accessible for all kinds of diners.
Jaye Fong, the one-woman band (read: baker and chef) behind sweet and savory Asian American pop-up Maa Maa Dei, has garnered a loyal following with her OG (mild) and Dragon (“WOOF-level spicy,” per Fong) chili crisps. That’s not surprising, as its complex flavor stems from more than 20 ingredients, including fried shallots and garlic, ginger threads, peanuts, and much more. Both varieties are sold out for the time being, but Fong says she’s planning another drop in early May. Keep an eye on her Instagram for a pre-order announcement.
A traditional Thai condiment, nam prik pao doesn’t fall neatly into the chili crisp category, but Chicago chef Palita Sriratana’s smokey, subtly sweet version is a noteworthy cousin. Sriratana describes the texture as “somewhere between a jam and an oil,” so there’s no crunch, but it still packs a spicy punch (those with tender tongues can cut it with honey to scale down the burn). There’s a vegan version and another variant with more heat.
In 2020, Chicago — like many other parts of the country — began pedestrianizing select streets to make room for outdoor dining. This was positioned as a lifeline to keep restaurants open while COVID-19 policies prohibited indoor dining.
Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushed this outdoor dining program, which was clustered around several North Side neighborhoods like Lakeview, Gold Coast, and River North. The mayor’s office argued the program was a success and showcased the city, counteracting the negative conservative rhetoric that framed Chicago as unsafe. Supporters say pedestrianized streets give Chicago’s downtown a European feel and increased morale during the height of the pandemic; it was also an unorthodox move to help draw people back to Downtown Chicago.
Urbanists hoped that the programs could stick around. Supporters including advocates for reducing car traffic hoped the outdoor dining program was the future. A restaurant owner inside Time Out Market Chicago, the food hall along Fulton, says sales were badly hurt last year when the city stopped allowing the food hall to set up seating on the street.
Street parking is difficult in the West Loop and Fulton Market. Pedestrianized streets take away spaces and require the city to pay an impact fee to LAZ Parking, which operates and maintains the city’s parking meters. But that fee isn’t significant, according to one city hall source. The city made up more in exchange for the positive message outdoor dining can have on restaurants and customers.
River North and its outdoor dining program along a three-block stretch on Clark Street between Grand Avenue and Kinzie Street has brought controversy. Block Club Chicago reported the conflict between 42nd Ward Ald. Brendan Reilly and Mayor Brandon Johnson. Reilly, whose constituents include restaurants like the Smith, Rick Bayless’ Frontera Grill, and Havana Grill, blamed Johnson for nixing the program “on behalf of his allies in organized labor.” Reilly later left the door ajar for the program’s return by saying the program is under the mayor’s review.
In May 2023, a group of alderpersons objected to former Mayor Lightfoot’s policy of automatic permit renewals, something Lightfoot’s office installed to speed up processes during the pandemic. In 2022, Reilly raised the issue of aldermanic privilege and opposed a permanent program that would shut down Clark. The city hall source says Reilly’s objections were rooted in his dislike of Lightfoot which superseded any attempt to quickly take action to allow restaurants to make the most out of Chicago’s short warm weather season: “He sank the vote for it,” the source says. Reilly would eventually support an ordinance that brought back outdoor dining after Johnson took office.
Another city council source says alderpersons are well aware of how important the topic is to Reilly, who’s known to frequent Boss Bar, a late-night tavern that benefited from the street dining program. Because of that, they’re reluctant to speak out: “It’s sacred ground to him,” the source says.
Reilly, who claimed on social media that the street closure was his idea, has forged strong ties with River North restaurants, which complicates matters further as opinions from restaurant owners have varied on whether they want the Clark Street program to return. Meanwhile, since the program’s inception in 2022, several neighborhood groups have sent letters to Lightfoot and Johnson’s offices objecting to closing down the streets. Grant DePorter, owner of Harry Caray’s, sent a letter in December 2022 detailing how the closure negatively impacted his business. DePorter adds that there are accessibility issues, as well. He mentions that 94-year-old Dutchie Caray, the wife of the restaurant’s namesake, has struggled to navigate the traffic. DePorter also mentions former Buffalo Bills head coach Marv Levy, a 98-year-old Chicago native, who also has had trouble getting to the restaurant while Clark has been closed.
Bayless, the city’s most famous living chef — who posed with Mayor Johnson in March to celebrate the city’s proclamation of Rick Bayless Day last month — tells Eater that it’s a complicated topic because downtown businesses haven’t recovered from the pandemic. A lack of Mag Mile shoppers has also hurt River North restaurants.
“Mix that up with the repairs on the Kennedy [Expressway] causing long travel times and the fact that people all around Chicago now say that it’s dangerous to come downtown, and you can see why those of us who are firmly planted in River North are looking for everything we can to boost business,” Bayless writes in a text.
Bayless adds that Johnson believes restaurants will play a big role in reviving downtown.
“Then why not close off the street and create a safe and vital atmosphere to draw people in?” the chef adds: “Will it hurt our business to have the street closed? Probably not much. Would it help our business? I can answer that with a resounding ‘yes.’”
Others share Bayless’s opinion. More than 2,700 people have signed an online petition asking the mayor, Ald. Reilly, and Chicago Department of Transportation commissioner Tom Carney to bring back the program.
On the other side is Sam Sanchez, a former chair of the Illinois Restaurant Association (one of his daughters, Korina, is a current board member). Sam Sanchez says the program should end. It was a pandemic lifeline whose time has come, he argues, stating that the program only benefits a handful of restaurants and gives them an unfair advantage while taking away business from other restaurants who have spent money building their own patios and licensed sidewalk patios.
Sanchez doesn’t blame the restaurants along Clark Street that benefit as he says any owner would love additional capacity, but it’s not fair. He points out that Gold Coast restaurants around Mariano Park didn’t push for outdoor dining programs to continue after Springfield restored indoor dining. Restaurants like Gibsons and Tavern on Rush were examples of ethical businesses, ones that didn’t take advantage of government relief that was supposed to be only temporary, he says. Sanchez also mentions Pink Taco, a Mexican bar — part of a chain — that closed in July 2022 after four years in Chicago. Sanchez says restaurants west of Clark Street are hurt because of traffic jams the street closures caused and that Pink Taco, 431 N. Wells Street, was among those impacted.
“We don’t need to shut down the streets when restaurants are hurting post-pandemic and are still trying to recover,” Sanchez says.
He wonders how new businesses, like the upcoming Hawksmoor steakhouse at 500 N. LaSalle, will do if traffic is jammed up. When asked if it would be okay if the program returned for select weekends in River North — the program will return in Lakeview for two weekends, on June 7 and again on July 12 — Sanchez wasn’t moved.
“We have street fests for this, we have Taste of River North for this — we have many festivals where people can enjoy the outdoors,” he says.
As the arrival of spring teases Chicagoans, restaurants are preparing to squeeze every opportunity and dollar out of outdoor dining, and they await the city council’s final decision. Sanchez says the mayor has more important topics to worry about. In the end, the winner will be which side has the best lobbyists, he says.
Etta founder David Pisor is no longer in charge of operations at his Bucktown restaurant, according to bankruptcy-related court documents. The news comes nearly two months after Pisor’s Etta Collective filed for bankruptcy in multiple states and as the once nationally recognized restaurant group’s assets head to auction next week.
The court’s order only pertains to Etta Bucktown, meaning Pisor remains at Aya Pastry. Pisor did not respond to a request for comment.
In the interim, the court has appointed Rafael Gaspar as manager of the Bucktown restaurant. The court has ordered that a sale must be finalized by Monday, April 15. Gaspar, who represents the debtors, owns a few Chicago-area restaurants including Fireside Restaurant in Ravenswood, and has no prior relationship with Pisor, according to court documents. Etta’s debtors made a motion to appoint Gaspar on March 1. His role is to “use his reasonable best efforts during the term to improve and maximize the financial performance of the restaurants and to keep them operational and maximize their value through the closing of the sale.”
In January and February, Pisor made five Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings covering his two Ettas in Chicago; Etta Scottsdale, Arizona; Aya Pastry in West Town; and his parent company, Etta Collective. He closed Etta River North in January after closing an Etta in Culver City, California, in December. He’s been involved in restaurants in Chicago, California, and Texas, and is a co-founder Gold Coast steakhouse Maple & Ash, though he is no longer affiliated with that restaurant group. Pisor’s relationship with Maple & Ash co-founder Jim Lasky deteriorated and the partners eventually reached an agreement to settle competing lawsuits against each other, and in January 2023 severed ties, with Pisor taking control of Etta properties, Aya Pastry, and Cafe Sophie under a new company, Etta Collective. Etta struggled after the split from the highly profitable Maple & Ash brand. Workers for Etta Collective in Chicago accused management of taking dental insurance premiums from their paychecks without paying for coverage in addition to other internal issues. Projects in Evanston, Downtown Chicago, and Texas have also been canceled or postponed due to the bankruptcy filings.
The order to appoint Gaspar was issued on March 12, according to a filing through the United States Bankruptcy Court of Delaware. The auction, scheduled for Monday, March 25, isn’t open to the public; parties had until the morning of Wednesday, March 20, to declare their interest in participating in the auction to undergo the appropriate financial background checks.
Two Etta locations, in Bucktown and Scottsdale, Arizona, remain, In late February, he filed notice of an agreement with John Leahy, a “stalking horse bidder.” The stalking horse — a bankruptcy term — who reaches an agreement with the bankrupt party to put in the initial auction bid and establishing a minimum bid for the party’s assets at auction. Leahy, who owns Lulu’s in Waikiki, Hawai’i, started the bidding at $675,000, according to court documents. The winning bid would also have to assume Etta’s debt, which includes $2.5 million owed to Wintrust. Other local vendors, from Rare Tea Cellar to Closed Loop Farms, are listed among Etta’s debts.
Pisor in February described Leahy as “a long-time colleague who is interested in helping us restructure and emerge stronger from this bankruptcy.” That means that Pisor could retain control over Etta if his colleague’s bid wins. Any deal, whether it’s involving Leahy, Gaspar, or another party, must close by the aforementioned April 15 date, according to court documents. Former Etta workers and those who have worked with Etta have told Eater there’s hope that a new owner could move Etta past its current financial crisis while reopening the River North location.
Aya Fukai, the founder of Aya Pastry, is owed $500,000 from Pisor after she left the business in October and sold her stakes in the West Town bakery for $700,000. She says she received $200,000 but has told Eater she’s not banking on seeing the rest. Pisor waited until February to mention Fukai’s departure and promoted a bakery worker to replace her. That replacement has since left Aya Pastry, a month after Pisor announced she’d taken the job.
Sources who have worked at Etta say that the news of the bankruptcy, and how the company handled employer dental insurance coverage has hurt business in Bucktown. The workers who remain are frustrated that their jobs are more difficult in the aftermath. They’re also dealing with low staffing levels, which hurt morale and created a rift between current employees and the former workers who were outspoken about their treatment. Meanwhile, vendors aren’t looking forward to working with Etta, given the company’s bankruptcy status.
In the wake of the bankruptcies and claims of mismanagement, Etta has launched a social media campaign leaning into normalcy and stability. An Instagram ad proudly announces, “the classics are back.” The phrasing was seemingly a response to former employees who claimed that popular items were removed off Etta’s menu because Pisor didn’t want to be reminded of former chef Danny Grant who had departed when Etta’s parent company was split in January 2023. In February, Pisor denied that claim.
The restaurant is even riding the success of The Bear, and involved in a gift card giveaway with other restaurants as part of a promotion benefitting radio station WBEZ offering a tour of the restaurants featured in the TV show.
Aya Pastry was a rare pandemic success story. While Chicagoans anxiously navigated the early days of COVID, the desire for comfort foods increased, and baker Aya Fukai — who rose through Chicago’s culinary ranks using her imagination and creativity as pastry chef at highly profitable Gold Coast hot spot Maple & Ash — was there with her baked goods: Fukai took inspiration from a variety of sources, including Girl Scout Cookies, which pushed her to create a supercharged doughnut, a decadent treat that looks like a Samoa cookie. Coffeehouses around town turned to Aya to supply pastries, and the bakery’s wholesale operation boomed, counting more than 50 clients including large grocery stores like Dom’s Kitchen & Market and independent coffee shops like Gaslight Coffee Roasters.
But behind the scenes, Fukai wasn’t exactly enjoying her tremendous success. She quietly left the bakery in October. Fukai’s exit came just 10 months after her backers at What If Syndicate dissolved the company. What If co-founder David Pisor brought Aya Pastry under his newly formed entity, Etta Collective.
Few knew about Fukai’s exit, as her name remained on the signs. She says that her deal to sell her 51 percent stake in the bakery for $700,000 closed on October 3. Meanwhile, Pisor told Eater on January 17 that she was still with the bakery.
Aya Pastry is just one of the dominoes to fall in Pisor’s restaurant empire, an empire that at one point consisted of five restaurants in three states. In the past month, Pisor closed the River North location of Etta and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy papers for Etta Collective and Etta River North. On the same day, Thursday, February 1, his attorney made two more bankruptcy filings — one for Etta Bucktown and another for Aya Pastry. The Aya filing revealed Pisor owed $500,000 to Fukai (she received $200,000 upon closing, it went mostly to attorneys fees, she says). A fifth filing had been made on January 18 involving Etta in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are also reports of a $2.5 million loan defaulting and eviction orders, according to Crain’s. The Chapter 11 filings would allow the businesses to continue, and although messaging directed to customers indicate that things are business as usual, questions remain about Etta’s future. Also, plans for a suburban Etta location in Evanston are on hold, Pisor confirms.
Workers said they only received two hours’ notice before Etta River North closed.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
“Our aim is to best position the Etta brand for future success,” a statement provided to Eater from Pisor and his reps reads. “By filing for protection under Chapter 11, we will be able to restructure our financial position while continuing our daily operations and keeping our locations open. As has already happened in our Scottsdale location, we predict that we will emerge stronger both operationally and financially.”
Former workers have been calling out Etta Collective for months, alleging that the company left them without health care. Their final paychecks also arrived two days late. Fukai, along with 11 former Etta employees — servers, bartenders, and operations staff — from River North and Bucktown provide an inside look into the seeming slow-rolling collapse of a national restaurant group. Etta’s Chicago workers saw warning signs of the downfall in August when Etta Collective narrowly dodged eviction at its Culver City location and laid off 10 workers including a handful at the corporate level. The cost-cutting continued as nine Etta River North workers claimed that they saw lapses in their health care coverage despite having premiums deducted from their paychecks. They accuse Pisor and management of allegedly misleading customers about the distribution of a 3.5 percent staff benefits fee added to customer checks. Most have requested their names be kept out of the story for fear of being labeled as outspoken as they search for new hospitality jobs. Some say they are worried about becoming a target of what they describe as Pisor’s litigious temperament.
After the settlement, Pisor quickly touted the arrivals of three forthcoming restaurants in an afternoon interview with Eater on January 22 — Etta Evanston, Etta Dallas, and a yet-to-be-announced Downtown Chicago steakhouse. Yet the bankruptcy filings include a list of unpaid vendors across sectors — restaurant, health care, and construction — that may put the three projects in jeopardy. Familiar names like Slagel Family Farm, Sysco, Kilgus Farmstead, and Supreme Lobster are owed thousands of dollars, according to these filings.
“He’s got open tabs all around the city,” alleges a source who works in construction and design.
In a written response about money owed to vendors, Pisor writes that Etta filed for Chapter 11 in part to ensure day-to-day operations to restructure and “work to resolve those payments.”
Etta Collective’s decline comes in the aftermath of a split between Pisor and former business partner Jim Lasky following a legal battle that started in March 2022. The two opened Maple & Ash, in 2015 in Chicago’s Gold Coast. They went on to form What If Syndicate and opened a Maple & Ash in Scottsdale. However, along the way, Lasky and Pisor’s relationship became strained, according to court documents. In January 2023, the pair agreed to split What If into two companies. Pisor formed Etta Collective, taking Etta restaurants in River North and Bucktown, Aya Pastry, and Cafe Sophie in Gold Coast. Lasky formed Maple Hospitality Group, taking Maple & Ash, one of the highest-grossing restaurants in the country, according to Restaurant Business Online.
Pisor’s employees in this new company, Etta Collective, say the split was an unwelcome change. Fukai alleges it was made without her knowledge or input, despite her being the majority owner of Aya Pastry. Though she’s come to terms with leaving the business that bears her name, she is considering pursuing legal action against Pisor after seeing the bankruptcy filing.
Many other former employees believe they would still be employed under different leadership.
“Pisor was the only thing wrong with that company,” former Etta River North server Drew Riebhoff alleges of Etta Collective.
Pisor earned a reputation as a developer with big ideas. As a restaurateur, he relished creating lavish dining rooms. Before Maple & Ash, he served as the chief executive officer of Elysian Hotels and was a prolific real estate developer. In 2015, Lasky and Pisor founded Maple & Ash. Building on the success of that first steakhouse, the partners, along with executive chef and Elysian alum Danny Grant, opened a second location four years later in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Maple & Ash brought a brasher attitude compared to traditional steakhouses. It had to, as it takes guts to open a steakhouse on the perimeter of what Chicagoans have nicknamed “the Viagra Triangle,” with Morton’s and Gibsons already surrounding Mariano Park. Pisor and Lasky debuted a new brand centered on one of the trends of the moment: kitchens with wood-fired hearths.
An approach that mixed fine dining with approachable irreverence earned Maple & Ash national attention; then-Eater critic Bill Addison hailed the team for its embrace of “the steakhouse motif with unfettered playfulness.” Addison continued, “[Grant] oversees a 12-foot hearth that breathes fire over rows of steaks, as well as a coal-burning oven that produces the kitchen’s greatest stroke of genius: a seafood tower of roasted shrimp, oysters, lobster, Alaskan King Crab legs, and other oceanic treasures, kissing the shellfish with smoke and concentrating their flavors.”
When Etta Bucktown, a more casual restaurant than Maple & Ash, opened in 2018, customers soon made it one of the hottest tables in town, too. A prototypical neighborhood restaurant and easily scaled, a second Etta soon opened in River North with a third following in Culver City, California.
But the partnership reached a breaking point during the pandemic. Maple & Ash became caught up in a scandal over vaccinations earmarked for a safety net hospital on Chicago’s West Side. A Maple & Ash regular, the former chief operating officer of Loretto Hospital, broke protocol and secured a supply of COVID vaccines for the steakhouse’s staff. While all of this was going on, restaurants across the country fought for every dollar and applied for PPP funds, and staff donned masks to keep safe. Pisor and Lasky’s relationship continued to erode.
David Pisor came up with much of the design for Maple & Ash, the steakhouse he and Jim Lasky opened before the two split in January 2023.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
A lawsuit filed by Pisor in April 2022 alleged that Lasky and Grant were freezing him out of the company. A counter-lawsuit accused Pisor of allegedly showing up to a female employee’s house late at night unannounced. Rumors began to circulate on both sides, but before the powder keg could explode, Pisor and Lasky agreed to a settlement in January 2023, splitting the company and keeping any other stories away from the public eye.
Today, Pisor’s empire appears in shambles, and his former business partner at Maple & Ash, Lasky, is defending allegations of PPP fraud levied by restaurant investors. The claims of PPP abuse were used as punchlines during the 2024 Jean Banchet Awards, which recognizes local chefs and restaurants. On stage in January, host Michael Muser, a co-owner of two-Michelin-starred Ever, joked about the alleged purchase of a private jet using taxpayer funds that were supposed to benefit employees. But Maple & Ash’s reputation and brand, at least in the eyes of customers, remains strong. The steakhouse continues to attract crowds in Gold Coast and Scottsdale.
Maple & Ash’s owners declined to comment for this story.
Pisor had big plans in 2023 after breaking away from Lasky. In March, he hired a pair of big names with Michelin-star resumes. Alinea Group alum Dan Perretta served as a partner and executive chef. He brought over Micah Melton, the former beverage director of the Aviary — the upscale cocktail lounge operated by Alinea. Buoyed by a fresh start and new personnel, Pisor teased expansion through a series of media announcements in the spring and early summer. But by August, Melton was laid off and Perretta had quit, allegedly in protest of the layoffs.
For service staff, Etta looked like a great place to work from the outside. The company’s promise to pay 70 percent of medical expenses for employees was particularly attractive. But after those August layoffs — which included firing managers who handled payroll — Etta workers allege that they received mixed messages from management regarding their paychecks and benefits. One ex-employee claims he was told by a manager that Etta had underpaid him in August and that he would receive the missing amount in the next week’s paycheck. When the following payday arrived, he claims he was told he owed money to the restaurant because he was overpaid. Complicating matters, according to workers, was an alleged lapse in dental and vision coverage between July 31 and December 5. Eater reviewed emails from insurance provider Guardian and Etta that backed the claim.
“It was just becoming this big, big process of confusion and lies,” a former River North worker alleges.
In an interview from January and a written statement, Pisor denies any lapses, claiming Etta provided “same-day reimbursement checks” and payments before appointments.
Eater has reviewed worker pay stubs from January 2024 showing the deductions (around $15.56 bimonthly for dental and $67.14 for health insurance for employees without dependents). Another worker tells Eater that their dentist told them their “insurance was no longer active.” They claim management never bothered to tell workers.
“I got a call from my dentist for like $500 because they said that they canceled our insurance in August, but we had still been paying premiums since then,” that same worker says. “And that has been taken out of our checks.”
Similarly, Etta server Riebhoff received a letter dated December 12 from Guardian stating dental coverage had been terminated on July 31 before coverage was reinstated. Workers pushed back during a December pre-shift meeting and benefits were restored retroactively to August. Management allegedly told workers they would be reimbursed for any out-of-pocket health care expenses incurred during the lapse in coverage.
“All employees who attended their appointments and submitted a claim to us received a manual check reimbursement from us directly out of pocket, as we did not want any employee to have to fund their own vision and dental appointments while the billing dispute was still being resolved,” Pisor responded.
In January, Pisor told Eater that the health care concerns were not as widespread as alleged by employees, attributing the claim to just one outspoken worker complaining. However, Eater spoke with eight other employees who shared similar concerns about dental and vision coverage. Pisor added that Etta was in a dispute with Guardian, saying the insurance company overcharged Etta following its August layoffs.
Guardian does not appear on the restaurant’s bankruptcy filing as one of the vendors to whom Etta River North owes money. In a statement, Pisor writes that Etta and Guardian agreed to a payment plan in mid-December after receiving a notice on December 7 from Guardian, giving Etta its 30-day notice that it would discontinue coverage due to nonpayment. However, a $10,042.39 debt to United Healthcare appears on the Etta Collective filing.
Aya Fukai says she left Aya Pastry in October 2023.Aya Pastry
Workers want to know what their deductions were spent on. They also received notice of open enrollment going from December 20 to December 29, 2023. An email sent to workers dated December 29, 2023, announced that the dispute with Guardian had been settled. A representative from Etta’s dental and vision provider, Guardian, declined most questions but did say that Etta is no longer a client.
Etta also tacked on a 3.5 percent fee for customers, presenting it as a payment for “staff benefits.” Workers claim that’s not the case and allege the money goes toward credit card processing fees.
“We were required through management to tell people that that was to go toward our health care,” a former Etta worker alleges.
Pisor’s statement denies this claim, saying the charge is meant to cover health care: “We do not offer discounts for cash, nor do we communicate with customers in that manner.”
Multiple former workers, including Riebhoff, allege that they were told by managers that “if [customers are] paying with cash, we take that service charge off.”
Riebhoff continues, “Yep, I guess if you pay cash, you don’t have to help people with insurance.”
Former Etta workers claim pettiness played a role in the company’s fall, citing numerous instances of Pisor’s hubris. A former employee says they believe “it would be thriving” and alleges that Pisor “completely gutted the restaurant of all of its heart and soul.”
The menu changed so much that regular customers couldn’t recognize the restaurant they once enjoyed; management removed popular items like oysters, ricotta pillows, and fire pie. “They just didn’t want anything that Danny [Grant] created on our menu,” Riebhoff says.
A manager allegedly told Riebhoff that the decision to remove specific dishes was a reaction to the loss of chef Grant after What If’s split. Pisor dismissed that conclusion as untrue speculation, saying while dishes change due to seasonality, the classics remain. In addition, three workers and a source familiar with operations say that to underscore that feeling, someone had defaced a photo of Grant at Etta Bucktown, drawing a penis on the picture.
“That’s how petty that they were about the Danny Grant situation,” a former worker says. “And that’s up at the restaurant for employees to see and walk past every day.”
Cafe Sophie next found footing in Gold Coast.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
Pisor writes, “to the best of my knowledge, there’s no photo of Danny Grant in the restaurant with graffiti on it” and that “if I had been aware of any such photo, I would have had it removed and made sure we addressed that issue with staff immediately.”
Grant declined a request for comment.
A source familiar with Etta’s operations says they were stunned by how quickly the chain’s financials soured right after the split with Lasky in January 2023. That source claims Pisor didn’t realize that restaurants in Chicago slow down in the winter months and make the majority of money after March. Part of the reason, the source alleges, was that Pisor didn’t make any adjustments to his lifestyle, thinking he could live his life as if he was still a co-owner of Maple & Ash, which reported $32 million in sales in 2023. He wanted badly to see Etta succeed on the national level but Etta wasn’t ready to expand that quickly at that scale, the source says.
Pride also seems to have fueled Pisor’s desire to open another steakhouse — showing Grant and Lasky that he could exceed the success of Maple & Ash without them. Pisor had an opportunity to partner on a new restaurant at One Illinois Center. Maple & Ash’s reputation impressed the project’s owner who sought to replicate that success. But in the wake of the bankruptcy filings and eviction notes, the project owner confirms they have severed ties with Pisor. They declined further comment, stating they didn’t want their name in the story and didn’t want anything to do with Pisor. Two other sources allege that the owner was continually embarrassed by Pisor’s recent headlines.
Engineers, architects, and management companies haven’t been paid for a $5 million project that includes a new Etta in Evanston. Construction was supposed to start there in mid-February, but parties are pulling out of the project: “As far as right now, that project is dead,” a construction source says.
Pisor described Evanston as “on hold” and that Etta Collective’s focus is on restructuring.
Pisor’s attitude toward flipping the page in teasing new projects without facing accountability irked his former employees. The day he closed Etta River North, Pisor told Eater Chicago he had worked out a deal with his landlord to open a new restaurant in the space.
“When he said he was going to open a new restaurant in that space, that was a bit infuriating for me,” a former worker says. “Because if that is the case, why were we not informed about this and given the option to maybe pursue a future with the company?”
As the bankruptcies get sorted, there are parties interested in buying Etta from Pisor. Court documents identified John Leahy, who owns Lulu’s in Waikiki, Hawai’i, as a stalking horse investor. “He is a long-time colleague who is interested in helping us restructure and emerge stronger from this bankruptcy,” according to Pisor. “Each entity is being restructured so that we can emerge stronger from the filing. We’re excited to start growing again once we come out the other side of this.”
While Pisor talks expansion, grassroots campaigns from restaurant workers, including the activists at the CHAAD Project, have mounted with a goal of alerting members of the hospitality industry of Pisor and Etta Collective’s reputation.
Pisor writes that he’s unaware of such campaigns and feels Etta treats workers well: “We take very good care of them, and we have employees who have been with us for five years. We’re very proud of the team we’ve built.”
That’s contrary to Riebhoff’s frustrations which have built for months.
“In the court documents for the Scottsdale bankruptcy, there is a quote from him saying, ‘I want to keep this place open so I don’t negatively impact my employees there,’” Riebhoff says. “Meanwhile, he closes Etta River North two hours before our shift with no communication whatsoever. I fucking worked for Lettuce [Entertain You Enterprises] during COVID, and R.J. Melman called us to tell us about it — everyone. So for him to just like not acknowledge it at all, to have zero sympathy or empathy, is fucking disgusting.”
Etta River North remains closed even though lights are turned on and tables set as though the restaurant is ready to serve customers. On the morning of Wednesday, February 7, Rieboff was greeted by the sound of 30 or so text messages. He wasn’t surprised with what he read. He and his former coworkers were supposed to receive their last paycheck from Etta, but the payments didn’t come through. So he and four former workers gathered that afternoon outside Etta Bucktown with signs to protest.
“A lot of industry people live check by check, where’s their money?” they yelled. “They have new concepts even though they’re broke!”
Former Etta River North server Drew Riebhoff holds up a sign at a protest in front of Etta’s Bucktown location.Ashok Selvam/Eater Chicago
A former Etta worker holds up two signs outside the Bucktown location.Ashok Selvam/Eater Chicago
Eater reviewed a text from Rieboff to Etta Bucktown manager Max Ostrowski asking about the status of the paychecks. Ostrowski replied that payment should pop up in 24 to 48 hours, “but if Bucktown gets shut down [because] of protest, then the courts could shut us down and we can’t pay anyone and it would be tied up in courts for months.”
That night, Pisor sent out an email to those former workers, writing that “this payment delay was not expected, the court has approved payment, and we anticipate that the funding process will only take a few days.”
On the afternoon of Friday, February 9, Rieboff told Eater that he received his payment and that he was shocked that no insurance premiums were deducted from his paycheck.
As news spread about Aya Pastry’s bankruptcy on Tuesday, February 13, Pisor’s teams sent out an email newsletter to the bakery’s customers: “Aya continues to operate and add new clients to our roster. What does this mean for you, our valued patrons? Operations as usual. We remain dedicated to producing great breads, cakes and pastries that you’ve come to expect, and our day-to-day operations will continue without interruption.”
A similar email was also sent to Etta Bucktown’s customers, a message that addressed the protest earlier in the week, reassuring potential diners that payments were “sent less than 36 hours after they were due” and that management was “filled with optimism about the future.”
Neither message included any mention of Fukai’s departure. When reached, Fukai, who had already seen the Aya Pastry email, said she felt the message “seemed misleading.” Pisor, in a statement, writes that Etta Collective promoted a worker who had been with the bakery for four and a half years to lead Aya Pastry.
Fukai, who already received $200,000 of Aya’s $700,000 sale price from Pisor, wonders if she’ll see the remainder after five years of building the bakery. She empathizes with Rieboff and Etta’s other workers. Though she’s had since October to extricate herself from the bakery, she needs a reset.
“I’ve been working so hard, and I had so many responsibilities, so I’m taking a little break,” Fukai says.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Our current political climate is a little scary, so going public around controversial issues can be terrifying. When does it make sense to use your business as a platform?
Often speaking up can drive business and foster customer loyalty. If you choose to remain silent, that’s your prerogative, but you’re more than likely going to get called out by your customer base at some point — and you should be prepared to respond.
Forrester did a study on it, and they found “when choosing between two brands with similar products, 43% of US adults will favor the company that takes a stand on like-minded social, environmental, or political values.” For Gen Zers, it’s even higher because, of course, it is. I love that activist generation.
If you’re still on the fence about whether to speak up or not, here are instances when you should.
Go back and read that quote again — “43% of US adults will favor the company that takes a stand on like-minded social, environmental, or political values.” The determining factor here is whether or not your customer base agrees with the stance you take.
For example, if I’m selling fashion accessories aimed at Gen Zers, I’m going to want to take a political stance that matters to the majority of that generation. Zoomers have a tendency to be pretty darn progressive — in fact, Gen Zers have even been called the most progressive generation to date.
Pew Research Center shows 74% of Zoomers support legalizing abortion in some or all cases, so making a statement as a brand that caters to this audience about Roe v. Wade is probably a good idea. Will there be pushback? Of course. However, in the long run, you’ll build customer loyalty from your target audience. Ditto global warming, LGBTQIA+ rights, etc., etc.
When it’s local
When something happens on a local level, it isn’t always wise to stay quiet, and you should always pay attention.
It’s important to consider how the current event/situation/happening might impact your employees, clients, customers or community. If the issue could directly affect any of the four, speak up. If somebody’s (or a group of somebodies) livelihood or human rights are at stake, you cannot sit idly by.
Recently, in my community, a local event venue came under fire for refusing to welcome the LGBTQIA+ community. They released a statement, really poorly written — clearly, they did not consult a PR firm about staying true to their Christian values. When pressed about where that line is drawn, they couldn’t articulate their reasoning. Again, if you are going to take a public stance, be prepared to defend your position, and have talking points ready to go.
In a time where so much is at stake, being apolitical can be a bad strategy.
Sometimes, things happen that are objectively bad — a local child gets abducted, or there’s another school shooting, for example. Those are black-and-white issues when it comes to sympathy and supporting victims. It should be easy for brands to get behind. Who in their right mind would be upset about a company showing support for a community going through a tragedy?
But that’s not what I’m talking about here. What I mean are the times when the going gets tough. At the end of the day, someone has to be the first to stand up for what’s right, even if it doesn’t seem popular. There has to be someone to speak up for the underdog or to utilize their platform to elevate the voices of those without an outlet.
Is it scary to do? Absolutely. Risky? You betcha. Will people be mad and drop your services? Definitely … and then they’ll be replaced by the people who’ve seen what you did and want to support your business. Remember: 43% of people will back a business with similar views. You’ll be shocked at just how many supporters show up when you’re willing to take the risk and speak up.
Shark Tank‘s Kevin O’Leary has found himself swimming in shark-infested hot water after making a controversial statement on Twitter over the weekend.
But Mr. Wonderful refuses to back down. On the contrary, he’s appeared on various news shows in the past few days, defending his statement and snapping back at his critics.
The brouhaha started on Saturday morning when O’Leary tweeted: “You may lose your wife, you may lose your dog, your mother may hate you. None of those things matter. What matters is that you achieve success and become free. Then you can do whatever you like.”
You may lose your wife, you may lose your dog, your mother may hate you. None of those things matter. What matters is that you achieve success and become free. Then you can do whatever you like.
— Kevin O’Leary aka Mr. Wonderful (@kevinolearytv) February 11, 2023
The tweet did not go over well with Twitter users, who found O’Leary’s no-holds-barred position lacking compassion and humanity.
A Twitter user named @MasonVersluis tweeted: “Kevin, this is a soulless tweet! Being soulless has brought you massive success, however, you now need to tap into your inner higher self and stop focusing on the money! Hopefully, you know self and have not gotten your brand mixed up with the human!”
Kevin, this is a soulless tweet!
Being soulless has brought you massive success, however, you now need to tap into your inner higher self and stop focusing on the money!
Hopefully, you know self and have not gotten your brand mixed up with the human!
@AlexKerner tweeted that O’Leary was too materialistic.
I used to appreciate your message, now it just sounds like a miserable life. Who cares about money when you have no one or nothing to enjoy but material items? If this is what’s defined as a success i can see why there’s backlash these days.
O’Leary, who never met a controversy he couldn’t publicize, took to the airwaves this week to defend his position.
He told CNN that he stands by his tweet “100 percent,” arguing that being an entrepreneur takes tremendous sacrifice.
“If you’re an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I’m talking about because you need to sacrifice. You have to work 25 hours a day, eight days a week, because your competitors in Mumbai or Shanghai — they want to kick your butt. You have to win when you’re young and sacrifice everything so that you achieve freedom for your whole family later in life,” he said.
O’Leary blasted his critics as not understanding the nature of entrepreneurship. “If you don’t get it, don’t worry about it cause you don’t fit the entrepreneurial mold,” he said. “If you’re not ready to work your ass off, you’re not an entrepreneur, get over it if that makes you uncomfortable. I couldn’t care less.”
On Fox News, O’Leary doubled down, saying, “If that statement makes you uncomfortable, you are not an entrepreneur. Don’t even try.”
Musical numbers have been an integral part of our Bollywood films. Recently, Pathaan’s song Besharam Rang featuring Deepika Padukone was at the centre of a controversy. When the song was first released it was heavily criticised by many.
However, this is certainly not the first time that Bollywood songs have been the subject of controversies.
In 2018, when Padmaavat’s Ghoomar was released it faced backlash from a particular community in Rajasthan as they said that the costume worn by the actress in the song failed to portray the regal image of the Rajput Queen, Padmavati.
Also, Radha featuring Alia Bhatt, Sidharth Malhotra and Varun Dhawan from the 2012 film Student of The Year was also accused to have allegedly hurt the sentiments of a particular community and was considered problematic by a certain section of people who had problems with calling ‘Radha’ as ‘sexy’ in the song.
Munni Badnaam Hui from Dabangg, Aaja Nachle’s title song and Bhaag DK Bose from Delhi Belly were some of the songs that stirred controversies.
If you’ve scrolled through any social media platform this week — particularly Instagram — you’ve probably seen a slew of digitalized portraits shared by friends. They look animated, cartoonish, and above all, hauntingly beautiful.
Made with Lensa AI
The portraits are generated by a new photo app, Lensa AI, which aims to make “your selfies look better than you ever could have imagined.”
Lensa uses artificial intelligence to digitize portraits in a variety of categories, from anime to fantasy to what they call “stylish” — which most closely resembles an oil painting set to a bold colored or blank background. The app itself is free, but the portraits come at a cost. With a seven-day “free trial,” users can upload 10 to 20 selfies and then select a package of unique avatars, ranging from 50 for $3.99, 100 for $5.99, or 200 for $7.99. A year-long subscription is $35.99.
However, the app’s popularity has raised questions regarding privacy as well as the potentially harmful nature of editing apps and filters that have flooded social media since the creation of Snapchat in 2011, FaceTune in 2013, and ultimately TikTok in 2016.
About three years ago, New Yorker writer and author Jia Tolentino famously cracked down on the dark side of social media filters, bringing to light an increasingly popular trend in cosmetic surgery in young adults aiming to achieve the “Instagram face.”
The “single, cyborgian face,” she writes is, of course, young. “It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips,” she continues. “It looks at you coyly but blankly, as if its owner has taken half a Klonopin and is considering asking you for a private-jet ride to Coachella.”
However, unlike other filters on social media and photo-editing apps like FaceTune, Lensa doesn’t try to look “real,” but rather leans into a new kind of photo distortion rooted in its other-worldliness.
I tried the app myself and followed the instructions prior to generating the portraits. It requires a minimum of 10 photos (with a maximum of 20) and demonstrates examples of “good” and “bad” selections. A good selection is an up-close selfie that showcases your natural features. A bad selection is you on vacation, slightly far away, but still looking at the camera.
After the photos are selected, the technology takes up to 20 minutes to generate the portraits in 10 styles: fantasy, fairy princess, focus, pop, stylish, anime, light, kawaii, iridescent and cosmic.
The “portraits” look like me, it’s undeniable, but there’s something both dream-like and dystopian in the similarities and differences. Lensa accurately captured my green eyes and dark hair. What was most unsettling was the accuracy with which it captured my somewhat awkward, closed-mouth smile that is present in so many of my photos and real life.
Made with Lensa AI
However, the girl in the portraits looks like me in the way, perhaps, someone might look like me if they played me in a Hollywood film — she’s younger, with a more narrow nose, protruding collarbones, and fuller lips — in short: she’s far better looking. Another unsettling difference was that despite my selection of photos only being selfies from the neck up, Lensa either animated my body to be strikingly thin and several photos revealed cleavage in halter tops and gowns, with others showcasing objectively suggestive poses — which I only later realized could be considered lucky compared to what other women have gotten from the app.
Made with Lensa AI
Melissa Heikkilä, a senior reporter at MIT Technology Review, wrote that of the 100 avatars generated, 16 were topless and another 14 had her in “extremely skimpy clothes and overtly sexualized poses.”
And Heikkilä isn’t the only one. Zoe Sottile, a reporter for CNN, had a similar experience wherein Lensa generated jarringly sexualized images despite her photos uploaded being fully clothed. “In one of the most disorienting images, it looked like a version of my face was on a naked body,” she writes. “In several photos, it looked like I was naked but with a blanket strategically placed, or the image just cut off to hide anything explicit.”
However, when it comes to male avatars, the portraits exude both masculinity and strength: generating men as warriors, astronauts, and something resembling a Top-Gun-like themed photoshoot.
After generating my own avatars, and reading about similar experiences from other women, it suddenly became clear why the app, before generating your portraits, requires you to be “the age of majority (18/21+).”
Entrepreneur has reached out to Lensa AI for comment.
Aside from the possible concerns of ethics and the sexualization of women, the app poses privacy concerns for users. Since it uses facial recognition to generate the portraits, the question looms as to how long — and where — those photos are ultimately stored. According to the app’s privacy policy, it uses TrueDepth API technology, and user photos “train our algorithms to perform better and show you better results.”
However, some have concerns about what happens to the data. “Do you really want your face on a large database? People need to decide for themselves about this but it’s not benign, there’s nothing to this, it’s not just fun,” Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist at the University of Toronto, told CTV News.
However, the company Tweeted that images are erased from the server after being generated.
As soon as the avatars are generated, the user’s photos and the associated model are erased permanently from our servers. And the process would start over again for the next request.
Lensa AI first launched in 2018 as a product of Prisma, which functioned as a photo-editing and filter app along with the ability to transform images into works of art. However, in November 2022, it launched the “Magic Avatar” feature that has been sweeping social media and generating highly-sharable images. Given the recent emergence of the app, it remains unknown what privacy and psychological repercussions Lensa poses.
Last month, FaceTune faced a class action lawsuit in Illinois claiming that the app illegally collects, stores and uses consumer data as a violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The plaintiffs are three Illinois parents who claim Lightricks (FaceTune’s parent company) collected the biometric data of their children, ages 4, 10 and 13.
While Lensa maintains its privacy promise, the app is still new, and therefore a lot remains unknown. As for the somewhat ethical and psychological concerns posed by such photo-editing apps, legal action might be tricky, as engaging with the app, at its core, involves a sort of welcoming of one’s visual distortion.
Of the reviews for Lensa on the app store, most are overwhelming positive — praising it as the “best of its kind” or one user saying they “love the app,” and continue to use it despite minor glitches. The most negative complaints are in relation to the photo limit, glitches and cost. Other complaints involve dissatisfaction with the quality of certain photos, stating that in some images eyes are distorted or limbs look unnatural. “I have fingers that look grotesque, eyes that are colored incorrectly, or one eye is larger than the other or drooping, faces that are deformed or dismembered, my head either cut off or completely missing in photos,” another user writes.
So for those looking for an airbrushed AI makeover, maybe Lensa isn’t the ideal app after all.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Ye, also known as Kanye West, has been a problematic public figure for years. From the time he wore a White Lives Matter shirt to the time he said slavery was a “choice” in a TMZ newsroom, Ye has always hidden behind the guise of “free thinking” to spread discrimination, alternative histories and controversy that pose a threat to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as we know it.
Ye isn’t the only public figure leveraging media as a way to enable harmful “free speech.” After months of Elon Musk performing political theater around purchasing Twitter to reclaim “free speech” on the platform, Ye threw in his hat and offered to purchase Parler, a social media alternative to Facebook and Instagram.
Public figures like Ye and Elon are opening the floodgates for hateful speech and violence to arise. Given the red flags, why do brands continue to ignore the dangers of partnering with public figures with controversial pasts with DEI? My theory is they looked past harmful rhetoric and move forward with business contracts for one main reason: profit.
Brands put profit over ethics all the time and the consequences are often a tarnished public image and a growing distrust amongst consumers. Brands that have looked the other way are now in a situation where they have to publicly cut ties to protect their image.
Could brands have seen the red flags and denied a partnership with Ye from the beginning? Yes. Did they probably know the risks? Yes. Did they make the right choice to stick it out until it backfired? Only time will tell.
No matter what, it should not have taken years of hateful comments for brands to step away from Ye. His most recent anti-semitic comments unearthed a disturbing rise in hate crimes directed towards Jewish people in recent years.
The recent rise of anti-Semitism shouldn’t be ignored
Before Ye’s inflammatory comments about Jewish people, hate crimes against those in the Jewish community were at an all-time high. An estimated 1 in 4 American Jews say they experienced anti-semitism in the last year. In 2021 alone, there were a reported 2,717 anti-semitic incidents in the US. With such an obvious rise in hate crimes, why aren’t more DEI practitioners and businesses focusing on it?
My theory is that folks of Jewish descent have often been associated with “white people” and are grouped that way in national census data. Therefore, other minority groups may not know that Jews experience an elevated level of hate crimes. Other minority groups may be so focused on their own mistreatment and trauma that it’s hard for them to imagine why someone who is categorized as a “white person” would experience what they do.
The truth is that some Jewish people may have very different lived experiences depending on where they live, how deep their Orthodox traditions are, and how their lifestyles contrast with the surrounding culture.
Above all, we know Jewish folks have been persecuted for centuries with anti-semitism coming to a head in WWII with the forced relocation and violence against Jews from Germany and other parts of Eastern Europe.
Since then, Jewish folks have come a long way in owning high-yield businesses in banking, finance and the entertainment industry. No matter their economic status or position in the business world, they’re human beings and should be treated with respect without having to sacrifice their safety in the process.
With the rise of hate crimes against Jewish folks and the continual threats faced by women, racial minorities and other groups, there’s never been a better time for businesses to put a magnifying glass on the DEI practices of public figures and influencers who they wish to partner with.
Don’t turn a blind eye to DEI red flags for profit
Brands that partnered with Ye already knew he was controversial, but they were blinded by dollar signs and wilfully ignored his controversial history for profit. As a DEI consultant, I work with big and small businesses that are often straddling the line between profit and ethics. If your leadership team has to rethink working with a public figure because of their checkered past, take a pause and look at why that is.
It’s one thing to work with a public figure who had a controversial past, owned up, apologized and is ready to make amends. However, looking away and working with figures who continue to commit harmful actions and speech toward minority groups is the fault of brands that have chosen to ignore those red flags and assume the risk.
If the idea of working with a public figure triggers a gut check with members of your team because of the person’s past comments and actions, reconsider whether you want your brand to be connected to that person. The more we look the other way and fund figures whose comments create, perpetuate and prolong violence against another group, the more the brands that partner with them put their reputations at risk.
DEI red flags to look out for when considering partnerships with public figures include:
Hate speech towards certain groups and a lack of remorse for or continuation of that speech.
Ongoing lawsuits against that figure with multiple witnesses and trials.
No public statements or apologies condemning their past behavior or speech.
No visible action to make amends like volunteering, donating, partnering or reconciling with those they’ve harmed.
Continued association with others who perpetuate harmful behavior and speech against groups without publicly condemning their actions or disassociating with them.
These red flags are obvious signs that the public figure your brand is about to work with has a problematic past that may harm your brand’s reputation and longevity in the future. So, beware.
Consider risks of partnering with public figures who have checkered pasts with DEI
Who your brand associates with can speak volumes. Let’s say your brand chooses to partner with Ye, Harvey Weinstein or others who have perpetrated harm against others and chose to show little to no remorse or desire to make amends. Your brand will face the consequences.
Loyal followers and customers may cancel your brand just for association with figures like Ye. It may seem unfair but it’s actually right on the money. Consumers today have a renewed interest in the ethics and honesty of brands and can see right through businesses that claimto be ethical or on the “right side” of justice but choose to associate with controversial public figures who do the opposite.
Of course, there is a difference between brands and their partners, but we know consumers are observing brands like Adidas, Balenciaga and Vogue very closely. Associations with public figures who have used racist, sexist, anti-semitic, transphobic and ableist language will be held accountable in the court of public opinion, and the consequences will be financial.
The best way to avoid the downfall of brands, their reputations and their profits is to be very choosy about who they partner with and be aware of the consequences that may result. Brands that have seen Ye’s controversial approach to DEI and made conscious decisions to ignore it now see their reputations tarnished with the memory of his anti-semitic comments and distasteful behavior.
Holding people accountable for harmful actions is key to changing behavior in DEI
No public figure is immune to cancel culture. In fact, cancel culture is how consumers, followers and others find justice when public figures misbehave or practice harmful speech. It’s the broader population who seems to hold public figures accountable for their actions.
On social media, the response to Ye’s recent anti-semitic comments has been resounding. People from all walks of life and areas of influence condemn his comments and the result is, finally, the businesses, projects and partnerships he’s built are crumbling. As painful as it is to see folks fall, sometimes hitting rock bottom and letting the rug be pulled out from underneath someone is the only way for them to learn the gravity of their actions.
I’m not naive. I don’t expect Ye to change his hateful speech and rhetoric overnight. But I do hope he really feels the financial and social repercussions and that he chooses to move forward more mindfully with his platform. He, perhaps more than many other celebrities and public figures, should know that no matter how rich, famous or influential a person is, there is no escaping the consequences of hate speech and the price to be paid will likely be bigger than they could have imagined.
It’s up to individuals, brands and businesses to have a stance and express boundaries around hate speech — to not only condemn it but to commit to withholding support from those who practice it. An overt stance on DEI will signal to public figures that if they want to make music, art, do business or work in political spaces, there is a code of conduct they must adhere to with DEI and respect at the root. They should know that businesses and individuals will not work with them if their hateful rhetoric continues, no matter how much profit is on the line. Only through consequences will we see a change in how long public figures like Ye thrive in the business world. Public figures should only be able to thrive if their comments are rooted in respect for diversity, equity and inclusion. Not the opposite.
I’m not here to criticize Balenciaga, Vogue and Adidas for initially making a financial decision to partner with Ye in the first place. However, I find it surprising they failed to calculate and anticipate the social price they would inevitably pay for doing business with a figure who offends so many. Whether you’re a big or small business, keeping DEI at the forefront of your work will not only protect you from situations like the one we see with Ye but will also help you thrive in the long run. Don’t be a business blinded by the red flags of public figures because your mind is focused on the money.
Be discerning about the long-term consequences of partnering with problematic figures. Brands should think about how even one bad partnership with a very high-profit outlook can have devastating impacts on their reputation for years to come. Consumers, followers and others will begin to see brands as co-conspirators of hate speech and rhetoric as a consequence of their partnerships with controversial public figures.
Now is the time to put DEI first and make business decisions that are truly on the right side of justice. Use DEI as a tool to be discerning about who you work with and why. Only then can brands that wish to last a lifetime and remain influential stand the test of time in a world increasingly focused on ethics, justice and equity.
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