Scott Barry, SQIRL’s creative director (of 8 years), has just scrubbed @SQIRLLA off of his instagram bio (instagram handle @miesenplace) and started deleting/archiving his recent posts of work for SQIRL.
Interesting to see Gabriela Camara not list Onda on her instagram bio anymore (probably not a reaction to #jamgate but possibly an indicator that Onda will not be opening back up).
David Prado is mentioned in the Google Books preview of the upcoming jam book. Book mentions it’s dedicated to Ryan Erlich (Jessica Koslow’s LA county deputy district attorney husband), Scott Barry (SQIRL creative director). and David Prado. To what extent the book mentions David Prado’s contribution to the company, we will have to see : /
Welcome to FTC! Wish you were joining us under happier circumstances.
Thanks for the update. The publisher Abrams Books deleted their IG post regarding the book yesterday. There is precedent for a publisher to completely scrap a publication (Rodale Books pulled Tales from Foragers Kitchen in 2018 for unsafe recipes) so we’ll see what they do. This is not to say her recipes in the book are bad—Just incredibly Bad optics and Loss of credibility .
A follow up post elaborating on the instagram scrubbing by Scott Barry, SQIRL’s creative director, to distance himself from the restaurant. The last post (pre-scrubbing) was a week ago showing his design work for SQIRL’s recently implemented take away packaging tape. He hasn’t given comment on the allegations so far.
Love your online handle by the way. Perhaps moldyjam would’ve been more fitting. 
Too soon, @moonboy403, too soon… 
BTW, is someone taking their pants off in that IG collage???
Wow this escalated quickly, commisioned illustration and everything. Word is LAist is in conversation with employees for a larger feature and that NYTimes is reaching out too. The title puns will be endless.
I DM’ed Lucas Kwan Peterson of LA Times on IG last night asking if they plan to do any investigative reporting but he hasn’t responded.
But he did make a comment prior to my DM via Twitter:
https://twitter.com/lucaspeterson/status/1282361893940690945
My statement actually had nothing to do with gentrification. I get there will always be two sides of the coin re: gentrification. Only reason I brought up Ktown was because someone said POC don’t displace other POC, which obviously is not true. Ktown is a good example of that.
Back to my point about the article being racist…
“White people are exhausting. That’s what they do, exhaust others, exhaust resources, exhaust themselves in their obsession with dominance. Whiteness is exhaustion.”
This is not ok under any context. And if you don’t find this racist, well then maybe…
[apologies to everyone for derailing this thread. Sqirl sucks, always has. There. ]
I can understand what you are saying and any time that I see language that deals in absolutes I get grossed out in the same way you do.
That said, I am sure that as a fellow POC you understand what racism feels like. That it is not only in literal statements like ones that have been hurled in our direction, but that it exists as something that is unspoken and can be much more pernicious than that.
The country as a whole is coming to realize the millions of ways that the systems and institutions it is built on are designed to benefit white folks. That’s not to say they don’t benefit others too but the statistics bear out that if you are born white in this country you have a leg up over the rest of the population.
How do you talk about a system that statistically benefits white people without talking about race? How do you change that system without addressing the role whiteness has to play?
Articles like the one above are trying to address this. It may not do so in the most delicate way but it’s trying.
What was stated was gentrification of POC community by other POC. What was NOT stated was POC being driven out by other POC. Hence:
or he could be pulling them back up…
oof man yeah this one’s outta my court, matt and farley are busting their buns to get the facts!
Well, as long as that toilet doesn’t contain uncovered jam…
maybe now that meehan’s out, mayyyybe. but most likely not. Putting my bet on NYT maybe tejal or Kim severson
@euno not in your court, but some of the former workers reached out to Eater’s Farley Elliot about workplace issues in the past–he declined to investigate saying it wasn’t enough of a story. This is evidence that speaking out doesn’t always get someone to listen or believe them. But now that it there’s mold! in the jam he finally writes a piece–about the mold and a mention of work place issues at the end.
That’s disappointing, as is Peterson’s response. The erasure of POC from her cookbooks is, IMHO, as much of a problem as is the moldy jam.
can’t speak to our editorial process, not my place to say and i refuse to speculate on it.
speaking entirely from my own editorial experience (which is limited), i will say separately that the presence of mold is a very wide-impact public health concern, and as such it is default newsworthy. if anything i want to applaud that farley and matt are going hard to protect consumers in a responsible, fact-based way.
statement from koslow, no word about the mistreatment of her staff:
"To my customers and my employees, I want to start by saying that I am sorry.
"Sqirl was built with a vision in my mind and the little money I had saved. We started with boxes as tables and crates for chairs. Like any business, as we started to grow, we needed more space, so in 2013, I acquired a secondary kitchen in the space that is now Sqirl Away (directly next door to Sqirl) and it was permitted to operate as a kitchen. I filed paperwork and proactively contacted the Health Department to request an inspection in 2013.
"The truth is that at the time I thought I could update the additional space with the little funds I had saved. But the job ended up being bigger than I could afford and my bank would not give me a loan. Around that time, our secondary kitchen fell off the radar of the Health Department, despite the fact that Sqirl’s main kitchen received regular inspections. Ashamedly, I took advantage of their oversight and did the best we could as we used Sqirl’s main kitchen for all our restaurant orders including jam, and used the secondary kitchen primarily for baking and food prep.
"We were at risk of being shut down, but in our industry, this is common and I was just focused on keeping the lights on and keeping my team employed.
"Until June of this year, our jam was always made in our kitchen at Sqirl after hours, when the restaurant was closed and then cooled and moved to the secondary kitchen for storage. To be clear: No jam was ever made in the secondary kitchen. Since 2018, the Health Department has known about our secondary kitchen and has worked constructively with us as we modernized our secondary kitchen which has now earned an “A” grade from the Health Department. Today, each of the three kitchens I own and operate—Sqirl, the secondary kitchen, and our catering kitchen—have an “A” grade.
"I take the safety and health of my staff and customers seriously. All of the retail jam we have ever sold—which is to say the jam in jars that is bought from us and at stores—is pasteurized and canned with the “hot pack” method that makes the growth of mold basically impossible. That same recipe is used in the restaurant, but because the jam is low in sugar and we don’t use chemicals or preservatives there were occasional instances where mold would develop on the surface.
"When this happened we would remove it. To guide this practice I relied on the research and guidance of health experts and to my knowledge thought it was safe.
"I eat the same jam I serve my customers, family and friends and would never knowingly serve any food that would put their health at risk. I realize that I was wrong and I am sorry.
"We have already thrown out any jam with mold on it and will continue to do so moving forward. Jam with mold will not be permitted in any of our kitchens or our restaurant. We are implementing the same “hot pack” method which is a commercial industry standard that involves pasteurizing all the jam used in the restaurant and storing it in smaller glass containers–just like we always have done with our retail products. We are also submitting samples of our jam to an independent lab, Certified Laboratories, Inc., for testing to ensure its safety and longevity.
"I know I have lost the trust of our loyal customers, partners, and jam subscribers and hope that my sincere regret and these changes demonstrate that I have learned from my mistake and are enough to earn a second chance from them.”
