In the early 1990s, food delivery services on Manhattan’s Upper West Side sparked what New York Times writer Emily M. Bernstein called “the menu wars.” Everyone from dry cleaners to nail salons followed Chinese restaurants’ lucrative lead, placing paper take-out menus inside apartment buildings’ lobbies and mail rooms and under residents’ doors. Angry tenants demanded that businesses stop. Fistfights erupted. Local government got involved. In 1996, Jane H. Lii wrote in The New York Times about the hard-working delivery men at the center of the battle. Here’s an excerpt:
Caught between take-no-prisoners owners who equate menu distribution with profits and angry residents eager to fight back are the deliverymen. They must be aggressive enough to push, lie and sneak their way into as many buildings as possible, lest they be branded incompetent by the supervisors who sometimes surreptitiously trail them in cars, but they don’t want to risk broken noses. If they are assaulted, as has happened frequently, forget about support from the owners. They have been known to tell angry protesters that the men were distributing the menus against their orders.
”At least with this job we can make enough to survive,” said Li W. Xiao. ”You can do twice the work and make half the money in a garment factory.”
Until a year ago, Mr. Li, who was smuggled into America just four years ago, thought he was on top of the world. Inspired by the American entrepreneurial spirit, he and his brother took a gamble and borrowed $20,000 from friends and relatives to open a garment factory in Brooklyn. But they did not realize how fierce the competition would be. After they opened, orders never came in enough volume for them to pay the bills. They shut down the factory six months ago. Now, in addition to his smuggling debt, Mr. Li owes $10,000 more.
from Longreads Blog » Longreads Blog http://blog.longreads.com/2015/08/15/done-new-york-citys-menu-wars/
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