Mike Beltran responds to Washington Post reader comments

A May 8 Washington Post story by Laura Reiley bearing the headline “As his restaurants’ customers return, a Miami chef is missing a critical ingredient: Workers,” examines the widespread difficulty restaurants and other hospitality businesses are having in staffing their businesses to meet the demand of an economy that is recovering — even if slowly — from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions imposed by government. The piece uses Ariete Hospitality (of which our host Mike Beltran is chef-partner) as a case-in-point. In this episode, Mike responds not to the article and Laura Reiley’s reporting, but to the comments left on the piece at the Washington Post’s website (of which, at the time we recorded, there were nearly 3,000). Most of the comments we saw were negative and highly critical of Mike’s approach to his businesses and employees. So we took it as an opportunity to respond to some of the criticisms and explain a bit about how the restaurant business — or at least Ariete Hospitality’s little corner of it — functions. Read the Washington Post piece referenced in this episode: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/08/restaurant-jobs-shortage-workers-miami/ Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DADEmag Follow Pan Con Podcast everywhere: Facebook: www.facebook.com/panconpodcast/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/panconpodcast/ Twitter: twitter.com/panconpodcast Follow Mike Beltran: Instagram: www.instagram.com/piginc/ Twitter: twitter.com/piginc Follow Nick Jiménez: Instagram: www.instagram.com/nicolasajimenez/ Twitter: twitter.com/nicolasajimenez Follow DADE: Support DADE on Patreon: www.patreon.com/DADEmag Facebook: www.facebook.com/DADEMAG/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/dadeig/ Twitter: twitter.com/dadetweets Send any feedback to [email protected]. Production and editing: Nicolás Antonio Jiménez Theme music: Carlos "Carluba" Rodríguez (instangram.com/carluba)