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    Pandemic Wave of Automation May Be Bad News for Workers

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    The need for social distancing led restaurants and grocery stores to seek technological help. That may improve productivity, but could also cost jobs.When Kroger customers in Cincinnati shop online these days, their groceries may be picked out not by a worker in their local supermarket but by a robot in a nearby warehouse.Gamers at Dave & Buster’s in Dallas who want pretzel dogs can order and pay from their phones — no need to flag down a waiter.And in the drive-through lane at Checkers near Atlanta, requests for Big Buford burgers and Mother Cruncher chicken sandwiches may be fielded not by a cashier in a headset, but by a voice-recognition algorithm.An increase in automation, especially in service industries, may prove to be an economic legacy of the pandemic. Businesses from factories to fast-food outlets to hotels turned to technology last year to keep operations running amid social distancing requirements and contagion fears. Now the outbreak is ebbing in the United States, but the difficulty in hiring workers — at least at the wages that employers are used to paying — is providing new momentum for automation.Technological investments that were made in response to the crisis may contribute to a post-pandemic productivity boom, allowing for higher wages and faster growth. But some economists say the latest wave of automation could eliminate jobs and erode bargaining power, particularly for the lowest-paid workers, in a lasting way.“Once a job is automated, it’s pretty hard to turn back,” said Casey Warman, an economist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has studied automation in the pandemic.The trend toward automation predates the pandemic, but it has accelerated at what is proving to be a critical moment. The rapid reopening of the economy has led to a surge in demand for waiters, hotel maids, retail sales clerks and other workers in service industries that had cut their staffs. At the same time, government benefits have allowed many people to be selective in the jobs they take. Together, those forces have given low-wage workers a rare moment of leverage, leading to higher pay, more generous benefits and other perks.Automation threatens to tip the advantage back toward employers, potentially eroding those gains. A working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United States but around the world.“Six months ago, all these workers were essential,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers. “Everyone was calling them heroes. Now, they’re trying to figure out how to get rid of them.”Checkers, like many fast-food restaurants, experienced a jump in sales when the pandemic shut down most in-person dining. But finding workers to meet that demand proved difficult — so much so that Shana Gonzales, a Checkers franchisee in the Atlanta area, found herself back behind the cash register three decades after she started working part time at Taco Bell while in high school.“We really felt like there has to be another solution,” she said.So Ms. Gonzales contacted Valyant AI, a Colorado-based start-up that makes voice recognition systems for restaurants. In December, after weeks of setup and testing, Valyant’s technology began taking orders at one of Ms. Gonzales’s drive-through lanes. Now customers are greeted by an automated voice designed to understand their orders — including modifications and special requests — suggest add-ons like fries or a shake, and feed the information directly to the kitchen and the cashier.The rollout has been successful enough that Ms. Gonzales is getting ready to expand the system to her three other restaurants.“We’ll look back and say why didn’t we do this sooner,” she said.Shana Gonzales, who owns four Checkers franchises in the Atlanta area, said she has had difficulty finding workers to meet demand.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesThe push toward automation goes far beyond the restaurant sector. Hotels, retailers, manufacturers and other businesses have all accelerated technological investments. In a survey of nearly 300 global companies by the World Economic Forum last year, 43 percent of businesses said they expected to reduce their work forces through new uses of technology.Some economists see the increased investment as encouraging. For much of the past two decades, the U.S. economy has struggled with weak productivity growth, leaving workers and stockholders to compete over their share of the income — a game that workers tended to lose. Automation may harm specific workers, but if it makes the economy more productive, that could be good for workers as a whole, said Katy George, a senior partner at McKinsey, the consulting firm.She cited the example of a client in manufacturing who had been pushing his company for years to embrace augmented-reality technology in its factories. The pandemic finally helped him win the battle: With air travel off limits, the technology was the only way to bring in an expert to help troubleshoot issues at a remote plant.“For the first time, we’re seeing that these technologies are both increasing productivity, lowering cost, but they’re also increasing flexibility,” she said. “We’re starting to see real momentum building, which is great news for the world, frankly.”Other economists are less sanguine. Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that many of the technological investments had just replaced human labor without adding much to overall productivity.In a recent working paper, Professor Acemoglu and a colleague concluded that “a significant portion of the rise in U.S. wage inequality over the last four decades has been driven by automation” — and he said that trend had almost certainly accelerated in the pandemic.“If we automated less, we would not actually have generated that much less output but we would have had a very different trajectory for inequality,” Professor Acemoglu said.Ms. Gonzales, the Checkers franchisee, isn’t looking to cut jobs. She said she would hire 30 people if she could find them. And she has raised hourly pay to about $10 for entry-level workers, from about $9 before the pandemic. Technology, she said, is easing pressure on workers and speeding up service when restaurants are chronically understaffed.“Our approach is, this is an assistant for you,” she said. “This allows our employee to really focus” on customers.Ms. Gonzales acknowledged she could fully staff her restaurants if she offered $14 to $15 an hour to attract workers. But doing so, she said, would force her to raise prices so much that she would lose sales — and automation allows her to take another course.The artificial intelligence system that feeds information to the kitchen at a Checkers.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesTechnology is easing pressure on workers and speeding up service when restaurants are chronically understaffed, Ms. Gonzales said.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesRob Carpenter, Valyant’s chief executive, noted that at most restaurants, taking drive-through orders is only part of an employee’s responsibilities. Automating that task doesn’t eliminate a job; it makes the job more manageable.“We’re not talking about automating an entire position,” he said. “It’s just one task within the restaurant, and it’s gnarly, one of the least desirable tasks.”But technology doesn’t have to take over all aspects of a job to leave workers worse off. If automation allows a restaurant that used to require 10 employees a shift to operate with eight or nine, that will mean fewer jobs in the long run. And even in the short term, the technology could erode workers’ bargaining power.“Often you displace enough of the tasks in an occupation and suddenly that occupation is no more,” Professor Acemoglu said. “It might kick me out of a job, or if I keep my job I’ll get lower wages.”At some businesses, automation is already affecting the number and type of jobs available. Meltwich, a restaurant chain that started in Canada and is expanding into the United States, has embraced a range of technologies to cut back on labor costs. Its grills no longer require someone to flip burgers — they grill both sides at once, and need little more than the press of a button.“You can pull a less-skilled worker in and have them adapt to our system much easier,” said Ryan Hillis, a Meltwich vice president. “It certainly widens the scope of who you can have behind that grill.”With more advanced kitchen equipment, software that allows online orders to flow directly to the restaurant and other technological advances, Meltwich needs only two to three workers on a shift, rather than three or four, Mr. Hillis said.Such changes, multiplied across thousands of businesses in dozens of industries, could significantly change workers’ prospects. Professor Warman, the Canadian economist, said technologies developed for one purpose tend to spread to similar tasks, which could make it hard for workers harmed by automation to shift to another occupation or industry.“If a whole sector of labor is hit, then where do those workers go?” Professor Warman said. Women, and to a lesser degree people of color, are likely to be disproportionately affected, he added.The grocery business has long been a source of steady, often unionized jobs for people without a college degree. But technology is changing the sector. Self-checkout lanes have reduced the number of cashiers; many stores have simple robots to patrol aisles for spills and check inventory; and warehouses have become increasingly automated. Kroger in April opened a 375,000-square-foot warehouse with more than 1,000 robots that bag groceries for delivery customers. The company is even experimenting with delivering groceries by drone.Other companies in the industry are doing the same. Jennifer Brogan, a spokeswoman for Stop & Shop, a grocery chain based in New England, said that technology allowed the company to better serve customers — and that it was a competitive necessity.“Competitors and other players in the retail space are developing technologies and partnerships to reduce their costs and offer improved service and value for customers,” she said. “Stop & Shop needs to do the same.”In 2011, Patrice Thomas took a part-time job in the deli at a Stop & Shop in Norwich, Conn. A decade later, he manages the store’s prepared foods department, earning around $40,000 a year.Mr. Thomas, 32, said that he wasn’t concerned about being replaced by a robot anytime soon, and that he welcomed technologies making him more productive — like more powerful ovens for rotisserie chickens and blast chillers that quickly cool items that must be stored cold.But he worries about other technologies — like automated meat slicers — that seem to enable grocers to rely on less experienced, lower-paid workers and make it harder to build a career in the industry.“The business model we seem to be following is we’re pushing toward automation and we’re not investing equally in the worker,” he said. “Today it’s, ‘We want to get these robots in here to replace you because we feel like you’re overpaid and we can get this kid in there and all he has to do is push this button.’” More

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    At Sweetgreen, Seeing the Future of Work in a Desk Salad

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    A favorite lunchtime destination of many urban office workers weathered the pandemic thanks to its digital savvy. It’s confident more people will be returning to their offices soon.What can office desk salads tell us about the state of the pandemic?To Sweetgreen, which has been selling $10 to $15 salads to lines of office workers for more than a decade, they say the end is in sight.“Covid’s over,” Jonathan Neman, chief executive of Sweetgreen, said in a recent Zoom interview from Culver City, Calif., where the company is based, and where employees are being asked to return to the office on July 19. “At this point, it’s just getting people back in.”Sweetgreen, which has 129 restaurants across more than a dozen states, is among the businesses that have been obsessively tracking coronavirus case numbers on sites like Axios and The New York Times throughout the pandemic. It has also been monitoring car traffic and OpenTable reservations to gauge consumer activity.The company and its meals are connected to the status of office workers in cities, particularly millennials and those in Generation Z. Sweetgreen has raised more than $450 million in funding since it was founded in 2007 and has cultivated a loyal following thanks to its fresh ingredients, digital savvy and sharp branding, which extends to the design of its stores and celebrity partnerships with the likes of the tennis star Naomi Osaka. But it has also bet heavily on serving many white-collar workers in cities like New York and Los Angeles, a once-ubiquitous slice of urban life that was upended by the pandemic.“It has definitely been challenging, especially in the cities that had a full shutdown,” Mr. Neman said.Before the pandemic, he said, the company had set up more than 1,000 “outposts” — its name for salad pickup locations at places like corporate offices and hospitals. Sweetgreen now has about 250 up and running.With a few dozen Manhattan locations and regular digital ordering, Sweetgreen has had insight into the movements of its customers.Rozette Rago for The New York Times“We’re definitely not fully back from an office perspective,” Mr. Neman said, though he added that the company had experienced a steady rise in business since many mask mandates were dropped in May and the Memorial Day weekend.“You’re starting to see these really nice increases as people are slowly returning to the office,” Mr. Neman said. He said he planned to watch for a similar bump after July Fourth, though Labor Day “is going to be a very big moment.” Many companies have signaled that early September will be when they bring most workers back to the office, at least for part of the week.With more than 30 locations in Manhattan and many customers who order salads digitally, Sweetgreen has had insight into the movements of its customers, even if they are not yet fully back to eating at their desks again.The company has seen neighborhoods “start to really light up, like the Upper East Side and Upper West Side,” Mr. Neman said. “The true Midtown office has been the slowest to return, so we have a store in Rock Center, Bryant Park, those sorts of areas which have definitely been the slowest.”Sweetgreen is also beginning to set up more restaurants outside the city in areas like Westchester County and around Greenwich, Conn., as well as regions of New Jersey and Long Island.“There’s definitely some following customers in their dispersion,” Mr. Neman said. The company had been planning a suburban expansion before the pandemic, but it has accelerated those initiatives.Although Sweetgreen said it had been insulated from some of the shocks of the past year because of its online ordering abilities and its robust delivery service, the future of work matters for its business. The company was recently valued at $1.78 billion, and, according to a report by Axios, it has confidentially filed for an initial public offering. Sweetgreen does not share its financials but has said its revenue exceeded $300 million in 2019.Third-party research firms have found that the company is still recovering from the past year. In the New York metro market, transactions at Sweetgreen were down 20 percent in May relative to 2019, according to Earnest Research, a data analytics company that monitors millions of debit and credit card payments made in the United States.Sweetgreen, which has 129 restaurants across more than a dozen states, is among the businesses that have been obsessively tracking coronavirus case numbers.Rozette Rago for The New York Times“As higher-vaccinated markets continue to drag, the impact of the lunch crowd heading back to the office will likely be a key factor on this I.P.O., especially with fewer folks returning from the urban exodus,” said Zach Amsel, a senior data analytics director at Earnest Research.Mr. Neman is expecting companies to go back to in-office work for three or four days per week, especially after Labor Day.“The office is not dead — I do think that sitting behind a screen all day created burnout,” he said. “I land a little bit more in a moderate world, where the world’s probably not going 100 percent back to where it was, but I also don’t think the world is going full-on work from home.”As for Sweetgreen’s return to office plan this month, the company said it had been encouraging vaccinations but would not mandate them for employees. The topic has been fraught, with companies like Saks and BlackRock requiring vaccines for employees who are returning in person and others hesitating to establish those guidelines.“These decisions get so loaded these days,” Mr. Neman said. “We are trying to find the balance between creating this place that everyone feels safe but also not overstepping in terms of pure personal decisions.” More

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    Upended by the Pandemic, Haute Chefs Move Into Hotels

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    Hotels not necessarily known for fine dining are drawing award-winning chefs seeking opportunities for reinvention. Yogis and nature enthusiasts have long flocked to Ojai, a verdant mountain enclave 90 minutes north of Los Angeles — gastronomes, not so much. That changed during the pandemic, when the Ojai Valley Inn turned its sprawling, indoor-outdoor farmhouse — formally a wedding venue before the coronavirus upended plans — into a stage for a revolving cast of high-end chefs.Among the marquee names: Christopher Kostow, the executive chef of California’s three-Michelin-starred paragon of fine dining, the Restaurant at Meadowood. Located more than 400 miles to the north in Napa Valley, it burned down in a September wildfire. “That, on top of Covid, gave us this feeling like, ‘God only knows what’s going to happen next,’” Mr. Kostow said.To pay his staff, Mr. Kostow would have to set up shop elsewhere. Before the fire, he’d had the foresight to look into a Plan B outside Napa, aware that constantly shifting restrictions could keep businesses in wine country shuttered while other parts of the state were open.It turned out that Howard Backen, the same architect responsible for the plush environs of Meadowood, had also recently built the Ojai Valley Inn’s Farmhouse, equipped with an open kitchen and state-of-the-art Viking appliances. One call led to another, and Mr. Kostow and his team decided to temporarily shift their operations to Ojai, where they engineered a tasting menu of can’t-cook-this-at-home delights like “champagne-bubbled” oysters and caviar dressed with eucalyptus and broccoli.“I hadn’t been to Ojai before,” said Mr. Kostow. “It’s like what I imagine California might have been like in the 1930s: rolling hills, rustic, really bucolic.”The partnership between the Restaurant at Meadowood and the Ojai Valley Inn exemplifies an accelerating trend: in the wake of the pandemic, hotels have become havens for high-end chefs. Whether displaced by disaster, like Mr. Kostow, seeking to make up for lost revenue, wanting to explore new markets or simply craving an opportunity to try out new things, well-regarded chefs are flocking to hotels not necessarily known for their cuisine. Last year chewed up and spit out the fine-dining playbook: now, there’s an opportunity for reinvention.Christopher Kostow, the executive chef of California’s three-Michelin-starred paragon of fine dining, the Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley, recently presided over sold-out dinners at the Ojai Valley Inn’s Farmhouse. Ojai Valley Inn“Serving outside on a lawn or in a space that’s not your own is not ideal, but it does make you scratch your head, like, ‘Oh, this is cool. What other cool things could we be doing?’” said Mr. Kostow, who also owns a more casual eatery, The Charter Oak, in Napa Valley. “I think the result, post-pandemic, regarding fine dining, will be more license, more fluidity. All the old rules are blown up, at this point.”“The Restaurant at Meadowood Residency” began on March 3. Over the course of five weeks, it got the culinary equivalent of a standing ovation: all 44 dinners Mr. Kostow presided over at the Ojai Farmhouse sold out, including a finale weekend of meals in May that featured wine pairings from the renowned Krug Champagne house and Harlan Estate, a famed Napa Valley producer of Bordeaux-style blends. Tickets for that dinner cost $999 per person.“They sold out within the first hour,” said Ben Kephart, the Ojai Valley Inn’s director of operations. “It’s crazy. That’s about as much as you can charge for a dinner anywhere. It shows you how much of a demand there is, and it speaks to people wanting to get out and support a venture that they feel is deserving.”One of Mr. Kostow’s March dinners in Ojai offered 13 courses, several pours of wine, and, maybe most importantly, the opportunity to dress up and people watch (from well over six feet away). It felt like the opposite of sitting on the couch, numbly chewing Postmates by the glow of Netflix. Apparently, people want that.“We could have had a month of these dinners, straight,” said Mr. Kephart. “That’s how many people tried to book them.”Besides Mr. Kostow, the Farmhouse has played host to chefs such as Nancy Silverton, the grande dame of Italian food in Los Angeles. Next month brings David Castro, the chef of Fauna in Baja California, which was recently honored by World’s 50 Best, one of the hospitality industry’s major ratings organizations, as well as Neal Fraser, the owner of the revered eatery Redbird in Los Angeles.Across the country and south of the border this summer and fall, similar guest chef-resort collaborations are in the works:Dominique Crenn’s San Francisco restaurant, Atelier Crenn, holds three Michelin stars. She will spend part of June at the Montage resort in Los Cabos, reimagining signature dishes like her geoduck tart, above, with citrus, lemongrass and verbena mousseline.Montage Los CabosDominique Crenn at Montage Los Cabos, Cabo San Lucas, MexicoDominique Crenn, whose San Francisco restaurant, Atelier Crenn, holds three Michelin stars, will move her avant-garde French feast 1,500 miles down the Pacific Coast this month, to the Montage resort in Los Cabos. For six days, beginning June 15, Ms. Crenn will serve a menu of signature favorites from her restaurant reimagined with local Baja ingredients and flavors. It’s Ms. Crenn’s way of marking her restaurant’s 10th anniversary, and as part of the celebration, she’s organizing volunteering activities in the Los Cabos community through a local organization, and encouraging dinner attendees to join her.Culinary partners Mashama Bailey, right, and Johno Morisano will preside over the southern fare served in the cushy environs of the Thompson Austin, opening soon.Adam KuehlMashama Bailey at Thompson Austin, Austin, TexasThe Bronx-born Mashama Bailey, who won a James Beard Award for best chef of the Southeast in 2019, and her culinary partner Johno Morisano will be traveling from their home base, Savannah, Ga., to Austin this summer and fall to launch two restaurants at the soon-to-open Thompson hotel, which promises guests “mid-century modern meets late-century luxury.” While the restaurants, The Diner Bar and The Grey Market, will be permanent, Ms. Bailey herself will be steering the kitchen on selected dates, to be announced.The celebrated chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten will decamp to the One&Only Palmilla in Los Cabos to spin fresh takes on the region’s seafood and steak.One&Only PalmillaJean-Georges Vongerichten at the One&Only Palmilla, San José del Cabo, MexicoGiven the popularity of Los Cabos among Americans, who make up the bulk of the region’s international tourists, and its proximity to the United States, it’s no surprise that several top-tier chefs are flocking there. From June 28 to July 2, Jean-Georges Vongerichten — who has restaurants in Shanghai, Paris, Tokyo and several other cities, in addition to his two-Michelin-star hallmark in New York — will hunker down at the One&Only Palmilla, on the Sea of Cortez. At one of the property’s restaurants, Suviche, he’ll riff on traditional sushi and ceviche, at another, he’ll see to the searing of steaks as the waves crash and recede: surf and turf, à la Jean-Georges.The Culinary Weekend Series put on by the Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal features a diverse array of chefs, seated dinners and cocktail parties, like this one, from chef Matt Zubrod’s April takeover of the property.Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos PedregalTop-tier chefs at Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal, Cabo San Lucas, MexicoThere will be no shortage of star chefs at the Waldorf Astoria in Los Cabos this year: June brings Chicago native Stephanie Izard, a multiple James Beard Award winner and the first woman to win Bravo’s “Top Chef.” In July, James Beard Award semifinalist Ronnie Killen will bring his Texas-style barbecue to the beach. October sees two more James Beard Award winning Chicagoans, Sarah Grueneberg and Mindy Segal, and in November, “Top Chef’s” Brian Malarkey will come on down from California. The Waldorf is calling it their Culinary Weekend Series and plans to continue these stints with notable chefs into 2022.The pub-inspired fare at the Mayflower Inn & Spa, above, is the work of April Bloomfield, the chef of the Michelin-starred Breslin and the now-closed Spotted Pig in New York. She has a residency at the Connecticut resort.Mayflower Inn & Spa, Auberge Resorts CollectionApril Bloomfield at the Mayflower Inn & Spa, Washington, Conn.At the Michelin-starred Breslin and the now-closed Spotted Pig, April Bloomfield presided over some of the best pub fare in New York. When the pandemic hit, she searched for an outlet to continue her craft and help her staff. She found one in the Mayflower Inn & Spa, an Auberge resort in the bucolic Connecticut countryside. Her residency began in September and will continue for the foreseeable future.“I’m excited for the next few months,” Ms. Bloomfield said, “and looking forward to growing the chef’s garden at the Mayflower this year.” She is, quite literally, putting down roots. Current menu highlights include cauliflower tikka masala and pan-roasted lamb chops with burnt satsuma and pistachio.“It’s meant a lot,” Ms. Bloomfield said of her residency. “I’ve been able to hire some of my staff from New York and therefore keep them employed. It’s been great to have them experience the country and the produce it has to offer. We feel very grateful for the experience and to be of service.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2021. More

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    British Tourists Return to Portugal, Unleashed but (Mostly) Masked

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    Sorely in need of sun and a change of scene, British travelers returned to the newly “green-listed” country and were met by relief, exasperation — and hardly anyone.After enduring a winter of strict lockdown, and a spring that saw a gradual reopening but lousy weather to spend it in, the first British tourists to Portugal since the country was “green-listed” for quarantine-free travel were elated by the thrill of escape, even if their trips were not quite as carefree as in past summers. “We just wanted to go anywhere that wasn’t London, basically,” said the singer and songwriter Celeste Waite, 27, as she climbed a hilly street in Lisbon’s Alfama district last Saturday with Sonny Hall, 22, a model and poet.“It’s been nice finally getting back to normal,” said Karen Kaur, 35, of Kent, England, after she and Jay Singh, 38, downed shots of ginjinha, a cherry liqueur, from a street vendor in Praça da Figueira, a large square in the city’s center. But British travelers expecting a kind of pre-pandemic travel experience found something different in Lisbon during the first weekend it reopened to them. Though the Portuguese capital still offered its signature food, museums, picturesque vistas and attractions, stringent mask rules and curfews reminded visitors this would not be an unfettered escape. The opening weekend for Britons offered a preview of what a broader return to international travel may look like for others, including vaccinated Americans when they are welcomed to Europe this summer: A mixture of joy, relief, and at times awkward interactions as cultures converge after a year of disparate pandemic experiences. Tourists soak up the sun in Cascais, a coastal resort town near Portugal’s capital of Lisbon. Before the pandemic, Britons were one of the town’s top tourist markets.Daniel Rodrigues for The New York TimesPortugal has long been among Britain’s favorite tourist destinations, with scenic city escapes in Lisbon and Porto, and beachside restaurants and hotels catering to British tourists in the coastal resort town of Cascais and the Algarve, known for its alluring beaches, all within a three-hour flight. More than 2.1 million people visited from Britain in 2019, the most from any country except Spain, according to Turismo de Portugal, the national tourist board.Now, Portugal is one of Britain’s only tourist destinations. Earlier in May, Britain included Portugal on its “green list” of 12 countries and territories that residents could travel to from May 17 without quarantining for up to 10 days upon return. Most other green-listed places are either not accepting tourists or are not major destinations.A tourist passing the Casa de Santa Maria in Cascais. Britain added Portugal to its “green list,” which allowed its residents to travel there without quarantining from May 17.Daniel Rodrigues for The New York TimesPrices for flights to Portugal spiked after the announcement. But flying now means accepting expensive, and, at times, confusing extra steps, highlighting the tentative nature of international travel’s reopening. Tourists need to fill out multiple forms and submit a negative PCR test taken less than 72 hours before the flight. Before returning to Britain, they must take another test within 72 hours of their flight, and prove they have booked a third test to be taken on their second day back in Britain. The tests add up to hundreds of dollars per person, for many people exceeding the cost of the flight. Some tourists on a British Airways flight from London last Saturday said the extra steps were a pain, but they needed to get out of Britain after a difficult winter. From December to late March, the country experienced one of the world’s strictest and longest nationwide lockdowns, with socializing permitted only through walks in the cold with one other person. Pubs and restaurants didn’t open for outdoor dining until mid-April, and overnight travel within the country wasn’t permitted until last week.“No one else is going, so I’ve been rubbing it in with my friends,” said Anna De Pascalis, 23, before boarding a flight to Lisbon with her mother, Julie De Pascalis. “Everyone’s pretty jealous.” After a winter of rising coronavirus cases, Portugal has been down to a few hundred cases and single-digit deaths per day since late March. But there is a disparity in inoculations against Covid-19: About 36 percent of Portuguese people have received at least one dose of a vaccine, compared to about 57 percent of those from the United Kingdom.Tourists enjoying the view from São Jorge Castle, a popular attraction in Lisbon. A mere trickle of tourists have returned to Portugal so far compared to the hordes before the pandemic.Ana Brigida for The New York TimesSilvia Olivença, the owner of the food tour company Oh! My Cod in Lisbon, said being indoors with unmasked tourists while eating does not worry her, though she’s heard concerns from other Portuguese people that the return of foreigners could threaten Portugal’s low case numbers, despite tourists testing negative before they can fly.“You have people thinking about it, of course,” she said. But, she added: “I think people in general are quite happy to see the tourism come back.”One month ago, she would run maybe one tour per week. Now it’s up to 10 per week, with about 70 percent of her bookings from Britain, she said. In addition to British tourists, Portugal has also welcomed back visitors from the European Union. For Sara Guerreiro, who owns a ceramics shop in the Feira da Ladra flea market in the winding Alfama district, last Saturday was more of a tease of normality. Looking outside her shop, she saw maybe 10 percent of the pre-pandemic foot traffic through the twice-weekly market, which sells miscellaneous items to locals alongside artwork and trinkets to tourists.A tourist photographs the famous 28 tram in Lisbon’s historic heart, Baixa.Ana Brigida for The New York TimesBut she said Lisbon could use a better balance in how many tourists it welcomes, because “how it was before was also too much.” Overall, a mere trickle of tourists have returned to Portugal so far compared to the pre-virus hordes. Those who made the trip were able to enjoy the city as few have: without swarms of other tourists to jostle with. At the ornate Praça do Comércio, a historic square typically packed with visitors, just a few dozen lingered. You could easily take a wide-angle photo outside Belém Tower, a popular landmark, at noon on Sunday with no other people in it. The line for custard tarts at nearby Pastéis de Belém, typically an out-the-door affair, passed in a few brief minutes Sunday morning. At Tasco do Chico, renowned for its live fado music, a spot at the bar was available one minute before Saturday night’s first performance began. Belém Tower, one of the most famous monuments in Lisbon, has few tourists still. Ana Brigida for The New York TimesIn one lively scene reminiscent of pre-pandemic freedom, tourists and locals alike converged Saturday night in Bairro Alto, with bars and restaurants packed with revelers until the 10:30 p.m. curfew. Nicci Howson, 65, said she was surrounded by Portuguese people dancing in Cervejaria do Bairro, a restaurant in that neighborhood, the first time she had danced outside her home in a year.“You could see the elation on people’s faces to just let loose,” she said.At 10:30 p.m., when some Portuguese might just be sitting down to dinner in normal times, the bars closed and sent packs of people dancing and singing tightly together in the narrow streets, until they were shooed away by police on motorcycles about five minutes later. The revelers lingered in the nearby Luís de Camões Square until 11:30 p.m., when officers dispersed the group. But during the day, there were no such crowds to contend with.Mark Boulle, 38, from Oxford, England, said he typically tries to avoid crowds while traveling, so the trip was in that respect a dream. When he took a day trip to Sintra, a nearby town with postcard-ready palaces and castles, on Monday, “for the first half of the day I virtually had the whole place to myself,” he said. But he was dismayed by the widespread use of masks outdoors in Lisbon — a sharp departure from behaviors in Britain, where the government has never suggested wearing masks outside and most people do not. It was a source of tension for both visitors and the Portuguese.British tourists in Lisbon did not have competition for a prime view at the ancient São Jorge Castle. Ana Brigida for The New York TimesUsing masks outdoors is mandatory in Portugal, with violators in some locations, including beaches, facing fines. At the Castelo de São Jorge, an 11th century castle with sweeping views of the city, a security guard roamed the grounds outside, instructing the few tourists there to put masks on while standing far away from others. A bookseller at an open-air market in Baixa grumbled that the tourists ought to comply with local attitudes and customs about masks, instead of bringing their own ideas abroad.But Mr. Boulle said he wanted the sun on his face. As he went to buy his ticket at the Jerónimos Monastery, a popular tourist attraction, he recalled, a security guard stopped him before he could buy his ticket, asking him to put a mask on. Mr. Boulle replied that he has asthma, and he couldn’t wear one because he’d have trouble breathing. “That isn’t true, but I just wanted to see,” he said. “In England you can always say that.” No such luck, as the security guard insisted. Frederico Almeida, the general manager of the Albatroz Hotel in the nearby beach town of Cascais, said he and his staff has had to remind visitors from Britain of the requirements.Despite these issues, he’s happy to see British tourists again. They are the top market for the area, he said, and their return has been swift. The 42-room hotel was at about 20 percent occupancy two weeks ago; now it’s up to about 80 percent. “All of a sudden, in the last two weeks, it’s as if we’ve turned back to normality,” he said. “It’s wonderful.”THE WORLD IS REOPENING. LET’S GO, SAFELY. Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you’ll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world. More

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    Restaurants and Bars Rush to Apply for New Federal Aid Program

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    The industry’s return will serve as a major test of President Biden’s goal of bringing the country back to some version of normal by this summer.WASHINGTON — A total of 186,200 restaurants, bars and other eligible businesses applied for help from a new $28.6 billion federal aid program in the first two days it was accepting applications, President Biden said on Wednesday, indicating huge demand from a struggling industry for a limited pot of relief funds.The Restaurant Revitalization Fund was created by Congress as part of the $1.9 trillion relief bill passed in March and began accepting applications online on Monday.“That’s a staggering number,” Mr. Biden said of the opening flood of applications that came in from all 50 states. Business owners who were hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic can apply for grants of up to $10 million.The return of the restaurant industry will serve as a major test of Mr. Biden’s goal of bringing the country back to some version of normal by this summer, both for 2.3 million people whose restaurant jobs disappeared during the pandemic and for vaccinated Americans eager to take advantage of newfound freedoms to go out and socialize again.“Right now, only about a quarter of the restaurant owners expect to return to normal operations in the next six months,” Mr. Biden said. “We can do much better than that.”Few sectors of the economy suffered the financial blow of the coronavirus pandemic last year as much as the restaurant industry, which saw business plummet with the shuttering of indoor dining in many states and closures of higher-priced restaurants that were not able to easily shift to takeout options. More than 110,000 restaurants and bars temporarily or permanently closed last year, according to the National Restaurant Association.Mr. Biden’s aid plan for restaurants, while limited, is more robust than what has been available to them in the past. Restaurants were not included in the coronavirus relief package that former President Donald J. Trump signed into law last December. Mr. Trump had been dismissive of the jobs lost, while expressing optimism about the fate of the industry overall.“It may not be the same restaurant, it may not be the same ownership, but they’ll all be back,” Mr. Trump told reporters last year during a news conference.On Wednesday, Mr. Biden described restaurants as important foundations of their communities and gateways to opportunities that were “more than a major part of our country.”“They’re woven into the fabric of our communities,” the president added.He described the battered industry as one of the best paths for many people to achieve the American dream. “One in three Americans, a restaurant provided their first job,” Mr. Biden said. “More than half of all Americans have worked in a restaurant at some point in their lives.”But for now, the relief the administration is offering falls far short of what is necessary to stabilize the decimated industry.A group of owners of small food businesses who lobbied for the funds have contended that $120 billion is needed to stabilize independent restaurants. And Mr. Biden said on Wednesday that he expected the current fund to be able to help about 100,000 restaurants and other eligible businesses — fewer than those that already applied in the first 48 hours of the website being operational.“We know that the $28.6 billion is not enough to meet the demand,” Isabella Casillas Guzman, the small business administrator, said last week. “However, we need to demonstrate that demand, and we need to encourage everyone to apply and access this fund as much as possible and demonstrate what remaining need is out there.”For the first 21 days, the Small Business Administration will approve claims only from businesses that are majority-owned by women, veterans or people who qualify as both socially and economically disadvantaged.Mr. Biden said 97,600 of the applications received in the program’s first two days had come from businesses owned by people who fell into those categories. High demand for the funds, however, was not necessarily a good thing for a program that has limited funding and will have to turn many needy businesses away.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the administration would be open to seeking more funding from Congress, but she offered no specifics. Mr. Biden said the high demand should prove to skeptics that the program was a necessity.“We passed the American Rescue Plan,” he said. “Some people said it wasn’t needed. This response proves them wrong. It’s badly needed.”Before his remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden purchased tacos and enchiladas from Taqueria Las Gemelas, a Mexican restaurant in Washington that was a beneficiary of the relief fund’s pilot program. The restaurant went from 55 employees before the pandemic to just seven, Mr. Biden said.The program has yet to distribute any money to restaurants outside of the limited pilot, but officials said they hoped to get funds out the door quickly. More

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    ‘We’re Suffering’: How Remote Work Is Killing Manhattan’s Storefronts

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    #styln-signup .styln-signup-wrapper { max-width: calc(100% – 40px); width: 600px; margin: 20px auto; padding-bottom: 20px; border-bottom: 1px solid #e2e2e2; } A big shift toward working from home is endangering hundreds of locally owned Manhattan storefronts that have been hanging on, waiting for life to return to the desolate streets of Midtown and the Financial District. The […] More

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    For the Economy, the Present Doesn’t Matter. It’s All About the Near Future.

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyUpshotSupported byContinue reading the main storyFor the Economy, the Present Doesn’t Matter. It’s All About the Near Future.The economy is at a major inflection point, and the question is whether job creation will accelerate in the months ahead.March 5, 2021Updated 10:41 a.m. ETAn empty food court in a Phoenix shopping mall.Credit…Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesIt is generally considered bad journalistic practice to start an article this way, but it must be said: The new jobs numbers that the Labor Department released Friday morning don’t matter.These numbers can sometimes be unimportant in the sense that any one economic report offers only a partial view of what is going on, and is subject to margins of error and future revisions.But it’s more than that in this case. This jobs report is inconsequential because the economy is at a momentous inflection point — what matters is not what happened in the last few weeks, but where things end up several weeks from now.The report that 379,000 jobs were added in February and that the unemployment rate edged down to 6.2 percent is good news. It is a better result than what was recorded in January, and better than forecasters expected.But the economy is still in a deep hole, with nine million fewer jobs than a year ago, or around 12 million shy of where we would be if pre-pandemic job growth had continued over the last year.For a simple model of today’s economy, think of it this way: A giant, complicated assembly line has been shut down for a year, and it is now being fired back up. Different stations on the assembly line are coming back at different speeds. The number of final products currently rolling off the assembly line is less important than the details of the progress all those different stations are making (or not) toward returning to full capacity.In normal times, the total employment gains reported Friday would be a blockbuster number. But continuing to add jobs at that pace would still mean a two-year grind back to pre-pandemic employment levels. The question is whether job creation will accelerate in the months ahead as more Americans are vaccinated and begin to resume normal patterns of behavior, especially regarding travel and entertainment. More

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    Jing Fong Workers Protest Restaurant Closing

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    Jing Fong Workers Protest Restaurant’s ClosingAmr Alfiky/The New York TimesThe “Save Jing Fong! Protect Chinatown!” chants were heard up and down Canal Street on Tuesday. Over 70 people gathered to protest the closing of the largest restaurant in the area — and one of few unionized restaurants in the city. Here’s what happened → More