Red Stag Supperclub in Minneapolis is closing

This month is the last for Red Stag Supperclub, a restaurant that has served hearty, homey fare in Northeast Minneapolis for 15 years.

Opened in 2007 by restaurateur Kim Bartmann, Red Stag was a prominent example of the trendy Twin Cities supper club with a mid-century Wisconsin vibe, adapted most recently by The Apostle Supper Club across from the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.

Red Stag announced the closure last month, writing on Instagram that the “restaurant business has been challenged since the onset of COVID-19, and in turn, the changing of consumer habits.”

“These challenges have affected how all restaurants do business,” the post continued.

The restaurant will serve its final meals on Dec. 31 but is continuing regular service — including weekly events such as Friday fish fries and Sunday chicken dinners — until then. Red Stag is also hosting a holiday craft market on Dec. 11.

Bartmann’s business practices during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic landed her in hot water with Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office. Following a state investigation into alleged wage theft, Bartmann’s company was required to repay more than $230,000 to employees last year. In response to continued criticism earlier this year when Bartmann was named a semifinalist for a James Beard award for Outstanding Restaurateur, she blamed the backlash on “double standards” and “misogyny.” Bartmann’s restaurant group, Placemaker Hospitality, did not return a request for comment.

As Red Stag closes, Placemaker Hospitality is making other moves in Minneapolis. After the Italian spot Amore Uptown closed last month, Bartmann bought the space — which is located across Lake Street from another restaurant of hers, Barbette — and she plans to reopen an Italian restaurant there in the near future.

Bartmann also operates the Minneapolis restaurants Book Club, Tiny Diner, Gigi’s Cafe and Pat’s Tap, and the concession stand Bread & Pickle at Lake Harriet. She also helped open Kyatchi in Lowertown, which closed earlier this year.

Red Stag Super Club: 509 1st Avenue NE, Minneapolis; 612-767-7766; www.redstagsupperclub.com/

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Cincinnati restaurants hit by Facebook, Instagram social media hackers

Arnold's Bar & Grill, a historic bar and restaurant in downtown Cincinnati, was targeted by social media hackers, the owner says.

Arnold’s Bar & Grill’s Facebook account was hacked over the weekend in what owner Chris Breeden says is a scheme that has targeted several Cincinnati small businesses.

According to Breeden, he received a notification Friday that someone in Los Angeles had logged into his personal Facebook account. Minutes later, he was alerted that an unknown user had accepted his friend request.

“I went in and unfriended that person and removed everyone that was logged in,” he said.

Breeden also changed his password. However, the user was added back as a friend, and the next morning, Breeden was locked out of his personal Facebook account, Instagram and the Arnold’s Bar & Grill business page for violating Facebook’s terms of service.

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The small business owner says two of his credit cards, which were linked to Facebook to pay for Arnold’s Bar & Grill advertising, were charged a total of $2,800. Two of four fraudulent charges were flagged by his bank before going through, and he was reimbursed for the other two.

As of Tuesday, the Downtown bar’s Facebook page is visible online, but Breeden says he can’t log into it. The Arnold’s Bar & Grill account on Instagram, which is owned by the Facebook parent company Meta, has been taken down.

Multiple Cincinnati restaurants have been targeted

Breeden believes what happened to him is part of a hacking scheme that has hit multiple small businesses around the country. Hackers can gain access to a user’s Facebook account, add themselves as an administrator for their business page and make purchases with linked credit cards or PayPal accounts, according to a Reddit page dedicated to the issue. The hackers quickly block users from regaining entry to their accounts by posting explicit or copyrighted content, getting the page taken down by Facebook.

Hackers gained entry to Chris Breeden's personal Facebook account and, from there, hacked into the Arnold's Bar & Grill business page.  A Subreddit suggests the issue is nationwide.

Crown Restaurant Group, which owns Losanti, Crown Republic Gastropub, Crown Cantina and Rosie’s Italian, experienced similar hacking issues in October.

Hayley Sitek, the group’s co-owner and social media manager, said she was notified on Oct. 18 that one of the restaurants’ posts had violated Facebook’s terms of service. After contesting the ban, her personal Facebook account was hacked, and she was locked out of all four restaurants’ Instagram profiles.

“You merge these accounts together and it’s advertised to make your life easier, but as soon as you connect them, they can take you down,” she told The Enquirer.

The restaurants’ Facebook pages were able to remain active because they had an administrator besides Sitek who could still access them, he said. Sitek didn’t save any credit card information to the business pages because he managed multiple accounts, so no fraudulent charges were made.

However, the restaurants’ Instagram pages and Sitek’s personal accounts were permanently removed, but she was able to create new pages for the businesses last week following a 30-day ban.

Breeden said he has connected with 10 local businesses, including Crown Restaurant Group’s, that have been targeted, seven of which were hacked within the past two months.

One business, bar and music venue the Belle & the Bear, said in a post it was forced to create new Facebook and Instagram pages after being hacked in September. Breeden also said Via Vite, which is owned by Cristian Pietoso, was affected by a hack. Via Vite, as well as Forno Osteria & Bar, one of Pietoso’s other establishments, began inexplicably posting out-of-place movie clips on Facebook in the past few weeks.

The Enquirer has reached out to Pietoso and other restaurant owners who might have been affected but did not hear back.

For small business owners, losing access to social media is “instantly crippling,” Breeden said, especially amidst the holiday season.

“We have a large Facebook presence that I’ve been working for over a decade to build,” he said. “We have our holiday show that we are doing with OTRimprov coming up, and I have no way to promote it.”

Breeden has begun Facebook’s appeal process to regain access to his account. He plans to contact the Cincinnati City Council and Ohio attorney general with a list of local businesses that have been targeted.

The Enquirer will continue updating this story as we get more information.

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Staff shortages see UK restaurants struggling to cope with Christmas season | restaurants

Turning down party bookings over the Christmas period is the last thing a restaurant owner wants to do. But that is the harsh reality for the Rattle Owl, an independent restaurant featured in the Michelin Guidewhich, like the vast majority of hospitality businesses, is suffering from a shortage of staff and having to make compromises.

“We used to be able to do 26 (people for a Christmas party booking) but we absolutely can’t do that now. The max we can do now is 10,” said the York restaurant’s owner, Clarrie O’Callaghan.

The shortage means that anyone who called to make a reservation for a larger number of people has already turned away.

“Independent restaurants are all in the same boat: we’re having to limit numbers to ensure customers get the best service.”

The restaurant has five chefs and six front-of-house staff, but needs one or two more chefs and two more front-of-house workers. It is not alone in suffering what is being called an “existential threat” to the hospitality industry.

London celebrity chef Jason Atherton last month said he will have to close restaurants in the new year because a third of his posts at his restaurants are vacant. Tom Kerridge, Rick Stein, Angela Hartnett and Raymond Blanc have also all raised their voices in support of training and recruiting more hospitality workers.

Other restaurants are making compromises over who they hire. One restaurateur said they were training front-of-house staff to do kitchen work, which is not ideal, as well as hiring international students, who are allowed to work 20 hours a week.

Last month, a group of hospitality organizations wrote to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions calling for “urgent intervention” in what was becoming a “perfect storm” that would force businesses to close.

In the joint letter to Mel Stride MP, UK Hospitality, the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), British Institute of Innkeeping (BII), the Institute of Hospitality and charity Springboard, wrote that the recruitment crisis was causing “an existential threat to our industry”.

“This is not a problem facing just one type of venue or hospitality business, it is a universal issue, and it is critical because brilliant, passionate people are the lifeblood of hospitality,” the letter said.

Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the BBPA, said the vacancy rate in the hospitality sector stands at 11%, compared to the UK average of 4%, and this is costing the industry £22bn a year.

“It is stark that hospitality is struggling to attract the people we need,” she said. “Obviously, we’ve always had a problem getting enough chefs in the kitchen. That was the case even pre-pandemic, but now we’re struggling to even get people to come in to do front of the house; it was never a problem before. And this is going to have an impact on Christmas.”

McClarkin said that during the pandemic many staff from overseas left and had not returned, this was especially the case with EU workers, who no longer had freedom of movement to the UK.

She said the uncertainty caused by the various lockdowns, where businesses were forced to close at short notice, had also seen staff leave the industry.

“We’re seeing people who also moved away (from the industry) because they were worried about long-term security. So they’ve gone off to work for, maybe, Amazon or a delivery company, or maybe work in a supermarket or retail environment, where they feel that they are able to sustain an income.”

The organization estimates that pubs are losing 16% of sales because of staff shortages.

“It’s the difference between a business making it and not making it. That’s how difficult it is. We’re in a ‘cost of doing business’ crisis, as well as a cost of living crisis.”

Pubs are now closing at a rate of 50 a month, compared to 30 a month at the beginning of the year. Last month, it was revealed that restaurant closures increased by 60% after the pandemic, with 1,567 insolvencies over 2021-22, up from 984 during 2020-21, according to a study by the consultancy Mazars. The figure includes 453 over the past three months, up from 395 in the previous quarter.

McClarkin said: “We’re expecting that to get worse over the coming months, so we really need to have a great Christmas.”

The hospitality industry is running a joint campaign called Hospitality Rising to encourage people to take up jobs in pubs, bars, restaurants and cafes. McClarkin said: “A job in a pub is not just a stop gap, it’s an opportunity to progress quickly into a long career where you have a lot of fun. There’s never a boring moment in hospitality.”

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