222: Emma Orlow

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. I don't want to make a sweeping statement about the people doing pop-ups, but so far I've found that at least the ones that I'm tracking, which are younger people, BIPOC, queer chefs, I think they're just nicer.

0:52You're listening to The Taste Podcast. I'm your host, Eliza Barbinelle. Emma Orlo is a reporter for Eater New York whose colorful aesthetic is only matched by her thoughtful reporting and maybe her love of Jell-O As the city's dining scene heats up along with the weather we invited Emma onto the show to share her constantly updating perspective on the state of New York City restaurants why so much exciting food is happening at pop-ups these days the rise of worker-owned food businesses and more It's a great conversation and we hope you'll enjoy it

1:33Emma, thank you so much for coming on the Taste Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. For people that are listening, picture this. Emma Orlo is sitting in front of me, and she's wearing a green outfit that would blend so perfectly into a green screen that she would be just a floating head. I mean, I try and make my style kind of look like a Nickelodeon Slime Time Live. Yeah, that's exactly what I would say. And that's so funny because I wanted to start off with talking a little bit about your perspective on like personal taste, because I think that you are such a cartoon character, not only in your outfits, but just your approach.

2:08Like I'll read things and I know that it's a story that you've written just because it's so wacky and fun that only you could have found it. So I'm curious, like where your sense of personal taste comes from and how that kind of impacts your work. Um, well, thank you. First of all, uh, you know, it's funny because I feel like I definitely do have things that I really like and a personal aesthetic and all of that, but I do sometimes worry where it's like, I, I, I, you know, you're saying wacky and fun and I definitely identify about that, but I think my life struggle is figuring out how to do that and then also be taken seriously.

2:43And, um, I don't know, I think like over the years, um, you know, it's probably evident in some of the stories that I've written, but like the majority of the reference images, I would say is like 1970s cookbooks. And like, I know you were going to talk about this, but like the wacky waving inflatable tube man that I have on my arm and the jello tattoo. And it's like, I really like, you know, old school things that are silly and fun and referential, but don't take themselves too seriously. And I think in terms of my work, it's like figuring out how to do those stories that are really fun and silly and then also bring in some sort of, you know, seriousness.

3:28And I think that comes through in the reporting. But yeah, I don't know. I think the world is pretty bleak. So I try and have fun where I can. Yeah, I think that balance between playfulness and seriousness is really interesting, not only in personal aesthetic, but also in writing, right? Because I think a good piece of journalism and especially food writing, which is supposed to be fun in the first place, has that kind of balance between something that's unexpected and then also kind of giving it that gravity. And I do think that comes through in your work as well. Thank you. I mean, that is the hope.

3:58I don't know. I feel like, you know, and beyond just like my work with Eater, I did this one story as a freelancer for Grub Street that was about following this photographer, William Mullen. I know you know him. who is, for those of you who don't know, Palm Queen, a really beautiful, not only photographer of apples, but sort of like archivist and documentarian of where you can find apple trees in New York City. And we did this crazy story together where he had found on the side of the BQE, this apple tree that he really wanted to pick. And a big part of his work is also, you know not gatekeeping and like sharing where these locations are and also sharing the fruit and he had um posted about on instagram that he had found this tree and and i like dm'd him about it and i was like we have to do a story about this and it required us to basically like on the side of um bq is a highway in new york city for those of you who don't live in new york but basically it was like there was like a gate that went kind of like 17 feet up and then there was a drop back down.

5:09So it was like at street level, you enter, then you go up and then you drop all the way down. And he'd gotten this ladder. And our story was kind of like apple picking at night on the BQE. And I think to this day, that's probably one of the wackiest stories that I've done, mostly because the whole time I was like, we don't have to do this. Like, it seems kind of dangerous. Like, at any time, if you want to back out, we can. And he was really adamant about doing it and it turned out to be this beautiful like you know story about um kind of like city planning and the mystery of like how this apple tree even got here and um yeah I really try and pursue characters like that and you know with food writing specifically obviously the food is important um but for me when I'm looking for a story I think more often than not I'm looking for people who are really obsessed and obsessed with like a very specific niche.

6:05And I try and pride myself on reporting on people who may not often be covered in media. And for me, a lot of times that means like I'm just addicted to my phone, scrolling on Instagram constantly, trying to find stories I'm interested in. And I think, you know, every writer likes to think that they, you know want to write their best stories that don't come from press releases that aren't repped by people um but yeah I think that's something that is really important to me and um I try and make a daily part of my practice definitely and I love that you brought up that story about William because I had I think I'd followed him on Instagram but when I read your story I just mustered up the courage to slide in his dms and say please take me with you to go apple picking Did you go?

6:52Yeah, we walked around South Brooklyn. I mean, we became friends. So this was the first time that he showed me some of his trees. And then last July, I guess, whenever the sour cherry season was, he took me and some friends to pick sour cherries and some trees that are just in a public park down in Red Hook. And we harvested all these sour cherries. And then I had all these, you know, dreams of making a shrub or a compote. I just ate all of them, as I always do. But that story really galvanized me to try to. I was just like, I need to spend time with this person. It's so fun. I like urban fruit is such a niche interest of mine.

7:28And it made me think a lot about like the topics that I see. And I just know it's a story that I want to write about. Do you have any pet topics that you see them online somewhere and you just know this is going to be really fun for me? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think my favorite story that I've ever written in my time at Eater was about the history of erotic cookbooks and um you know I think once I got into that wormhole which like involved my favorite kind of stories are the ones where you're like you know you're going on J-Story you're reading all your pdfs you're going to like a vintage bookstore to do your research um not the J-Story lock in to have a I don't have it you have to really have like a friend of a friend of a friend and um but um but yeah to you know for that story like I reached out to like a design professor to talk about like the aesthetic of the books and then historians who write about sexuality and food and like that topic was so interesting to me and I had so much fun spending hours searching for it because I think it's a topic that people really easily kind of make into a joke um or see as yeah just not uh necessarily a serious uh study in food media and i think like originally the idea was that they were being written from the perspective of a woman trying to win over a man and by extension trying to get a man to marry her um and you know you see so much sexism in those early erotic cookbooks now obviously they don't hold the test of time but they're still so interesting to look at like what the recipes are for something like that um but then it became this thing in the 1970s where it's like the porn industry is changing and also like women's liberation and and these cookbooks then didn't just represent you know women trying to make sort of like erotic uh recipes for a man it was like for themselves for their own body and then now I think like over the past, I don't know, 30 years or so, you see also like just the idea of who these are for expand to where there's like a lot of like queer erotic cookbooks now.

9:40And I don't know. That story was just so fun because it touched so many different things that I'm passionate about. And I thought it was a topic that had been sort of overlooked by a lot of people that I wanted to give a sense of joy to. Yeah. I loved reading that one. The first issue of Cake Scene that I've talked about on the podcast before is the magazine I do with Sexy Cake. And we did talk about erotic cookbooks a little bit just when we were doing our own research. And to me, I think it is such an underrepresented industry because I think there is something so essential about cooking something for somebody and then they're consuming it and putting it in front of their body in front of you and it's sensory reaction.

10:18I think that it does seem silly at first and you imagine it to be really corny instructions that are like, you know, loosen your necktie and uncork the bottle of wine to deglaze the pan. But actually in practice, like I think it makes a lot of sense that that is an industry, you know. Totally. And it's like when you look at the actual book design of these, I think what we sort of lost in their most like there was this period in sort of the early 2000s where they just got so tacky. Like they're just like really. Well, everything in the early 2000s got tacky. But I think we're in this really interesting moment right now where like you brought up cake scene and I would actually put that under the category of like an example of one of these like modern texts of exploring this topic.

10:59But basically after the 1970s, the aesthetic of them just got so ugly. And I'm excited to see hopefully if people continue to do this work to bring back not only in terms of the, you know, content, but also like the design. because something that I thought was interesting in researching that piece is also like in terms of commercial sales of these books like a lot of those 1970s erotic cookbooks were really on the fringes of publishing and and even the ones that were maybe selling a lot of copies weren't necessarily like picked up by a major publisher because and that within that kind of like allowed them to have more fun in the design um but I hope that comes back in some kind of way yeah we're We're rooting for it.

11:45I want to talk about your job at Eater because we're talking about these kinds of fun features that you get to do. But I know that you also do a lot of kind of day-to-day work about openings and closings in New York. So what does the job look like for you? And what kind of position does that give you in terms of having an eye on the food scene here in New York? Totally. Well, I think the Eater New York reporter job is pretty unique to food media in terms of its emphasis on breaking news. so while I definitely do get to do a lot of those like fun longer feature pieces I feel excited about the day-to-day is incredibly fast-paced so in the morning it might be a morning news roundup and then you know working on some sort of breakout piece about maybe like a law change or you know a restaurant partnership or something we cover a lot of openings and closings and then yeah I do like a lot of a lot but it does come up quite frequently of like you know lawsuit work which is something that prior to this job I didn't have as much experience in and and it's just this job is really fast-paced and I love it so much and I feel so lucky to do it but it also takes a very particular kind of person who can like ping pong their brain back and forth between doing a map of best restaurants in Brooklyn and then doing a lawsuit about sexual harassment.

13:08Yeah. How does that work? Do you have like a lawyer on retainer that Eater calls? Or how do you how do you develop that muscle to be reporting on legal things? I mean, we have a Vox Media legal team. So we kind of like tap them in when we're working on a story in the early stages so they can review it and it gets multiple manager reads. But, you know, I think it's also about a mix of having the like mental fortitude to be talking to people who often want to clap back pretty hard and dealing with like, you know, an individual restaurant's lawyers. And that's definitely like a lifelong skill that I'm trying to work on is like, you know, being a very like emotive person who's empathetic, but also like sensitive.

13:55And I think like building a thicker skin is just a lifelong journey as someone newer to this industry. But no, it's interesting. It's definitely like having to be very organized about your time and being able to do back and forth those kinds of stories in one day. Yeah, I imagine that, you know, the New York City restaurant industry, I bet there are some pretty intense lawyers that some of especially the old school establishments are retaining. Luckily, I feel like we don't have that many cases in New York that we have to deal with on a day to day basis, but they definitely come up. And there's a lot of like he said, she said stuff that, you know, there's not always necessarily a clear answer of who's right, who's wrong, but you're just there to say these are the facts.

14:40So I wanted to also ask you about the pop-up column at Eater, which I think of as very much something that is your baby. Did you originate it or how did it come together? So I think people have covered pop-ups at Eater before me. For sure. But on the New York team, we had never had a dedicated column. And I started in July 2022, in part because, you know, pop-ups are just the part of the restaurant industry right now that feels the most exciting to me. And they're also incredibly hard to keep track of. Like, you know, you're seeing them on Instagram. There's not really good Instagram interface to be, you know, beyond bookmarking to put them in your calendar.

15:20And people put so much work into pop ups that I just wanted a dedicated space for people to be able to find them. And not everyone is addicted to their phone as I am. So it just gives space to that. But it's been interesting because I've seen other publications since follow suit and now also have their own weekly pop up guides. And they started it just a few months after ours. And it's great to see because it's, you know, not only does it do well traffic wise for us, but I've just gotten the feedback from so many people who do pop ups that it's really important to them, you know, financially to be able to have like a space where they're where they're talked about because a lot of times they only exist basically on social media.

16:01Yeah. And I think you're right that pop ups are such an exciting space and the dining scene here in New York right now. And I'm curious, what about it is exciting to you and why do you think that's able to flourish in a pop-up space? Well, I think there's a lot of things happening right now in pop-ups. You started with pop-ups. Granted, pop-ups existed long before the pandemic and they were a thriving industry. But I think the pandemic really changed the game in terms of people being able to see maybe it's going to be like a long-term business plan for themselves and also restaurants themselves taking them more seriously.

16:34You know, in the pandemic, obviously, people are doing pop ups in part just out of basic necessity, like restaurants were closed. They needed work. But then also, you know, when we had the good kind of unemployment, that also enabled certain people to be able to like finally have the money in some capacity to take a chance on themselves and not have to be beholden to their bosses at restaurants and be able to fully envision what it looks like to have their own food voice heard. So, you know, I think it started with the necessity aspect of things. And then now it's a really thriving industry that people are taking really seriously.

17:15And, you know, beyond just the fact that I think they're the most fun events to go to, I think it's really exciting to see how certain restaurants have now carved a part of their business model to be a part of pop-ups. Like, you know, places like Winona's and Rodora, these are restaurants and wine bars that opened in New York City before the pandemic. When they opened, you know, they didn't necessarily have local fanfare around them. Like they were really cool spots, but like there were a lot of cool spots kind of like them in New York City. And I think what's really interesting is that both of those spaces now have, I don't know if it's biweekly or what the frequency is, But they're doing it basically very frequently to introduce other chefs into their restaurant and allow them to take over the kitchen for however many days.

18:04And I think both of those spaces have seen such an explosion of growth on their end, too, to get more customers in, to, like, build communities in with the people that they're doing pop-ups with. and I think beyond just the fact that we're seeing that it's a great thing for restaurants to open up their space to chefs and give them a chance I think they're also seeing that it's financially beneficial to them too. Yeah I would definitely agree I think it's really fun as somebody that lives in Brooklyn that likes to go out to eat that I know that I can go to Honey's or Adora on a weekend and that they're going to have a fun pop-up and I also think that there's kind of a specific ecosystem of chefs that these pop-ups are working with and then it's also interesting to see the fact that some pop-ups have turned into permanent brick and mortar restaurants as a result of that i think about le partement 4f in brooklyn heights which was a really popular croissant etc pop-up that now has their own brick and mortar and also from lucy in the east village yeah do you see this as like the pop-up being the next intermediary stage into getting a full restaurant?

19:11Because I think some people are looking for that and some people maybe want to just keep doing pop-ups. Yeah, I think right now we're kind of split into three camps. There are the people who want to be doing pop-ups as their full-time thing. They have no intention of ever going back to restaurants. That's not the business model that they're interested in exploring. And then we have people who, you know, maybe don't necessarily see it as a job for themselves. It's in the meantime more of a hobby. They want to try and experiment, invite their friends to events and then there's the third category which is definitely like people who are opening a brick and mortar and the pop-up becomes sort of like a way to preview and test out menu dishes before they open um and I think it makes a lot of sense right like it's it's kind of similar to friends and family where it's like you have these events beforehand you test out what works what doesn't work um before launching to the public but it also builds out the fanfare um and yeah I don't know I think something that I've really loved about the doing the weekly pop-up guide is like that's also where I build a lot of those relationships and get a lot of the tips so you know I'm keeping track of let's say a business that um wants to open in Ridgewood and they've been doing pop-ups and then when they eventually want to open a brick and mortar they DM me and we sort of get in touch and we've already had that built out relationship and I'm kind of going to those events and keeping track of them in that way.

20:36So it's been a really fun, fun thing to do. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. So it's early April right now while we're recording this. Whether it's a pop-up or a permanent restaurant, I feel like the beginning of spring, everyone's eating outside. We're getting new produce. It's such a fun time to be going out to eat in New York. So I'm curious, what are the spots on your radar that you're trying to go to over the next couple months? Well, I know it sounds like everyone in food media would ever say this. You can say superiority burger. Yeah, I have to say it. Have you been? No, I haven't been yet.

21:11Let's go after this, honestly. I don't think it's— They're open. They're open, but I think that they're only open at night right now. But we can try and figure it out. Eat a reporter, Emma Morlow. Hot tip. Yeah, no, I wasn't invited to the Friends and Family, so I didn't go. but I was watching everyone on my social media go and it looks wonderful. And the dessert program looks insane. Another one that I'm really excited about is Salty Lunch Lady's Little Luncheonette. It's a mouthful to say. Cute. But she, Drea is amazing. She's working at Mission Chinese. She's opening a luncheonette in Ridgewood.

21:48And she's really known for these like nostalgic 1960s kind of like pink coconut layer cakes and mortadella sandwiches. and she just she has such a good eye for things that I think the space is gonna be really cute um is this related to the salty sandwiches that were very popular at Marlow back in the day no it's not it's just a similar name yeah she she was doing um beyond the mission Chinese stuff she was she did the pastries at this very short-lived cafe in Chinatown called La Ito's I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right but um her desserts are really great and I've been to a bunch of her pop-ups and you know I don't want to make a sweeping statement about the the people doing pop-ups um but so far I've found that at least the ones that I'm tracking which are more often than not you know younger people um BIPOC queer chefs I think they're just nicer and there's like less of an ego I think in part because it's so much more community driven and um you know a lot of these people like left restaurants because they hated the way that they made them feel or how they were treated and what they were paid and uh I think that has bred a scene that's very collaborative and kind um I'm sure there's assholes in any scene but that is something that has felt really good because, as I'm sure you know from doing food media for enough time, like you do deal with a lot of egos.

23:24And I think so far this space has been, I think, very nurturing. And I'm excited to see what that means for the industry at large. Yeah, me too. I think that's a really sweet thing to think about. And I'm really excited to go get that pink layer cake. Yeah, I feel like there's so many fun and interesting things happening in the New York City restaurant scene right now, especially as it's a new season and things are starting to open up. Are there any specific trends that you're noticing? Yeah. I mean, I'm really fascinated in general by these hybrid spaces that are opening and especially as it pertains to pop-ups, like figuring out a multi-pronged business model seems to be top of mind for a lot of business owners who, you know, weather the pandemic and are figuring out like how to have multiple revenue streams.

24:09So, you know, there's the one bucket which is the restaurants that are opening their dining rooms to pop-ups once a week um but i'm also really interested in these sort of like i saw a tweet recently that was like why does every girl want to open a like combo coffee shop magazine store plant store stop and uh or it was like stop my urge and then there were all these people who had owned those businesses kind of like being like don't do it it's too much work um but it you know a lot of those spaces end up feeling very um i've seen the word avant basic be used online of like to describe that very like instagrammy aesthetic that ends up feeling really homogenous but at their at their core i think that they're really smart and i'm excited to see more of them like there's just this coffee shop that opened in red hook that's like a vintage furniture bakery coffee shop and one of my life dreams is that i would love to someday own a general store sandwich shop wine shop that also sells 1970s cookware and that sounds insane when I say it but um I think that I would be really good at it and um you know I'm excited to see more people figuring out like if restaurants have such thin margins what are other ways into food and beverage that um are able to have lasting business models and now I'm just reveling in the fact that I have a eater reporter in front of me so I can turn this into my personal like dining help hotline.

25:39So I want to ask, I have this always this situation where I realize how nice of a day it is outside and I want to just go sit and have a glass of wine maybe or a beer or a little snack, but mostly just like be outside somewhere where I know that I'm not going to have to fight everybody in Brooklyn for a table. So if you were me, I would also go to Manhattan. Where would you say I go? Ooh, I love the backyard at Sunny's. um there's not snacks there yeah in red hook um i've been really into um i think we were talking about this a little bit but like uh prima which is close to both of us in clinton hill coffee shop by day wine bar by night they have a really nice backyard to work in you can get a snack and a drink um yeah i don't know i it's funny my job has made it so i am an unpaid um hotline to not only all of my friends but every friend of a friend of a friend where I'm getting and I'm sure you get this too where it's like hey I'm in Chinatown right now um I'm looking to go to a restaurant in 10 minutes can you give me five recommendations of where I can go without a reservation for a group of 10 on a Friday night yeah yeah and I mean I kind of love it I I don't know if you remember I don't think they still have it but the infatuation had that like texting concierge system for a minute, which seemed like a hot mess to work for.

27:00But like that does feel like what my extended job is, where my favorite thing is when people ask me about date spots, because to know that you're giving a good recommendation that potentially get someone laid is a joy. I love that because I was about to say, like my people always ask me for date spots, which I think is so funny because there are such established. I recently told a friend to go to Dinoco, which is a great bar in Brooklyn that has a fireplace. And a cake slice that's really good. Yeah, yeah. A cake, the chocolate stout cake. And they were like, oh, it was a great date. Everybody around me was on a first date.

27:33Like every time someone walked through the door, the whole bar turned to see if it was their person that they had met on some app, which is so funny to I think to give a recommendation and realize that it is accurate and it is so accurate that everyone else has the exact same idea. Would you want to be at a first date spot that no one else is on a first date at? Like, which is better? Well, I think I'm delusional and I like to think that I'm unique and special. I would rather not be, oh, I had the same idea as every other person in Brooklyn at this bar. Totally. But there is solidarity in the fact that everyone knows that it's sexy and that it's a nice place to cozy up with someone.

28:10I think it's kind of like you have to calculate what the risk is if it's your neighborhood bar. Are you going to run into someone that you used to date? Are you going to run into friends that maybe like you want the space to go on a first date without their outside opinion. But some people want to be comfortable in their neighborhood too. So yeah, I have one friend that goes to the same bar for every first date and all of the bartenders are on her side. I love that. I think that's like kind of a pro move. Yeah. I used to have that at Doris, but I think that not as a first date spot, but just in general, like going there and then getting people to tell me their opinions on people afterwards.

28:44um but hey bartenders see a lot of people in the city they know they know a day I think I think so and and while we're talking about restaurants and bars and and openings and closings in the city I feel like every couple months I read some headline about the state of dining in New York whether it's that no one is eating past midnight anymore or that like midnight dining is back in New York or all of these things do you have a sense of like a vibe check for the city right now oh it's so hard those articles where it's like yeah 4 p.m is the new 8 p.m and then it's like 4 a.m i think that's what we wrote and i don't really like go out very late so if it is happening till 4 a.m i'm not a part of that scene but um i don't know i think we're at this really interesting schism where we have these restaurants that are opening which are you know incredibly expensive fine dining restaurants and then we have you know people either like in the pop-up scene or like who worked at maybe like smaller restaurants like opening very casual a lot of them seem to be inspired by diners lunch nets and stuff like that um there's nothing wrong with fine dining like clearly there is a huge audience for that in New York specifically um and there are apparently people who can afford to go to those places.

30:03We've heard about them. But I don't know. I think it's it's I don't to me it feels in this day and age a bit tone deaf to be opening those kinds of spaces, especially in an era of so much inflation and people out of work and whatnot. And just just the culture of how people like to eat is pretty. I prefer to eat a really unfussy meal. um yeah and yeah I don't know I think that divide is just growing um and to keep it more positive I think I'm really excited to see all of these you know modern luncheonette diners like placing emphasis on affordability and fun and comfort and nostalgia um but I think yeah I think it's it's in sort of like a a stuck place in that way yeah I think a schism is a really interesting way to talk about it.

30:58And on the note of affordability, I do think that there is such a conversation happening right now about inflation and labor costs and pricing and restaurants. Like, what role in that conversation do you see Eater having? And how do you see it playing out right now? Well, I think that, you know, food, and many people have said this, needs to cost more. People need to be paying more for food, especially if, you know, people are paid living wages. But I think that it's figuring out what is actually worth spending money on. And I think that's something that Eater is really good at is cutting through the bullshit of saying, you know, in New York, it's pretty easy right now to spend$100 per person at any kind of restaurant.

31:43So where is worth doing that? And I think that's something that I take a lot of pride in and I enjoy doing in my job is, you know, helping people like my friends where it's like if you have a limited amount of money that you want to spend on a meal, these are the places that we think that we can actually stand by. Yeah, I really appreciate that. I think that is a good approach to it. And the living wage part of it reminds me of a story that you recently wrote about restaurants doing worker co-ops in the city, which is something I'm so interested in. I'm wondering if you could tell me just a little bit more about what that was like to report and what the takeaway was.

32:17Yeah, well, I'll just make the distinction that a lot of them are actually not calling themselves co-ops. They're calling themselves worker owned. And through the reporting of the story, I learned that everyone has sort of nuances of how they identify what that means to them. Fascinating. There's a lot of different models at play. Some of the restaurants and bars that I reported on were pre-existing places that had been open for years. And either, you know, the owner was looking to retire or they were like moving upstate and they couldn't be involved in the day to day. and those businesses were transitioning that pre-existing restaurant to the employees.

32:55And then there are new places that are opening that are sort of baking that into the model from the get-go, which is encouraging to see. But within that, there's like several ways where it works, where there's this all-day cafe called Banter in the West Village. There's two locations. And they worked with a group called TeamShares, which basically like buys the business from an owner that is looking to retire. Currently, they own, I think, 90 % of shares in the banter businesses and 10 % is split to employees at no cost to them. So they don't have to put in money to get the ownership. And over time, over the course of many years, the business slowly, slowly, slowly becomes fully worker owned.

33:41So it's not like a magic wand that one day it becomes that way, but it's like the wheels are there to set it forth to be able to do that in the long term. So, yeah, I think it speaks to the idea of we've had so many articles come out about equity in the industry and ways to do that. And, you know, I think there are other ways. Worker owner doesn't have to be the only way. People talk about unions, obviously something incredibly hard to do in the restaurant industry. I think what's clear and encouraging to see is that it's not only good for workers in a lot of cases, but it's also good for business, where there was like a Harvard Business Review report in 2018 that said that worker-owned businesses were more likely to weather economic downturn and 14 % more likely to be profitable.