Are the Bay Area’s Worker-Owned Restaurants Better Equipped to Weather the COVID-19 Crisis? | Eater SF

"A newer, smaller collective-run restaurant and bar in downtown Oakland, Tamarack opened last year and serves craft cocktails and Southern-influenced food; its original members, many of whom met organizing in movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter, formed a 12-member collective of mostly part-time workers who also held other restaurant jobs. The group closed the restaurant a week before the shelter-in-place order because they didn’t want anyone to get sick, and currently none of the collective members are getting paid—most have also lost other jobs—but they find comfort in sharing the burden and decision-making rather than facing these choices as sole proprietors. In response they’ve started a grocery distribution program and began selling to-go meal kits and cocktail kits, and members express confidence that the restaurant will bounce back after the crisis; as Will Adams explains, he’d “hate to be a sole proprietor right now,” and values not having a boss." - Luke Tsai