Portland Burrito Spot Shutters After Cultural Appropriation Outcry

[Steelangel]

Ever heard of the phrase, "theft of intellectual property"?

Ever heard of the concept of "metaphor"?

[Kathandira]

Recipes cannot be copyrighted. Only descriptions of them can be. Nor can they be patented (unless you're using a unique process; e.g., Shredded Wheat was patented (the method for making it)).

Keeping your recipes secret is under Trade Secret law, which is different from copyright, trademark, or patent. As for chefs doing what you describe, I don't know any. I don't anyway. I keep a book of laminated pages any of my peons can use to make a batch of whatever.

So you are saying that there is no law protecting recipes? That it is on the creator to keep it secret themself?

[petej0]

I cant wait until this current SJW crap dies out.

[Bryntrollian]

https://www.thedailymeal.com/news/ea...riation-outcry

The Kooks Burrito pop-up cart in Portland, Oregon, has closed after being accused of stealing techniques from Mexican cooks

Cultural appropriation is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in in the modern food world. When globalism meets long lines of hungry Instagrammers, authenticity becomes harder to grasp and grey areas are further blurred. For instance, is a college campus that serves General Tso’s chicken with the wrong sauce to mostly-white students an example of cultural insensitivity?

Most recently, Kooks Burritos, a pop-up burrito cart in Portland, Oregon, was shuttered — just months after it opened — over public outrage regarding “cultural appropriation of intellectual property."

Kooks Burritos was born out of co-owners Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly’s road trip to Mexico, where they “picked the brains” of every tortilla lady they could find, and brought those recipes back to the States.

“They told us the basic ingredients,” Connelly told Williamette Week in an interview featured in the magazine on May 16. “They wouldn't tell us too much about technique, but we were peeking into the windows of every kitchen, totally fascinated by how easy they made it look. We learned quickly it isn't quite that easy.”

The feature angered a lot of people who claimed that the women had stolen what was not rightfully theirs, from tortilla technique down to the recipes, just to make it big in hipster-ville:

1. White women sees som'n cool.
2. Steals it.
3. Claims altruistic desire to spread said som'n to wider audience. https://t.co/wMZP5wrYRO

— issa husband (@tdouble_u) May 20, 2017

It's only cute, exotic and trendy when white girls do it https://t.co/8g8SLmJIN5

— Hella Bella (@SelaSmella) May 19, 2017

These white cooks bragged about stealing recipes from Mexico to start a business
Kooks Burritos is a hot spot in... https://t.co/Q5la76vJYQ

— Krantzstone (@Krantzstone) May 19, 2017

Exactly one week after the article was published, Kooks had closed in the wake of the sociopolitical firestorm. The once-uber-popular burrito spot has deleted its website and all social media accounts.

Did these two white ladies just steal recipes from Mexican women in a crass attempt to turn a profit, or is "cultural appropriation" of food silly to begin with?

" Cultural Appropriation " is the American way, always has been.

[Kraenen]

Remember, every race has ownership over entire species of food. Think about how dumb that is.

[Deleted]

In light of this controversy, some people have taken to action in the state of Oregon.

White people are nearly 50% more likely than people of color to own a business in the state of Oregon. Ownership builds wealth in ways that employment does not. The racial wealth and small business lending gaps in the US are pronounced, which allows white folks to open new businesses more easily. These white-owned businesses hamper the ability for POC to run successful businesses of their own (cooking their own cuisines) by either consuming market share with their attempt at authenticity or by modifying foods to market to white palates. Their success further perpetuates the problems stated above. It's a cyclical pattern that will require intentional behavior change to break.

If you're interested, they're maintaining a list of white-owned appropriative restaurants in Oregon, along with POC-owned alternatives.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...7I5kDGSt22Ie8/

[Nihilist74]

I don't really care but I am curious. Is there really any legal grounds to shut them down? Are recipes and cooking techniques patentable or subject to copy write? Did they just shut down because all of their customers were outraged? It doesn't seem like there would be any legal grounds to shut them down.

[Video Games]

In light of this controversy, some people have taken to action in the state of Oregon.


If you're interested, they're maintaining a list of white-owned appropriative restaurants in Oregon, along with POC-owned alternatives.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...7I5kDGSt22Ie8/

Don't worry my place isn't on there. Come eat ramen.

Really though, this is asburd and people should eat at the better place no matter who owns it.

[Themius]

They were doing fine until in a cheap bid for authenticity, they claimed that they peeked into the windows of Mexican restaurants to figure out what they were doing after those restaurants refused to share their recipes/techniques/secrets, and then tried to claim the supposedly stolen knowledge as their own. The whole focus on cultural appropriation is nothing more than an attempt to stir people into a frenzy, when the reality is that they marketed themselves as slimy business people and got bit on the ass when people decided that was something they didn't like.

Yeah there's a huge difference between "cultural appropriation" and legit just stealing a restaurants secret by spying on them.

[Flarelaine]

Don't worry my place isn't on there. Come eat ramen.

Really though, this is asburd and people should eat at the better place no matter who owns it.

I would go, really, it's just this really big pond plus a continent between us. At any rate, I agree: people should eat at the better place.

[unbound]

Did these two white ladies just steal recipes from Mexican women in a crass attempt to turn a profit, or is "cultural appropriation" of food silly to begin with?

Or...

- Did the cart shut down because they weren't actually selling much product?
- Did the cart shut down because they weren't making enough money to pay their bills and/or live the life they wanted?
- Did the cart shut down because they couldn't manage the business appropriately?
- etc

It is extremely common in this world for people to leverage some external force as the reason for their problems instead of accepting their own problems. I see this all the time in corporations who try to hide behind their own greed by blaming the marketplace or corporate profits (whichever is the better excuse to give the least raise / bonuses)...all the while the top executives are pulling in huge salaries and/or huge amounts of stock for (many times) only average performance.

[Video Games]

I would go, really, it's just this really big pond plus a continent between us. At any rate, I agree: people should eat at the better place.

We got our first award yesterday from ww ;333
http://www.wweek.com/restaurants/201...ht-from-japan/

[Ozzyorcborne]

So you mean as a brown person i cant use authentic techniques to make chinese stir fry??? Are all SJWs mentally retarded or were they dropped from a 3 story building as infants?

[Revik]

This is a kind of cultural segregation. I guess SJW want to maintain the purity of each individual culture and not allow any dilution or pollution of any culture. Does kind of sound familiar. I wonder where I heard something like that before.

[Themius]

So you mean as a brown person i cant use authentic techniques to make chinese stir fry??? Are all SJWs mentally retarded or were they dropped from a 3 story building as infants?

Forget the buzzwords for a second.

They literally spied on and stole restaurant secrets.

Many restaurants have "secret" techniques and ingredients many people aren't sure of, to go and spy on them and then steal them is egregious and shameful.

[Deleted]

Many restaurants have "secret" techniques and ingredients many people aren't sure of, to go and spy on them and then steal them is egregious and shameful.

The quotations give it away: they're only pretended to be some secret ancestral knowledge. They're not, for the most part. It's just marketing, in the same way that these two girls marketed a story of going through every "tortilla lady" in a quest to uncover the recondite and arcane wisdom of making tortillas. Tortillas, of all things.
So they manufactured the story of Indiana Jones: riders of the flat bread. Big deal.
Consequence being that the pretension of "stealing" it is just that: imaginary.

[Dextroden]

The quotations give it away: they're only pretended to be some secret ancestral knowledge. They're not, for the most part. It's just marketing, in the same way that these two girls marketed a story of going through every "tortilla lady" in a quest to uncover the recondite and arcane wisdom of making a tortilla.
Consequence being that the pretension of "stealing" it is just that: imaginary.

We've already been over this. There is no such thing as hyperbole in advertising. Clearly, these women literally stalked windows to learn everything.

[Deleted]

We've already been over this. There is no such thing as hyperbole in advertising. Clearly, these women literally stalked windows to learn everything.

People barking about this are just LARPing in the universe advertising manufactures.
Must be a fun game.
Joke's on us, though: they're only pretending to be useful idiots.

[lonely zergling]

As if you can steal secret recipes by just looking into a window for a few moments... omg this thread. Faith in humanity lost again.

I guess all the restaurants with show kitchens/open kitchens and all the foodtrucks where you can see how its prepared are an open book for any secret recipe hunterz(tm).

And the secret how to make a burito isnt exactly rocket sience.. especially in the age of internetz.

[Kathandira]

We've already been over this. There is no such thing as hyperbole in advertising. Clearly, these women literally stalked windows to learn everything.

The very worse that can happen legally is a trespassing, and invasion of privacy charge. Beyong that, they can make all the burrito's they please, in which ever fashion they choose. There was no theft.