Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DP_KtzRT0k
the jurgen experience we're here to talk about what the [ __ ] is happening to the restaurant industry during this pandemic and how crazy it is um you know i i i've talked about this before but having you guys on so you could say firsthand what it's been like to you and what this experience has been like and how poorly it's been handled just i want to give people a sense of this at home what it's like from two men who have made their living in the hospitality and restaurant industry yeah yeah i mean you want to start craig well no the funny thing is it's like we're the rule followers yeah we're the ones that are used to handling the health department we're the ones that are used to you know doing everything that you know from a safety standpoint right and now we're the ones that are being crushed or being picked on so to speak by that's the way a lot of people in the industry feel because we're the ones that are being shut down in a city where a lot of other businesses are remaining open like malls distribution centers markets stores i mean you can go to a mall and go shopping you can go on an airplane from la to you know new york take your mask off and eat and that's okay but you can't eat outdoors in a restaurant in la that's following social distancing all the health guidelines i mean we know our business and so it's been really hard since but it started march 15th we we shut down um we were then told to put glass in between our our boots so we did that we opened for about 10 days um we did uv lights in the in the in the air conditioning air filtration all the stupid absolutely and then we built patios um i've personally spent 250 000 abiding by the rules that were set forth by the state by the county by the governors by everybody and and then to just kind of be shut down is really really difficult and it's not
about me and it's not about my restaurant and it's not about john it's not about it's about the employees it's about the dishwashers and the busboys and the servers that live day to day on the money that they make at the restaurant it's their livelihood it's how they feed their families they send money back to the countries that they came from you know this is a larger issue and and the reason it's a larger issue is one little restaurant like craig's we have 90 employees a furniture store might have five or six so when you shut down an industry like that it really has a huge economic impact and then it has a social impact because we all love to eat it's the one thing we have in common we like to get together as people i'm a giant fan of restaurants i mean it's one of my favorite things to do is to go out to eat and living in la it was so frustrating it was it was bizarre it did it doesn't make sense now when you guys get the orders when they tell you what's shut down or what's open is there anyone you communicate with is there anyone that's involved in government that you've had conversations with no that's the issue that's the biggest issue that we have is they they refuse to communicate to any of us and i can't quite figure out why we hear about it on the news we've we've joined with about 40 30 40 other like maine owners you know that that are all in the area and i think it's the one thing that's kind of a silver lining in all this is that we've all teamed up to kind of like try to figure out what's going on but we find out about it from the news and we have to just make these moves within 24 hours it's it's absolutely absurd and we've reached out i've reached out to newsome i reached out to garcetti and they do nothing you know they put you on phony task force they lie
you know they they they have no idea how serious this is and i commend you for having us on no one else wants to speak about it everyone's too scared of backlash but what backlash what i don't think they understand it i think it's crumbling right yeah i think people are thinking it's black and white if you say anything somewhat negative they view you as your anti covid you're you're you're wanting to kill everybody right yeah but that's not the issue so we're not denying that there's an issue we're not denying that people are getting sick we're not denying that there are we all are in this together so how do you do it well how do you do it smartly where should we be spending money um a perfect example is they're doing rapid testing in certain areas so instead of losing all of this revenue why don't they invest in smart technology that has rapid testing that allows people to go to a restaurant get a rapid test you're positive you're negative and then you get to go into the restaurant like we did here today exactly exactly we got rapid testing today everyone's a fine where we could sit down have a conversation have no paranoia yeah you could do that at a restaurant you could have the i was telling you about stubs barbecue here in in austin where dave chappelle and i have been doing great establishment we do 400 seats we test everyone people get their way in advance they test them yeah they get a kova test which gives them a nice peace of mind like oh great i don't have it then you get to sit down and enjoy a show and the place is packed and so the business is making money everyone's having a good time it's it's possible well that's what that's what a lot of people are doing in la right so they're having parties in la and a lot of them are doing rapid testing beforehand so everybody gets a wristband then everybody in the party knows that everybody's negative but isn't the
mayor's threatening to shut those kind of parties down he's trying to shut water off like yeah like and by the way he's done it yeah water and power which we're living in like a dictatorship i really i literally feel like la's like a third world country right now never seen anything like this well if you go to venice or you go to downtown l.a and you see the encampments it's [ __ ] bananas yeah i mean third world countries wouldn't allow that [ __ ] but it's worse this is some sort of dictatorship happening that uh we to me is a bigger picture if if if other uh governments if other states county cities see that they can just shut an industry down so easily get a name for themselves get their name out there what's stopping everyone else from doing this exactly it's new powers catch new episodes of the joe rogan experience for free only on spotify watch back catalog jre videos on spotify including clips easily seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on spotify you can listen to the jre in the background by using other apps and can download episodes to save on data cost all for free spotify is absolutely free you don't have to have a premium account to watch new jre episodes you just need to search for the jre on your spotify app go to spotify now to get this full episode of the joe rogan experience