News You Need to Know in Two Minutes

California lawmakers must consider a flurry of bills this week that include several proposals the CRA opposes. Sabrina tells us about them in this week’s video, along with the CRA-sponsored and supported bills that include efforts to eliminate the red tape and cost linked to alcohol permits and food prep in outdoor areas; a proposal to allow cocktails into the mix of drinks that can be delivered from a restaurant; and a proposal to allow local areas to create outdoor “entertainment zones.” What is an entertainment zone and how would it help restaurants?

CRA members were the first restaurateurs in California to learn of this news, made official by Cal/OSHA: the agency has scaled back its onerous COVID-19 workplace regulations requiring an additional layer of so-called “exclusionary pay” for your team members who were either exposed to – or contracted – COVID-19. The requirement was always redundant and unnecessarily costly when the law already required supplemental COVID, paid sick leave for affected employees.

Some new laws take effect as the new year begins, and that is just around the corner. Hear Sabrina tell us about a few of them in today’s News You Need to Know. A document summarizing these new laws and local ordinances will be pushed out through our compliance app. If you haven’t already downloaded that, you can do so here. A note about the app: we use it only to send you important compliance information, so you will not be hit with too many push notifications.

AB 257, one of the most damaging bills that California’s restaurant community has faced in decades, will be the law in California — unless a referendum effort is successful. Immediately after Governor Newsom signed the bill into law last week, a coalition was formed to take the issue directly to voters. As Sabrina tells us in this week’s News You Need to Know, the CRA will support the coalition, which must collect more than half a million voter signatures by December in order to qualify for the 2024 ballot. 

Thanks to a published report from the Government Accountability Office, we now know that there is still $180 million remaining in the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. The Small Business Administration has agreed to distribute those dollars to restaurants, but the amount is not enough to help the many qualified applicants who never received a grant. Sabrina dives into those details in this week’s video and gives us more information about the fast-approaching Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo.

Here by popular demand is the CRA’s new, easy-to-use training platform for restaurant workers and managers. This new platform is a result of feedback from CRA members, who are working harder than ever to hire, train and retain employees. It was developed for the CRA by Train 321, a leading provider of training courses for major restaurant brands, and it features helpful courses like Front-of-House Basics, Back-of-House Basics, and Bar Basics. It also includes required training in sexual harassment prevention.

If you haven’t already registered your business through CalSavers, you can still do so. There is a deadline coming up that we’ve told you about before, but with everything that restaurants have had going on over the last two years, we thought you’d appreciate seeing this information again. 

With the state budget flush with an enormous amount of unexpected revenue, we are revising our ask of lawmakers as it relates to the unemployment insurance (UI) fund.

Instead of the initial $3 billion, the CRA is now asking the state to spend $10 billion stabilizing the UI fund. Why is this important? So that employers are not later forced to pay huge assessments for something that was beyond their control: the layoffs that resulted from a mandated closure of restaurants.

The Responsible Beverage Service (RBS) program is now being offered by the CRA. The training is required under new California law. In this week’s video, Sabrina tells us the value of the training and all it provides, including teaching alcohol servers how alcohol influences behavior, and how to identify signs of intoxication. 

The CRA is leading California restaurants from the Sacramento Valley, Central Valley, Bay Area, Central Coast, and from all over Southern California to Washington, D.C. this week for the National Restaurant Association’s Public Affairs Conference. You can guess what our top issue is: speaking up for the thousands of qualified applicants in California who got left behind when the Restaurant Revitalization Fund ran out of dollars. The House of Representatives has voted to replenish the fund; now, it’s up to the Senate.