Weekly Wrap February 24: Immigration Crackdown, Uber Sues DoorDash, and More

The chilly first two months of the year are usually a peak business period for Teddy’s Red Tacos, where diners indulge in the restaurant’s specialty, birria — spicy, warm and deeply tender meat slowly braised in its own fat and served with a pool of flavorful broth.

But this year, it’s different.

The day after President Trump announced a series of immigration actions to fulfill a campaign promise of mass deportations, Teddy Vazquez, owner of Teddy's Red Tacos, noticed a steep drop in sales at all of his 10 locations in Los Angeles and Orange County.

Two weeks later, sales had dropped by half of what he’d normally make in January.

“People are afraid to go out. There’s no movement. There are no people coming in to eat," Vazquez said. "People don’t want to go out because they don’t know what is going to happen with this administration.”

Vazquez said most of his taco shops — from Echo Park to Anaheim — are in neighborhoods with a large proportion of immigrant inhabitants.

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Vazquez isn’t alone.

He’s one of several people in the food-service industry — from restaurateurs to back-of-the-house workers — who are bracing for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Of an estimated 8.3 million workers without legal status who are employed in the U.S., approximately 1 million have restaurant industry jobs, according to the Center for Migration Studies, an international migration think tank in New York.

Several restaurateurs are scrambling to create plans in case ICE descends on their business. Managers are calling staff meetings to inform workers of their constitutional rights. Owners are circulating red cards to their restaurant staff advising them to "not answer any questions” if approached by an immigration agent.

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Restaurants, cafes and bars are “super easy targets” for immigration raids, she said, because there are so many of them. Also, ICE agents can legally enter public areas of a business, such as a dining room or waiting area of a restaurant without explicit permission.

“It provides good optics for the Trump administration,” she added.

ICE agents cannot lawfully enter private areas without permission or a warrant signed by a state or federal judge. These private areas include backrooms, kitchens, offices or other areas of a business not generally open to the public.

Sometimes ICE agents will present administrative warrants with the heading “U.S. Department of Homeland Security” as evidence of their permission to enter private areas, but it doesn’t give agents the right to enter private areas without the consent of an authorized employer.

“A lot of times people don’t know their rights and people just let them in,” Luu-Ng said.

Uber is suing DoorDash, alleging that the rival delivery provider bullies restaurant chains into using its first-party delivery service by threatening to penalize them if they go with Uber.

In the complaint, filed Friday in California Superior Court, Uber alleges that DoorDash uses its large third-party ordering business as a cudgel to get restaurants to sign exclusive or preferred contracts for DoorDash Drive, its white-label delivery service. 

The alleged tactics include threatening restaurants with multimillion-dollar penalties, higher fees or worse placement on the DoorDash marketplace if the restaurant plans to use Uber’s first-party service, Uber Direct.

Uber argued that the practices violate antitrust law and hurt competition.

A DoorDash spokesperson said Uber’s case is meritless. “Their claims are unfounded and based on their inability to offer merchants, consumers, or couriers a quality alternative,” the person said in a statement. 

DoorDash added that restaurants that have stopped using DoorDash Drive later returned after trying other services.

The blockbuster lawsuit pits the country’s two largest third-party delivery players against one another at a time of rapid growth and heated competition in the delivery market. And it centers on a less-discussed part of the companies’ business model: first-party delivery, in which customers order through a restaurant’s own website or app, and Uber or DoorDash drivers handle the delivery.

According to the lawsuit, DoorDash has used coercive tactics to build a dominant position in the first-party delivery market. More than 90 of the 100 largest restaurant chains have an exclusive or preferred contract with DoorDash Drive, including brands like Burger King and Papa Johns.

At the same time, DoorDash handles more than half of all third-party delivery orders in the U.S. through its online marketplace, where consumers can order delivery from a variety of nearby restaurants. Uber argues that DoorDash has used that business as leverage to force restaurants to sign exclusive deals with its first-party service.

What does “date night” mean for you?

Jennifer: We like to go out to restaurants. Since we had kids, date night has changed: It’s less often, but we still try to prioritize going out to restaurants. We support places in the neighborhood, but we also try to mix in new restaurants: James Beard nominees or very buzzy restaurants.

What are you looking for in a restaurant?

Jennifer: It’s not worth it for us just to have the food be good; it has to be the whole experience.

Justin: We don’t always get a chance to talk without a toddler pulling on our shirt and telling us that they need more water, so if a place is too loud or the chairs are weird, it’s not gonna be a place we go back to.

How has your approach to date night changed over time?

Jennifer: We’ve gotten way more discerning about the restaurants we go to. Before kids, we heard about a new place and we would check it out. Now, we do our due diligence in terms of reading what people say before we make the commitment.

Justin: As parents, we don’t have enough bandwidth in terms of date nights to give a lot of chances, unfortunately, so we really hope that on the first go, it blows us out of the water and becomes part of the regular rotation.

Jennifer: Our time and resources just feel more precious.

Frequency: Around once a month

Typical cost: $150 to $200 before tax and tip, plus $100 for childcare

Preparing to hit a new goal of 10,000 restaurants averaging more than $3 million in sales, Wingstop is planning to roll out a new kitchen modernization effort designed to take the fast-casual chicken chain to its next level of growth.

Wingstop had another record year in 2024, with domestic same-store sales up nearly 20% for the year, driven mostly by transactions, which was on top of an 18% increase the previous year. Systemwide sales increased 36.8% to $4.8 billion.

For the Dec. 28-ended fourth quarter, domestic same-store sales increased 10.1%, also mostly driven by transactions. That was a relatively modest increase for the chain, which in the third quarter reported same-store sales up nearly 21%. For the quarter, systemwide sales increased nearly 28% to $1.2 billion.

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Last year, the chain rolled out a new MyWingstop tech stack that has enabled the chain to grow its consumer database from 40 million to 50 million users. Digital orders now represent about 70% of sales, and the chain hopes to become 100% digital.

The tech platform allows for more hyper-personalized engagement with guests, and users visit more frequently, have a higher average check, and their satisfaction rates have increased 6%.

Skipworth said the new kitchen operating platform will be a game changer, promising to speed service and increase worker productivity.

Describing it as co-developed and built specifically for Wingstop, the new kitchen system has been tested in about 30 restaurants and will be rolled out over the next 12 months. Skipworth said it uses artificial intelligence, but he didn’t say how specifically.

It’s not just digitization of the ticket and order workflow, he said, but it uses visual cues and “gamification” to better engage team members. The result is improved speed and “role clarity,” which ultimately improves productivity. There’s also a consumer-facing element, with screens designed to help manage guest expectations.

Skipworth said the kitchen modernization will make Wingstop more of the consideration set.