Its layered plaster walls give the impression of an eroding canyon that leads into a modern room punctuated by vertical wood slats, sliding panels and widely spaced tables. In mid-March, though, with about 60 percent of construction done, Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a shelter-in-place order that would prohibit restaurant dining for months in Illinois. When, weeks later, the two partners set a July 28 opening date, it was a big roll of the dice.

On June 11, Ever emailed its mailing list to announce that two months’ worth of reservations were now on sale via the restaurant-reservation platform Tock. Chicago restaurants had been serving outdoor meals for just eight days, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Governor Pritzker had yet to announce a date when indoor dining could start. There was also no guarantee that a Covid-19 resurgence wouldn’t prompt another shutdown.

When the city did begin to allow indoor service, on June 26, it capped capacity at 25 percent. Ever cut its seating plan to 40 guests a night, not using all of the dining room’s 14 tables at once, but still: Would enough people feel comfortable spending $285 or more for a 10-course menu that would keep them indoors for about two hours? Is this kind of luxury dining still appealing and viable in the pandemic?

Ever might be the test case. Alinea, currently the city’s only restaurant with three Michelin stars, has been serving takeout comfort food since March, and has made no plans to reopen its Lincoln Park dining room. (AIR: Alinea in Residence, an outdoor pop-up on a West Loop rooftop, opened July 1, though it closed for three days after an employee, who had not worked in several days, reported testing positive for the coronavirus. AIR reopened after co-workers tested negative.)

Nick Kokonas, a co-owner of Alinea and the chief executive of Tock, said the Ever partners “probably don’t have much of a choice as to whether or not to open.”

“They started raising money and building this out before the crisis hit,” he said. “At some point if they don’t attempt to open, the financial obligations will be weighty enough that they cannot open.” (Mr. Muser agreed with that assessment.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/dining/ever-chicago-restaurant-coronavirus.html

“I’m not ready to sit in a nail salon, even with this protective gear. I’d rather just be in my parents’ backyard doing my nails and toes,” she said. “I can control the environment.”

As the country undergoes a Sisyphean-seeming reopening with infection rates rising in many regions, many Americans are still wary of venturing out. To accommodate skittish clients who have neglected their basic grooming for months, a cadre of service providers — personal trainers, hair stylists, tattoo artists, pet groomers and spiritual advisers — have been making house calls, or plan to start doing so soon. They have been fielding calls from clients eager to receive services in their living rooms, backyards and balconies.

For providers who always had an in-home component to their business, this period of seclusion has proved to be a boon, giving them an edge at an anxious time. They’ve attracted new clients who never considered house calls before, but have since discovered that they like private pampering.

“We believe this is a long term shift in consumer behavior,” said Amy Shecter, the chief executive of Glamsquad, an in-home beauty company headquartered in New York City that offers services including blowouts, manicures, pedicures and makeup application.

Glamsquad has resumed its usual services and introduced haircuts in New York, Florida, Boston and Washington, D.C. In Los Angeles, the company moved services outdoors after the state rolled back its reopening plans. (Its San Francisco market remains closed.) Workers undergo safety training to reduce the chance of coronavirus transmission and wear personal protective gear during visits.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/style/coronavirus-manicures-haircuts-tattoos-dog-groomer-at-home.html

Mallory Cayon, who helped create the cult-favorite brunch recipes at Sunday in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, has remained head pastry chef as the Sunday Hospitality group grew to four restaurants: two in Brooklyn and two in Los Angeles. She said that for the first time since she entered the profession, she is in a workplace where the pastry operation (mostly staffed by women) is on equal footing with the “savory” side of the kitchen (mostly men).

“It starts in culinary school, because you look around and all the bakers are girls,” said Ms. Cayon, 30, who said she was surprised at the time that gender imbalance in the field remained so persistent, long after most workplaces had become more inclusive. “The men who do it are deemed less masculine.”

Dianna Daohueng, the culinary director at Black Seed Bagels in New York City, said that working your way up in the restaurant business as a woman, as a person of color or as a first-generation American — or, in her case, all three — means confronting prejudice every day.

“Just being a minority in the kitchen and in life turns you into a natural activist,” said Ms. Daohueng, 38, whose parents immigrated from Thailand before she was born.

Ms. Day, of Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, took a different path to protest baking. She was raised in Los Angeles, but spent summers in Tuscaloosa, Ala., learning to bake from her grandmother. “That was my culinary school,” she said.

She also came to see how baking skills have defined Black women’s lives, especially in the South. “My great-grandmother was both enslaved and a pastry cook who was famous for her biscuits and cakes,” she said. “There is power in that.” (Ms. Day, 59, has just completed a cookbook based on her Southern lineage, to be published by Artisan next year.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/dining/bake-sale-activism-racism.html

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated July 22, 2020

• Why do masks work?

  • The coronavirus clings to wetness and enters and exits the body through any wet tissue (your mouth, your eyes, the inside of your nose). That’s why people are wearing masks and eyeshields: they’re like an umbrella for your body: They keep your droplets in and other people’s droplets out. But masks only work if you are wearing them properly. The mask should cover your face from the bridge of your nose to under your chin, and should stretch almost to your ears. Be sure there are no gaps — that sort of defeats the purpose, no?

• Is the coronavirus airborne?

  • The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.

• What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

  • Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

• What’s the best material for a mask?

  • Scientists around the country have tried to identify everyday materials that do a good job of filtering microscopic particles. In recent tests, HEPA furnace filters scored high, as did vacuum cleaner bags, fabric similar to flannel pajamas and those of 600-count pillowcases. Other materials tested included layered coffee filters and scarves and bandannas. These scored lower, but still captured a small percentage of particles.

• Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?

  • So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/dining/danny-meyer-no-tips.html

Safe Eats was started by Carlos Suarez, who owns a group of Greenwich Village restaurants, including Rosemary’s and Claudette; and Yann de Rochefort, the founder of the Boqueria chain in New York and other cities. Also among the founders and participants in management is Zero Hour Health, a company that provides health and health-crisis management to restaurants, partly through its app, Zedic.

The organizers of Safe Eats said that they reached out to the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio for input, but that the office showed no interest in getting involved. The health department has its own list of guidelines that restaurants can consult. “As the city continues to reopen, we’re committed to helping our restaurants safely adapt to the changing circumstances,” said Avery Cohen, a spokeswoman for Mr. de Blasio.

Roslyn Stone, the chief operating officer of Zero Hour Health, said the rules are changing all the time. “No two days are the same,” she said. “How can you keep up with it?”

Mr. Suarez said that he and Mr. de Rochefort were “spending so much time trying to stay on top of all the latest Covid guidelines,” citing more than a dozen agencies they had to monitor. “What if there was a single source for safety guidelines that we could rely on? How great would that be for us.”

In addition to providing the guidelines culled from government agencies that member restaurants must agree to follow, Safe Eats also relies on the expertise of Zero Hour Health and other restaurant consultants.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/dining/safe-eats-sticker-restaurants-coronavirus.html

In truth, gleaning gathers a very small fraction of what is surely billions of pounds of produce, most of which is simply worked back into the soil. It also yields far less than other surplus-food programs, where donations from supermarkets and distribution hubs are measured not by the garbage bag, but the tractor-trailer.

But gleaning is still important, Mr. Peterson said. “What gleaners do really well is work within the spaces missed by more traditional food recovery and hunger programs,” he said.

They can pick a farm’s fragile greens on 24 hours’ notice, set out a free box of tomatoes still warm from the sun at a rural library, or deliver pints of delicate, just-picked raspberries to a nearby food pantry lacking a refrigerator, on the same day it gives out food.

That’s why Harvest Against Hunger, in Seattle, eventually added gleaning to its larger food-rescue programs, said David Bobanick, 54, its executive director. Today, the 38-year-old organization also runs a national gleaning incubator program through AmeriCorps VISTA that aims to create operations that are tailored to meet the specific needs of their region.

This year, that should also mean financial support for farms that donate the food, most of which aren’t able to participate in the Farmers to Families Food Box program, Mr. Bobanick said. His organization is one of several that have recently won funding to broker arrangements between hunger relief organizations and farmers who can’t sell their crops.

This is also a goal of the sales platform Forager, which will use the rest of its ReFED grant to introduce a new tool that will connect gleaning groups to agencies with funds to buy food. Most of the money will go to the farmer, but a portion will also go to the gleaning group to cover the costs of distribution, said Erica Merritt, 29, who is coordinating the effort.

The idea arose when the obvious became clear, she said: “Gleaners are literally in this unique position between the farms that can’t sell their food, and the people that are hungry.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/dining/gleaners-farm-food-waste.html

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated July 15, 2020

• Is the coronavirus airborne?

  • The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.

• What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

  • Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

• What’s the best material for a mask?

  • Scientists around the country have tried to identify everyday materials that do a good job of filtering microscopic particles. In recent tests, HEPA furnace filters scored high, as did vacuum cleaner bags, fabric similar to flannel pajamas and those of 600-count pillowcases. Other materials tested included layered coffee filters and scarves and bandannas. These scored lower, but still captured a small percentage of particles.

• Is it harder to exercise while wearing a mask?

  • A commentary published this month on the website of the British Journal of Sports Medicine points out that covering your face during exercise “comes with issues of potential breathing restriction and discomfort” and requires “balancing benefits versus possible adverse events.” Masks do alter exercise, says Cedric X. Bryant, the president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit organization that funds exercise research and certifies fitness professionals. “In my personal experience,” he says, “heart rates are higher at the same relative intensity when you wear a mask.” Some people also could experience lightheadedness during familiar workouts while masked, says Len Kravitz, a professor of exercise science at the University of New Mexico.

• I’ve heard about a treatment called dexamethasone. Does it work?

  • The steroid, dexamethasone, is the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in severely ill patients, according to scientists in Britain. The drug appears to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, protecting the tissues. In the study, dexamethasone reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third, and deaths of patients on oxygen by one-fifth.

• What is pandemic paid leave?

  • The coronavirus emergency relief package gives many American workers paid leave if they need to take time off because of the virus. It gives qualified workers two weeks of paid sick leave if they are ill, quarantined or seeking diagnosis or preventive care for coronavirus, or if they are caring for sick family members. It gives 12 weeks of paid leave to people caring for children whose schools are closed or whose child care provider is unavailable because of the coronavirus. It is the first time the United States has had widespread federally mandated paid leave, and includes people who don’t typically get such benefits, like part-time and gig economy workers. But the measure excludes at least half of private-sector workers, including those at the country’s largest employers, and gives small employers significant leeway to deny leave.

• Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?

  • So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

• What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

  • Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

• How does blood type influence coronavirus?

  • A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.

• How can I protect myself while flying?

  • If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

• What should I do if I feel sick?

  • If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/dining/restaurants-nyc-dot-outdoor-dining.html

Quora said 60 percent of its workers expressed a preference for remote work, in line with national surveys. In a Morning Consult survey in late May on behalf of Prudential, 54 percent said they wanted to work remotely. In a warning sign for managers, the same percentage of remote workers said they felt less connected to their company.

One very public setback for remote work was at Best Buy, the Minneapolis-based electronics retailer. The original program, which drew national attention, began in 2004. It aimed to judge employees by what they accomplished, not the hours a project took or the location where it was done.

Best Buy killed the program in 2013, saying it gave the employees too much freedom. “Anyone who has led a team knows that delegation is not always the most effective leadership style,” the chief executive, Hubert Joly, said at the time.

Jody Thompson, a co-founder of the program who left Best Buy in 2007 to become a consultant, said the company was doing poorly and panicked. “It went back to a philosophy of ‘If I can see people, that means they must be working,’” she said.

The coronavirus shutdown, which means 95 percent of Best Buy’s corporate campus workers are currently remote, might now be prompting another shift in company philosophy. “We expect to continue on a permanent basis some form of flexible work options,” a spokeswoman said.

Flexible work gives employees more freedom with their schedules but does not fundamentally change how they are managed, which was Ms. Thompson’s goal. “This is a moment when working can change for the better,” she said. “We need to create a different kind of work culture, where everyone is 100 percent accountable and 100 percent autonomous. Just manage the work, not the people.”

But it is also a moment, she acknowledged, when working can change for the worse.

“It’s a crazy time,” Ms. Thompson said. “When you’re a manager, there is a temptation to manage someone harder if you can’t see them. There’s an increase in managers looking at spyware.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/technology/working-from-home-failure.html

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated July 15, 2020

• Is the coronavirus airborne?

  • The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.

• What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

  • Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

• What’s the best material for a mask?

  • Scientists around the country have tried to identify everyday materials that do a good job of filtering microscopic particles. In recent tests, HEPA furnace filters scored high, as did vacuum cleaner bags, fabric similar to flannel pajamas and those of 600-count pillowcases. Other materials tested included layered coffee filters and scarves and bandannas. These scored lower, but still captured a small percentage of particles.

• Is it harder to exercise while wearing a mask?

  • A commentary published this month on the website of the British Journal of Sports Medicine points out that covering your face during exercise “comes with issues of potential breathing restriction and discomfort” and requires “balancing benefits versus possible adverse events.” Masks do alter exercise, says Cedric X. Bryant, the president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit organization that funds exercise research and certifies fitness professionals. “In my personal experience,” he says, “heart rates are higher at the same relative intensity when you wear a mask.” Some people also could experience lightheadedness during familiar workouts while masked, says Len Kravitz, a professor of exercise science at the University of New Mexico.

• I’ve heard about a treatment called dexamethasone. Does it work?

  • The steroid, dexamethasone, is the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in severely ill patients, according to scientists in Britain. The drug appears to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, protecting the tissues. In the study, dexamethasone reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third, and deaths of patients on oxygen by one-fifth.

• What is pandemic paid leave?

  • The coronavirus emergency relief package gives many American workers paid leave if they need to take time off because of the virus. It gives qualified workers two weeks of paid sick leave if they are ill, quarantined or seeking diagnosis or preventive care for coronavirus, or if they are caring for sick family members. It gives 12 weeks of paid leave to people caring for children whose schools are closed or whose child care provider is unavailable because of the coronavirus. It is the first time the United States has had widespread federally mandated paid leave, and includes people who don’t typically get such benefits, like part-time and gig economy workers. But the measure excludes at least half of private-sector workers, including those at the country’s largest employers, and gives small employers significant leeway to deny leave.

• Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?

  • So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

• What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

  • Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

• How does blood type influence coronavirus?

  • A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.

• How can I protect myself while flying?

  • If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

• What should I do if I feel sick?

  • If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/nyregion/nyc-reopening-sunset-park.html

Like Levain Bakery, and its early e-commerce focus, Singapore-based Aqua Expeditions’ initial bet on technology helped steady operations during both the Great Recession and today. Rather than build costly reservations and management platforms when it launched in 2008, “we outsourced most of these technology needs to cloud-based services,” said Francesco Galli Zugaro, founder and chief executive of Aqua, which operates small-scale luxury cruises in Peru, Cambodia and Indonesia.

Opting for cloud services was an unusual move back then. “Smaller-sized companies typically created their own systems, but we realized we could benefit from all that technological R.D. as it came online,” Mr. Galli Zugaro said. “Today, cloud services are allowing our entire business to run remotely with automated mechanisms in place to clearly measure company performance and employee productivity.”

Of course, for most small businesses, managing — and, particularly, cutting — costs ultimately proves to be the most effective recession survival strategies. Leon Avigad, founder and co-owner of the Israeli boutique hotel chain Brown Hotels Ltd., said that when his firm started in 2008, costly staffing setups like numerous assistants and unnecessary deputies were simply not an option.

“We’ve never had ‘No. 2s’ or multiple managers at the company,” Mr. Avigad said. “Israel is the kind of place where every two years there’s a political crisis or mini-war, so beyond recessions or corona, businesses here must retain the ability to shrink or grow rapidly.”

Still, Mr. Avigad added that this did not necessarily mean simply hiring and firing at will. “Costs must be contained as cleverly as possible; for us this can mean combining jobs — perhaps having the front-desk manager also become a reservations manager.”

For Vivek Mathur, creative director and president of Indika Entertainment Advertising in Manhattan, cost management meant “replacing a culture of excess with a culture of thrift,” during the last downturn — a move which is helping to keep his company lean today.

Indika closed its Los Angeles office in late 2008, “because it involved not just the office itself, but also the cost of the travel, the cars, the digital connections between the offices in a pre-broadband world,” said Mr. Mathur, whose firm develops advertising and strategic marketing campaigns for movie studios, television channels and digital platforms. Indika’s New York office was also downsized, and unnecessary recurring expenses — multiple phone lines, special stationery, water delivery services — were eliminated.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/business/coronavirus-great-recession-2008-lessons.html