Shop and dine on the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do shopping and dining within the 49 square miles of San Francisco by supporting local Services Within neighborhood. We help San Francisco remain unique, successful and vibrant. Where will you shop and dine in the 49 . San francisco owes the charm to the unique character of the neighborhood comer hall district. Each corridor has its own personality. Our neighborhoods are the engine of the city. You are putting money and support back to the community you live in and you are helping Small Businesses grow. It is more environmentally friendly. Shopping local is very important. I have had relationships with my local growers for 30 years. By shopping here and supporting us locally, you are also supporting the growers of the flowers, they are fresh and they have a price point that is not imported. It is really good for everybody. Shopping locally is crucial. Without that support, Small Business cant survive, and if we lose Small Business, that diversity goes away, and, you know, it would be a shame to see that become a thing of the past. It is important to dine and shop locally. It allows us to maintain traditions. It makes the neighborhood. I think San Francisco should shop local as much as they can. The retail marketplace is changes. We are trying to have people on the floor who can talk to you and help you with products you are interested in buying, and help you with exploration to try things you have never had before. The fish business, you think it is a piece of fish and fisherman. There are a lot of people working in the fish business, between wholesalers and fishermen and bait and tackle. At the retail end, we about a lot of people and it is good for everybody. Shopping and dining locally is so important to the community because it brings a tighter fabric to the community and allows the Business Owners to thrive in the community. We see more Small Businesses going away. We need to shop locally to keep the Small Business alive in San Francisco. Shop and dine in the 49 is a cool initiative. You can see the banners in the streets around town. It is great. Anything that can showcase and legitimize Small Businesses is a wonderful thing. It is monday. This is a regular meeting of the Small Business Commission Held on monday october 7, 2019. This meeting is being held called to order 2 01 p. M. Members of the public, please take this opportunity to silence your phones and other electronic devices. Public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker unless otherwise established by the presenting office of the meeting. Speakers are requested but not required to state their name. Completion of a speaker card while optional will ensure proper spelling of the speakers names. In lewis of speaker cards if you have not yet filled one to the right. Speaker cards will be called in the order they were placed in the basket. Additionally there is a sign in sheets on the front table. Please show the office of Small Business slide. Welcome. It is our custom to begin and end each of our Small Business Commission Meetings with a reminder that the office of Small Business is the only place to start your new business in San Francisco. It is the best place to get answers to your questions about doing business in San Francisco. The office of Small Business should be your first stop when you have questions about what to do next. You can find us online or in person here at city hall. Best of all all of our services are free of charge. The Small Business commission is the official public form to voice your opinions and concerns about the policies that affect the Economic Vitality of Small Businesses in San Francisco. If you need assistance with all Small Business matters start here at the office of Small Business. Item one. Call to order and roll call. [roll call] mr. President , you have a quorum. Item two. General Public Comment. Allows members of the public to comment generally on matters that are within the Small Business commissions jurisdiction but not on todays calendar, and suggest new agenda items for the commissions future consideration. discussion item do we have any members of the public that would like to bring up any issues that is not on todays agenda . Okay. Seeing none. Public comment is closed. Item three. Board of supervisors file no. 190710 health code food preparation and Service Establishment categories, disclosures, and permit fees. Ordinance amending the health code and business and tax regulations code to replace the requirement that food preparation and Service Establishments food facilities post a symbol issued by the department of Public Health with a requirement to post a colorcoded placard indicating whether the establishment has passed green , conditionally passed yellow , or failed red a health inspection; clarifying some of the terminology pertaining to violations and remedies and penalties for same; defining new categories of food facilities; establishing annual permit fees for new categories of food facilities; and increasing permit fees for temporary permits and food vending machines. Discussion and action item presenter s calvin yan, legislative aide, supervisor aaron peskin and the department of Public Health good afternoon. My name is calvin from supervisor peskins office. Thank you again for hearing and offering your recommendation on the legislation regarding the Food Preparation Service establishment disclosure originally occurred on july 22, 2019 a couple of ago. As we have mentioned last time, we are currently working with the department on amendments to update some of the d. P. H. Permitting fees. The goal is to continue to instill confidence that food safety and Public Health remains a top priority. Also ensuring that the fee schedule is a hearing to delay this food preparation and Service Models on the everchanging industry terms in San Francisco. On september 17, we submitted a substitution legislation to reflect the changes to the permitted fee schedule. Nothing about the placard as change. Thank you again for hearing the amendment today, we hope that we will gain your support again. We have members from the department of Public Health today to present. We have patrick, the assistant director, and mary from the department. They are both Principal Environmental Health inspectors. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners. I am the assistant director of the Environmental Health branch at the department of Public Health. Last time we were here you may recall, we came to talk about proposed amendments to article eight of the health code which would require us to move from a score based system to a placard system. After discussing that with you all, everyone agreed that it was going to be a winwin situation for both the department and the Business Community here in San Francisco. Since then, and the reason we are back today, we propose additional cleanup language to the ordinance in addition to what would be required to move to a placating system. The cleanup language mostly creates a handful of new categories for food establishments. San francisco is an innovative city. We are counseling trying new things. Because of this, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to squeeze every business that comes to us looking for a permit to the existing permit structure and fees. We are going to take advantage of this opportunity while the ordinance is open for the amendments to make some, what we believe, are necessary changes to make new categories and fees they go along with that. I brought one of our food program managers, mary, who will be able to further explain the new categories to you. Thank you for your time. Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is mary. Not just in San Francisco, but in the Food Industry in general, has many new innovations. Our current classification codes do not accurately represent some of these new operations. To precisely define these categories we have created new classifications. I would like to give you flute few examples. As you may see there is catering that says cooking versus catering with no cooking elko. A typical typical catering facility is a kitchen that has a large exhaust system. That is one type of classification for catering. More recently what we have seen in many of the new Tech Companies is there are very small kitchens that are designed for caterers to use as an Assembly Assembly and holding space. Actually by separating out these and two separate classifications, it does behoove the business owner. The fees for these will now be more representative of the actual operations in these facilities. You will also see there is a new definition called a shared kitchen complex. As you know, so many foods nowadays can be ordered online with apps. In this particular case, we have been seeing a new trend where we have have facilities that are coming in, its like a very large warehouse and then it has several individual facilities within that warehouse. It is essentially a shared kitchen complex. The complex itself provides the establishments within the ability to clean, store foods, walkin storage, disposal and waste. We have a new place in San Francisco called cloud kitchen. Again all online application, and the food is delivered. There is no onsite consumption. Its not like your typical restaurant. This category was recently created. We have hosted facilities. This is actually defined in the California Retail it means the facility located within a brewery, winery, commercial building or another location approved by the Enforcement Agency to support a catering operation that provides directly to individual consumers for a limited creative time. Most of you are probably familiar with the term pop up. In San Francisco we do have a popup program. You have to be a licensed caterer in order to pop up. You do have to pop up into a licensed food facility. However with breweries and wineries, they often are not required to have a retail permit through the department. This host facility allows them, after inspection, to allow a caterer to pop up in the location. There is also some introductions to the vending machine code which has not been updated since probably the eight late 1970s. With vending machines, we license vending machines that provide prepackaged potentially hazardous foods. Such as sandwiches, salads. We have also seen a lot of new innovations in this industry, as well. We have people who are coming and asking us if they can do korean rice bowls or a pizza. We have updated that code to now establish a new fee. So that each individual vending machine will pay a separate fee, and a separate annual license fee. With regards to limited Service Charitable Feeding operations. This is going to be fee exempt, because this is nonprofits that are providing food. Are there any questions regarding any of this . The fees . Thank you. Thank you. Commissioners, do we have any other questions before we take it for Public Comment . Okay. Do we have any members of the public you would like to make any comments on item number three . Okay. If there is no Public Comment and for item number three. Public comment is closed. Commissioners, do we have any comments . Commissioner riley . I think some of the fees, the increase is very minimal. I am sure they have done outreach to businesses. I dont have any questions. I do not i do like the new color code. Do we have any motions . We are going to get you a tshirt. [laughter] move to support the legislation as proposed. Second. [roll call] motion passes 60 with 1 absent. Thank you. Next item, please. Item four, board of supervisors file number 190811 environment code promotion of reusable Food Service Ware. Ordinance amending the environment code to require food vendors to charge customers 0. 25 for each nonreusable beverage cup and 0. 25 for each nonreusable food container, provide reusable Food Service Ware for onpremises dining, and provide customeraccessible selfbussing stations; and affirming the planning departments determination under the California Environmental quality act. Discussion and action item. Presenter s lee hepner, legislative aide, supervisor aaron peskin and the department of environment for members of the public, went Public Comment is opened it will be limited to two minutes per speaker. Commission, president adams, thank you so much for having me today. I do have a Powerpoint Presentation up here for you that i believe you will also have before you. There we go. All right. Ill try not to spend too much time as this, i know a lot of people to discuss this ordinance. Before you today is what we are calling the reuse ordinance. I want to start by going through what the problem is. I dont think we are going to find thing anything particularly disagreeable here. It makes the foundation why we are putting this forward in the the problem, in large part, is can we use waste . We have been inundated with reports from folks, it has been in the media a lot. We produce a lot of plaque does plastic raid we reuse things wants and throw them away. In large part what we have understood to be recyclable is not being recycled. It is going straight to landfill. The statistic here suggest that less than 10 of plastic ever produced under the understanding that it is recyclable is in fact not being recycled. Our local Waste Service provider does a much better job and a lot of us. Recovering over 6 Million Pounds of recyclables every year. Nevertheless, we understand that food and beverage packaging causes significant Environment Health and safety impacts. Approximately 120 million non reusable cups are used in the United States alone. 300 million in San Francisco. The environmental costs that we dont necessarily consider, the water that is used to produce these cups, the omissions that result from the print editions provisions process are less talked about. We do understand they have toxic impacts on our environment and they pollute our waterways. Recent reports, just last week a big conference in the city of San Francisco. Our bay is in bad shape. 7 trillion micro plastic particles low on the San Francisco bay each year. Clothing, baby wipes, food packaging, vehicle tires as chief contributors. At a recent cleanup event, a lot of folks are here from organizations that do this work around some of that data comes from a letter that you have in your pockets from an Organization Called upstream. Who is here to speak about this ordinance. We did this in the mission. Upstream, surfrider showing that about 90 of the collected waste for single use food service where. I want to say a quick word about convenience culture and somebody who is a little bit older than the use that are leading the movement these ways, around environmental initiatives. I still feel as if my generation is responsible for it uptick in single use waste that is the consequence of Delivery Services and the socalled shut in economy. We know the delivery culture, convenience culture is a gateway to the throwaway culture area meanwhile, the implications of Delivery Services are a myriad in negative in other ways. Whether it is taking 2530 commissions from restaurants or the labor implications. [reading notes] some of the labor implications for workers not being afforded minimum wage and other benefits. Of course, a very relevant topic for this body which has been discussed quite a bit. How do we solve this . We have been working a long time to make San Francisco a zero waste things to the department of the environment, for really pioneering a lot along those lines. The goal that we came to last year in 2018 was to reduce solid waste generation by 15 . Compared to 2015. Reducing the amount of municipal solid waste. Disposed to landfill and incineration by at least 15 and a diversion rate of 70 by 2030. I think contextually it is good to recognize a lineage of legislation which looks like a lot of regulation. It is indeed slowly chipping away at a problematic thing that we agree upon. Dating back to the 2,002 resolution adopting zero waste goals. Moving forward through Food Service Production ordinances which have been updated since then. The 2018 single use wares. Building upon the info most widely strawman. And then our reuse ordinance. It really aims to do three big things. One, it would create a reusable Food Service Ware requirement for all onsite dining. Two, it would create a 25cent charge for non reusable beverage cups and three, it would create charge for non reusable takeout containers. For the reusable Food Service Ware for onsite Dining Services food vendors who are preparing food for consumption onsite shall use reusable food service where. With some exceptions, food wrappers, sleeves, paper napkins. I think it is really important to note here. We are anticipating some of the concerns and limitations around this ordinance and implementation of this ordinance. There is a potential waiver in there right now. If a food vendor is able to demonstrate an ability to comply due to insurmountable space constraints undue Financial Hardship they can apply for a full or partial waiver of this requirement. That would be the prerogative of the director of the department of the environment issue. And inoperative operative date for this for july 2020, much of this as a policy matter cures and limitation dates and should be discussed and i believe on some level negotiated. Number two, the 25 cents charge for non reusable cups. Pretty basic, if you are using a non reusable cup you go to your coffee shop and get a paper cup. It would have to be a separately itemized. 25 cents charge for that beverage cup which you can avoid by bringing your own reusable cup. A lot of folks, i think, it was Something Like 11 of San Francisco consumers are already accustomed to bring their own cups. And you bring your own cup you traditionally get a bit of a discount. On some level, while we are requiring a separately itemized. 2 i sent cup charge, in some ways this to some degree in as much as a lot of coffee shops will give you that discount when you bring your own cup. Implementation date for that is january 1, 2021. Third, the. 25 sent charge per container for non reusable containers. Sorry, i forgot to mention, both of these charges for equity concerns, he would not be assessed that charge if you are making payment with food stamps at the special Supplemental Food Program for women, infants and children. We are anticipating to say if you have proof of medical and pro enrollment, would also not be subject to that trend charge. The operative dates here, trying to be a little cute here. On the one hand you have a firm implementation date january 1, 2022 for formula retail food vendors. The idea being some of the larger chain restaurants are better capitalized and perhaps a better equipped to try to lead in this regard. Or to enroll with thirdparty services and help those services scale. As to non formula retail food vendors, implementation date would be a year out, january 1, 2023. That would be by s. F. Environment that a Food Environment option exists. There are services popping up today. Dispatch is one of them. The proprietor of the business is here. Another is a vessel. These are organizations that are providing a thirdparty Standard Container service. I hope to have an opportunity to tell you about what they provide, and how they intend to scale. It actually is in accessible alternative for folks who want to avoid a 25 sent charge. Other provisions in here, but not insignificant. A requirement for delivery, food Delivery Services, providing non reusable food accessories. If im ordering on an app, and my food comes, it doesnt automatically have a fork in there, it does not automatic they have a knife. I have to specifically request i think, as a matter of common sense, when i order delivery food to my home, i do not need a fork. I have forks at home. And yet, they are there. Typically in large numbers. Moving away from single use terminology. I think it is important, what we understand to be single use versus reusable. We have encountered this in some of the conversations we have had with businesses. Reusable can be single use and people are throwing it away probably. We want to try to avoid that terminology. How it gets us closer to zero waste . Some of this is obvious. At least it is intended to be obvious. Reusables replace items that are easily littered. We are trying to get that upstream. We are trying to create a marketplace for thirdparty services for standardized reasonable alternatives to single use food where. We do not want to put the burden solely on food vendors to have to do this if we think there is an avenue and a market to be created for responsible, reasonable thirdparty alternatives. Like dispatch, like vessel. Charges, we know that they change consumer behavior. This has been demonstrated by the plastic bag charge which is dramatically changing consumer behavior, it is becoming yes, it is still irritable to many of us, it has otherwise become quite secondhand and we expect and understand it. We hope that beverage cups and food containers will incur that same sort of thought process and change consumer behavior. Lastly, and without being too presumptuous or allknowing about the way the Small Business functions because i am not. Several case studies put together by this group, by restaurants that have proactively gone down this path. Many of them are called the rethink disposable restaurants. Some of those folks are here today that do the outreach. We have shown that this can actually make net cost savings for the money that you spend, per year, on the single use non reusable food service where accessories is a pretty extraordinary line item. There are some onetime costs converting to a reasonable model. Not having to pay that, though you may have to pay other costs related to the washing of reusable items. We have seen that actually bear a net cost saving for some of the businesses whose case studies are in your packets. Not the least of which is seidels pizza which is one of my favorite pizzas pizza spots in the cities. We kick this off july 21, 2019. We are not rushing this through. We have indeed been trying to be deliberate with our outreach. Meeting with the golden gate restaurant association, San Francisco chamber of commerce, Chinese Chamber of commerce, or ecology which has been a supporter out of the gates for us here. I met personally with levine, im trying to understand their Business Model. They are an interesting case that we are learning from. They have full bussing restaurant sit down dining expenses. They have six that are very fastpaced, Takeout Service with non reusable cups and Food Service Ware. Trying to figure out how operationally this works for them. It has really helped inform our move forward on this. Outreach that has been largely undertaken by a Broad Coalition of supporters on this or actually meeting with businesses to understand what their concerns are, and how to commit compliance with an ordinance like this. Just a little feedback that we have received. I touched on some of the stuff. It is also in a letter in your packets from supervisor peskin how we tend and to this, in order to ease compliance. I think one of the biggest things that people want to know how to apply for a waiver. What does that mean to be for feasible reusable alternative . We can provide additional clarity along those lines. It really has to do, i think, with the Square Footage of your establishment. How building out a dishwasher service might create fiction with other Building Code requirements. What the cost is . What your . We want to make sure that relative to mobile food facilities are more permanent mobile food facilities that we are trying to bring them into this as well. Acknowledging temporary food facility there for a day, going to have a hard time complying with reusable Food Service Ware requirement. Ive already alluded to earlier, the exemption for that. 25 sent charge. Clarification of the container charge on applying to food prepared and packaged offsite. The rest of this is for discussion with commissioners. I have met with some of you, discuss this with some of you all. What else can we do to make this easier for food vendors . How can we be, you know, amenable and receptive to Small Business concerns . One of the conversations that i had recently with commissioner zouzounis, we had a wonderful conversation friday. It really did include a conversation about all of these new requirements of Small Businesses, at a rough time for retail corridors. How do we make it easier, and how do we put this on the city on the departments to come forward with a report that says hey, this is what we anticipate to be the, and here are avenues to help mitigate those costs. Here are buckets of assistance that might help you ring yourself into compliance. Instead of some of the other things we are seeing right now. The challenges with massage parlors. Regulations that go to implementation, three years down the line. We have forgotten them and now we are confronting 900 businesses who are challenged and try to figure out the best way to comply. I think the same thing is happening with our accessible business century way controls right now we are trying to bring everything into compliance. Some of that work we can do it from. We can anticipate those costs and help mitigate those costs along the way. How does work we are committed to doing. That might manifest an additional amendment to this legislation. But certainly, an and limitation period we are here to listen, learn, and move forward. Generally, the businesses we sit down and talk to them listen to their concerns it is a much smoother conversation. Those conversations are ongoing. I do not want to suggest we are done here today. I know that there are businesses who have been receiving misinformation about this ordinance. That is not a good place to start. I would much rather start with a sitdown conversation. We looked at the Business Model and see how we might incorporate some of your concerns into the conversation. Uh without saying too much more specifically about that uh other approach which uh unfortunately has put misinformation in the air and created some fear where i dont think it should exist. Uh i think that is a less uh open approach than what we are looking for uh. Everyone who is either a Small Business owner uh i am happy to sit down to you and talk to you about how this ordinance is intended to go into effect and how we might uh ease of limitation for everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much. Commissioners questions . I have one quick question. What about when you go to a coffee shop and you get a cup and its already a biodegradable cup. Are you still want to be charged for biodegradable replacement cup . A lot of that stuff we are have ordinances in place. This is my concern. You know, styrofoam is banned in this town. The stuff you are getting already is biodegradable. Im trying to figure out what i am missing here. Right. I think some of this, and i think anybody in the coalition of advocates who are supporting the transition to reusables, even from compostables right now, will admit, you know, i think it was a little bit shortsighted to think because it is compostable means it is being composted. In fact, a lot of this waste, same with recyclables, is not. We want to diverted from landfill. Unfortunately, even if single use items are technically compostable or recyclable, a lot of them are ending up in the landfill still. This is the option to really switch to a truly reusable model and make sure we are not sending anything to the landfill. Particularly if youre already dining on site before Busing Service, that should not be happening. Commissioner laguana . Thank you, and thank you for the leadership on this issue. I cant speak for the other commissioners, but speaking for myself yeah, move closer . Uh there is a lot here to digest we are certainly, im sure, all theyre interested in. There is a lot of things to consider like inputs and outputs on this. Uh one question that came up for me looking through this, there are several uh references to a waiver process. Can you walk me through without waiver process what you intended to look like . Right, so, the idea is that you would be able to petition the director of the department of the environment for a waiver of for instance the onsite dining reusable food where requirement. This is something that, if youre a business that operationally uses thousands of non reusable containers every day, i dont know their exact numbers. Youre going to be challenged to set up a dishwashing facility and actually provide that Busing Service if people are not self busing. You know, you are facing challenges with the of limitation. You might be able to apply to the director of the department for a full or partial waiver of that requirement. The partial waiver might, you know, that could be the percentage of reusables, or not. Or, the time that, you know, youre allowed to bring operation in compliance. I think one of the key ways we want to amend this ordinance as is make that waiver more clear. Who it is designed to apply to, how do we recognize the difference between existing businesses that do not have have reusable capacity and perspective businesses that might be able to actually implement that buildout is part of their opening process. How do we confine, or give contour, to what that waiver looks like . As we just did with the easy charging station ordinance. We allow the department, the director of the department of environment to have that would then be transmitted to the board of supervisors for review. The board of supervisors could give that a thumbs up or thumbs down by ordinance which provide an additional level of transparency before the end limitation date. You know, we have that clarity up and ready to go before businesses are bumping up against a compliance deadline. I guess my question is more about the actual waiver process itself. Are they just going online and filling out a form . Is our paper . Is there inspections . Is there an appeal . Walk me through the actual sure. Honestly, the department of the environment might have a better sense of how that applies. I think it is different for different requirements. First entry way, you can appeal that determination. There are certain exemptions laid out in the ordinance. If you are denied, you can appeal that to the access appeals board. This presumably would be something similar. You can fill out a form online, i think what we want to see, as a policymaker imperative is some demonstrated burden that you have costed it out. Whatever reason this cost is, you know, it is too much for you, it is not accessible for you. I do think it would be Something Like a form that you would fill out, and adaptation that you try to make this work and you cant for whatever reason. We could be a little more explicit about those exemptions, or those certain considerations. Then it would be up to the director of the department of the environment to give a thumbsup or thumbs down. Whether that is appealable to the board of appeals is a matter of charter authority. Im not 100 certain. Thank you. Commissioner yee riley . Thank you for the presentation. I do have a question with a b619. It requires the restaurant to isolate the customers container from the serving surface. How does that work . So, a b619, as i understand add foz will not part was to give guidance to restaurants on how they can accept containers that folks are bringing in on their own. Previously that has not been allowed under state law. This is an evolving piece of state law that says actually, we see the environmental imperative, we are going to allow people to bring their own containers in. These are the rules that you will to follow. Ab 619, as i understand it, and somebody will stand up and yell and scream if i am wrong, a relaxation of Public Health and safety laws to allow people to bring their own containers and give guidance to food vendors with their obligation is relative to bring you back into a food prep area, or how they are obligated to serve in that container. Our San Francisco department of Public Health has promulgated guidance along these lines relative to beverage cups. If you bring your own beverage cup, to a coffee store, to have your cup filled up to ask you to remove the lid first. They will not touch that is a crosscontamination concern. Part of regulation and guidance that the department of Public Health has provided. Ive been in some communication with the department of Public Health about promulgating additional guidelines for people to bring in their own containers that should be forthcoming in the wake of ab 649. I remember growing up we used to bring our own container, and then we were older food to deliver, they would deliver in reusable dishes and then they would come back and pick it up. Times are different now. You cannot do that anymore. I try to wash some of the containers i have gotten from to go food, you are not allowed to take it back. I dont know. We probably need more detailed instruction and guidelines for the Business Owners. What you do. The container provided by the consumer is clean enough for you to touch it if you live and go touch Something Else. I think we need more guidance on that. I would agree with you. The reason we put the uh implementation date of the container piece a few years out is to allow for some of that to take place. Youre right, it is often cultural norms. It is a generational thing. There was a time before where we werent throwing away single use everything. I understand india is a country that has a fairly robust reusable container system. Those containers are largely, you know, standardized across businesses. It might not be the norm here today, but this points to a point where it is the norm. The norm as something other than drowning our bay and micro plastics. That is the imperative that we are trying to pursue here. Okay. Commissioner zouzounis . Thank you for the presentation. A couple of clarifying questions and comments. For onsite facilities that require self busing stations. Can you define it that would look like if it is a different type of self busing station . Does it require a sink . So, one of the businesses that was a pioneer in the recent disposable conversation, was right near my house, i go there all the time. They have all reusable foodservice aware and accessories there. They dont even have the like a little ceramic cup for salsa. It is otherwise Counter Service pretty go order, you sit down, and your stuff is served. They have three container busing station already there. Its at the front of house. They are technically self busing. To have that busing station. Interestingly, one of the concerns that we have is that people are actually kind of quick to throw away they reusables when the self busing station is front of house. That absentmindedly throwing away technically reusable forks area one of the changes we anticipate making for the ordinance is saying hey, if you are doing reusables maybe you dont need to have that self busing station at the front of house. Maybe you can have that behind, back of house, so people arent inclined to absentmindedly throw away a reasonables. Im not sure if that gets your answer. It is an operationally different thing for each type of food vendor and self busing stations you know, its a little bit peculiar. Am thinking about in both context if someone brings their own tupperware, and they use it. They are expected to take you back home. We are not requiring a business to allow them to clean up before they go home or anything like that . Im not aware of a requirement on the food vendor to allow people to clean their own dishes. I dont think that that exists. Tran21 comment before we talk more, after hearing from the public. I do agree with our president. I do see this as a punitive measure for businesses that have spent five times, you know, increased costs moving from a non compostable for example to compostable. We are complying with the law, and the next year there is another law. I am really not inclined to vote on this until we have a fee mitigation in. We have litter fees that Small Businesses pay. We have pof fees that Small Businesses pay and would require an additional line item on the receipt, which i think is fee related. That is generally where i stand. Echoing commissioners is in his remarks echoing commissioners remarks, most Small Business owners are very timelimited. That is one of the reasons why i was asking about the waiver process both in terms of, you know, i think we all support the end goal. It often seems like the burden is put on Restaurant Owners to get to the end goal. I tend to agree with commissioner zouzounis, i think there needs to be, if you want to get to the end goal you cant be entirely on the backs of the Small Businesses. It is whiplash constantly. Some thought, i think, should be given to that. Absolutely. I encourage you to take a look at the case studies to the businesses that have already converted to this. We dont want to be in a punitive mode with Small Businesses. If anything the subjecting businesses to audits for waste sorting, large ways producers are that is, i would agree a harder stick enforcement measure to ensure compliance with sorting. The reason i came into play in the first place is because we know that compostables are ending up in a landfill anyway. Recyclables are ending up in our landfill anyway. I agree with you, we had this conversation and i put it on the record as well, we should be very clear to the stakeholder community, what costs are associated with bringing yourself into compliance with this ordinance. At the same time we should be very transparent about the cost saving to businesses as well. We can do both of those things before this hits its implementation date. It is incumbent on the city to do so. We will be in the process looking for ways to mitigate fees as well. It is something we talk about all the time in the city. Calling at low hanging fruit rather than being partners with Small Businesses and food vendors. Just a few weeks ago, that is something that was a recurring theme. We will be continuing to look at those opportunities in the context of this ordinance and the course of an limitation to make sure that, you know, if we are going to put in a new requirement we are actually finding ways for food vendors to be partners and for the city to be a partner to the Small Business community as well. One other thing i want to mention. The thing that it is not contingent or applied to prepackaged offsite locations. I think that is a little problematic. How do we know that is not going to encourage to go businesses like delis and stuff, instead of producing their own readymade stuff that they buy outside of the city or externally. That is kind of my question. How are we making sure that is not disenfranchising our onsite production San Francisco produced to go items. It was our intent to reflect reality. Do i think there is a potential loophole there that could be exploited wrongly . Maybe. I think maybe some folks in the coalition that have been pushing similar ordinances around the bay area can help answer that question. You know, certainly, do i understand that there is a cost associated with that container and that the cost of the containers going to be included in the charge that you are paying at a food vendor, or at a corner store or a Grocery Store . Yeah, its all kind of there. In a Perfect World you would be able to get your sandwich without having it prepackaged and it might cost. 25 cent less then the prepackaged food sandwich. That is a virtue that we are trying to establish. Okay. Any other questions before we going into Public Comment . Okay, lets open it up to Public Comment. Commission secretary . Okay. I do have some speaker cards here. As a reminder, we will be limiting Public Comment up to two minutes. There is a timer. We will begin with Taylor Stafford with pier 39, followed by kristen teach from green to bins. My name is sandra fletcher, i am the president and ceo of simcoe restaurants on pier the biggest concern is while we are very much in support of sustainability, and we are actually Green Business certified. We are pier 39, where 90 of our business is tourism. I dont know about any of you, but i dont travel and pack my to go containers, and to go coffee cup. We arty have a reputation that we are a tourist trap, and that overcharge. Now, this is one more line item that we have to add to a check to try to explain to people from all over the world why we are charging them this. I understand, you know if you live locally. We just cannot afford this. This is another thing we are fighting against. The tourism, as you know, is one of the biggest profits. It pays everything. Its really a big concern for us that we are going to add Something Else and go against the negative image that San Francisco is arty receiving with the homelessness and the cost of hotels. Our going to have the cost of having to pay. The customer will not understand when they come into my coffee shop, if you want this cup of coffee youre going to have to pay. I cant push them to try to sell them a to go cup. Excuse me, a cup, souvenir cup that is 10, so now instead of them getting a 3dollar cup of coffee theyre going to have to get 13. It is very difficult for us on pier 39 with these types of ordinances are put in place. In 20 thank you. Hello. Good afternoon. My name is kristen, i work for green tip in. Let me put my glasses on, sorry. It is a sustainable Small Business located in San Franciscos mission district. They make planned based plant based lunches, grown locally. These are reusable containers delivered to customers by electric bicycles. When it comes to sustainability, i like to say that we truly walk the talk. Green tip and has been in business for four years was founded by visionary. We have over 2,000 subscribers. When customers subscribe, they put down a 25dollar deposit which is refunded when they and their subscription and return to us. Approximately half of subscribers and up keeping it for their own personal use for their lunches, their kids lunches et cetera. The amount of disposable plastic we have prevented from going into a landfill is greater than what we even estimate. Speaking of which, since travertine began operation four years ago we estimate that we have kept over 75,000 single use or non reusable plastic containers out of landfills by offering customers reusable containers. Travertine is one Small Business, we have such a huge impact. Imagine how much lighter if all establishments followed this lead. It is an immigrant owned bicycle power plant based Small Business. This is showing us exactly how to do this legislation. On behalf of all of us at green tipon, we support the reuse ordinance. I have information if you want to read about us. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I so long. The owner and founder of zeno nutrition which makes protein bars. We have a local headquarters here in San Francisco. We sell hundreds of thousands of bars around the country, particularly california. We are also retailing in San Francisco, gnc and other establishments. We are not directly impacted by this ordinance. We recognize this could be a harbinger of things to come down the road. We happened to support the proposed ordinance, because we have an issue ourselves with trying to be clean and green. Our bars come in a nonrecyclable , plastic wrapper. We could make them from recyclables, but it puts us at a competitive disadvantage against our competitors. Unfortunately, we are not doing it. We are hoping at some point there will be legislation statewide or in congress or somewhere that requires recyclable packaging. That will level out the playing field. The difference though in this ordinance on what we are facing is unlike protein bars, this takeout charge, there is no net Financial Impact to business. For example, someone buys a 4dollar latte. Now they have to pay 4. 25 in theory, but the owner of the establishment can reduce the price by. 25 cent to reduce the cost of the cut. I dont understand the point other than one little line item on the receipt. Other than that, i think it is a clean zero impact to the business and the consumer. We would support. Thank you. Have had your protein bars too, they are very good. 1020 thank you. Thank you. I am miriam gordon, i am the Program Director for upstream speaking for support. San francisco has done a great address the plastic pollution problem. 70 of the trash on bay area streets, and city streets that enters the ocean is disposable food and beverage packaging. This trashes is the result of our throwaway culture, and it is time to change that culture. It is hard to imagine changing to reusables will actually be good for business and save businesses money. You will hear from rethink disposable today. Hundreds of businesses that they have worked with and that is the truth. This is not just about reducing later, this is also good for economic businesses. As long as food businesses give their customers disposables for free, for takeout, there is no economic incentive for customers to choose reusables. These charges will motivate customers to either bring their own reusable, provided by the retailer or dine on sites with real cups and plates. It is wellsettled that customers change their behavior to avoid at a cost. We have seen this with the bag charges. On average california bag charges have reduced litter by 80 and increased reusables by three years ago, a survey of 500 cafe customers, 77 of them supported the mandatory charge for takeout cups. Cafe owners similarly reported 71 of them, so they would support this charge if the retailer gets to keep the charge