The Wall Street Journal today takes note of how expensive it is to staff a restaurant in San Francisco. Certainly having a living wage and health care benefits are important for servers and bussers alike, but according to restaurant consultants Full Plate Consulting, our almost-$10 minimum wage and local ordinances regarding benefits mean that restaurants here spend three times as much per employee as they do in New York or Chicago. Good news for waiters, bad (and probably old) news for chef-owners. In related news, the Chron talks today with the owners of Kasa Indian Eatery about how the credit crunch has affected their new business, and Michael Bauer checks in on the survival rate of his top 10s over the years, which turns out to be an encouraging 62%. more ›

Here's some days-old news for you to chew on, folks. In a move that has some editors at The Chronicle defecating in their hermetically-sealed bubble, both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times plan on printing special San Francisco editions. (Brittle wit and over-labored angles, anyone?) In a strategy to win over fresh readers and advertisers, both publications are looking "to capitalize on the contraction of regional papers." And where better to start than in San Francisco, home to alleged progressiveness and people who don't own televisions. “'It's a highly educated, internationally minded audience, and our research out there shows there’s a market need for a quality news product,'” said Paul Bascobert, chief marketing officer of Dow Jones Consumer Media Group, the unit of the News Corporation that includes The Wall Street Journal, who plan on released SF editions in November or December of this year. Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, said, “I think the San Francisco area is the most obvious market to try this in, because it’s big, it’s sophisticated and it’s getting progressively more poorly served by its papers.” Oh snap. NYT, however, would not comment on plans for a scheduled SF release. more ›