By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—A video of U.S. President Barack Obama eating lunch at Charmington’s Restaurant in Baltimore with several women including the restaurant’s managing partner, Amanda Rothschild, was distributed by the White House during the week leading up to the President’s State of the Union Address on January 20 in which he called for laws increasing minimum wages and extending sick leave to federal workers.
Through email correspondence with Rothschild, I had the opportunity to learn more about her career and philosophy, as well as some of the events leading up to President Obama’s well publicized visit.
While still a high school student, Rothschild began working at a food stand at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, where her manager, Denisa Protani, taught her about “the importance of fair wages, benefits, and a work environment where all roles and employees are treated with equal respect.” Furthermore, recalled Rothschild, Protani “fought successfully for higher wages for her employees and continues to personally make sure all of her employees are given the best opportunities possible.
“Festival work is traditionally held by very transient populations and turnover is exceptionally high in that industry,” Rothschild reflected in an email interview with San Diego Jewish World. Protani’s booth, however, “retains more employees each year than any other food booth at the MDRF and also consistently sees some of the highest revenue, growth and profits compared to other booths at the festival.”
When Rothschild later went to the University of Maryland-Baltimore County where she majored in English and minored in sociology and psychology, it was a natural choice to take a job at the Café at Bluehouse in Harbor East “where customers could not only shop for Hermann Miller chairs and home accessories but could also order a coffee and a bagel and work in the WiFi-fueled café.” She stayed on at the restaurant after graduation in 2007, not being able to find a job in what she thought was her chosen field of editing and publishing. Perhaps that was beshert. When Bluehouse closed down in February of 2009, “my boss asked everybody left at the store if they would like to open up a business together, as a worker cooperative.”
That they did, and Rothschild became the managing partner of a new restaurant named Charmington’s after its location “between the neighborhoods of Charles Village and Remington” in close proximity to Johns Hopkins University. Her management style was influenced by Protani and also by having grown up in Pikesville, a Baltimore suburb with a large Jewish community. “It was always taught to me that Judaism is more than just a religion, and that the mitzvot we each choose to uphold help us not just to achieve personal relationships with God but also to build relationships with the people around us,” Rothschild said.
She continued: “From a very early age, I understood a sense of purpose that included lifting ourselves up together, because the Jewish faith is more centered around everyday life than the mystical or heavenly afterlife. The importance placed on the present led me to focus more on the people that are around me right now, and worry less about some indeterminate future. I think that these tenets were taught to me at an early age and also to others; it’s an ingrained part of growing up in a Jewish community, whether secular, Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox. Another aspect of note is the importance placed on learning and constructive argumentation. I learned to honor education and also to honor the virtues of debate and talking through differences of perspective or opinion. It makes us hardy people and less susceptible, I think, to narrow-mindedness or misconceptions.”
The owners/staff of Charmington’s agreed that the restaurant would reflect their values. Charmington’s website says “Not only do we strive to serve organic and/or local food often as possible, but we try to suit most dietary needs, including healthy and vegetarian options as well. One thing is for sure: all of our milk is certified organic!” The art works on the walls are by local artists and are for sale. “We have free WiFi for all our customers during non-peak hours. To accommodate for all our customers during lunch hours, our WiFi automatically turns off between 11am-2pm, however.”
Furthermore, the restaurant decided it would pay all of its employees well above minimum wage and has extended to them other benefits including sick leave. As word spread that Charmington’s, as a result, had very low turnover, and, in fact, among its staff had a sense of esprit de corps about the food it served, revenues rose. Over the last two years Rothschild has been asked to speak in Baltimore and in nearby Washington, D.C. about the benefits of an enlightened labor policy.
Two years ago, for example, she gave speeches in the Raise Maryland campaign for a higher minimum wage. The gist of her message was that the better paid workers are, the more secure they feel in their personal finances and the more loyal they feel to their employer. This leads to lower turnover and lower costs for recruitment and training.
“With my proximity to Washington, D.C., I’ve had the good fortune and honor of presenting my business as a model of fair labor practices to both state and federal senators, the Secretary of Labor, and a number of other legislators throughout Maryland and DC,” Rothschild wrote to me.
About a year ago, the Department of Labor filmed a video about her in which she further discussed her philosophy.
“In Maryland,” Rothschild wrote, “the Working Matters Coalition has been working tirelessly to pass sick leave legislation through the state senate, and over the last year, the White House administration has become quite involved in the issue as well.”
Earlier this month, Rothschild was contacted by Working Matters “to confirm some details of Charmington’s sick leave and family leave policies, and shortly after contacted by a White House staff member for more details,” Rothschild said. “I knew that the Administration was interested in the topic, and have been consulted a number of times by the White House about our wage and leave policies, so I didn’t think much about the questions.”
Although she didn’t know it at the time, this was the lead-up to the President’s visit. Here is Rothschild’s account of that visit and its immediate aftermath:
“I was later asked to join in a lunch meeting with some unnamed White House officials – it was presented as a pretty casual event and I’ve become pretty familiar with the questions that legislators like to ask, so there was no pressure to prepare anything for the event. The White House had asked the Working Matters coalition to find a business owner in Baltimore who offered sick leave, and didn’t explain any details to them either. Unbeknownst to us all, the White House administration was planning for President Obama to reveal his upcoming plans for enhanced sick leave for federal workers, and a call to action for individual states to enact their own sick leave policies. Backing from small businesses is essential to moving these policies forward, and President Obama understands this very well. Besides having a small group of working women and business owners at his side, it turns out he wanted to hear from us directly too.
The other two women (at the meeting) and I were told we’d be lunching at a nearby restaurant; when we arrived, a coordinator welcomed us and said ‘I’m very sorry, but you won’t be meeting with two White House staff today; you’ll be meeting with the President.’ I soon learned we were meeting with him at my very own establishment. There are no words for my excitement at this news; I had hoped to one day have the opportunity to shake President Obama’s hand and thank him for his efforts on labor issues. To have him visit my shop was a far-off dream, and to actually sit down with him was beyond the farthest reaches of my imagination. He showed up about an hour and a half after we heard the news, and sat with us for a little over an hour before making his public remarks. What was most remarkable about the event was how easy he was to talk to; he made jokes to put us all at ease, asked us earnestly for our opinion, and was entirely humble about his presence the entire time. Several of our customers were present at the event, and after shaking hands with everybody in the shop and saying hello, he looked around the room and said ‘alright everyone, go eat your lunch – just act like I’m not here!’
As for our conversation, it focused mostly on our experiences offering sick leave or needing sick leave in our personal lives. The President wanted to know about the realities of working women’s experience, and what the administration can do to better prepare small businesses to offer sick leave to their employees. He seemed genuinely interested in the details of our lives and what it really takes to run a business. One of the best lessons I’ve learned from my work with politics is that the voices of working people really matter, and that if we find the courage to use those voices, we will be heard. President Obama also shared with us a story about the First Lady’s experience with sick leave, during Obama’s time as a senator. He impressed upon us that sick leave and wage gaps aren’t just a blue collar issue, but a women’s issue. At that point I was able to share with him my own story; I attended the Working Family Summit last June and heard Michelle Obama speak about these difficulties as a working mother. At that time, one of my coworkers was pregnant and nearing her due date. It was the first time we had needed, as a business, to think about family leave, and it was a learning experience for us all. Hearing Michelle share her experience helped me shape the way we as a business handled family leave, and take into account the problems and scenarios I could not imagine on my own. That speech, I think, made a positive difference on my coworker’s experience as a new mother – and I in turn was able to share that bit of gratitude with the President last week. I recognized that day that people in all tiers of society have unique and valuable voices; when given the chance to share their personal stories, we can learn from each other in unexpected and immeasurable ways.
The days following the President’s visit were a bit of a blur. There was a lot of media attention, and attention both from our regulars and new customers. I have lost count of the times I’ve answered questions about the President’s lunch (roast beef sandwich and a turkey avocado wrap), what he smelled like (sorry, I didn’t lean in to sniff), if he tipped well (yes, and he paid for the meal himself), and how he likes his tea (with lemon and honey – very classic). Before the President left, I asked if he would take a group selfie with me and my coworkers and staff; he agreed! Within a couple of hours, the photo had gone viral and before we knew it, there were thousands of people commenting on the photo. Some people were nice and congratulatory; others were not. A lot of the negative comments were about our appearances, or assumptions about our jobs, education, or life goals. Those comments came from people who looked at a single photograph and built a story about us without knowing the background. I’ve tried to ignore the comments themselves, but I think it’s an important reminder that we are constantly writing stories about the people around us, and when we write other people’s stories instead of listening to them, we often get the details wrong.
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Rothschild, of course, is a famous Jewish family name, but if there is any genealogical connection between the family of Amanda Rothschild and the European House of Rothschild, she says it is pretty distant. But she does have relatives about whom she feels justifiable pride as entrepreneurs.
Her parents are Neil and Shelly (Peck) Rothschild. Her father owns a computer technology firm. Her paternal grandparents, Joyce and Herman Rothschild “owned a small craft store across from Lexington Market in Baltimore City when my father was growing up. This grew into a larger company called Craft Word, which is no longer around. My uncle David Rothschild and his wife Jamie have continued on in the tradition with a wholesale craft business called Sunshine Crafts in Tampa, Florida … My father’s grandfather also owned a small business in the early half of the 20th century: a magazine and book stand inside Lexington Market.”
Her mother’s maternal grandfather, Israel Wainglass, an immigrant from Poland, owned Madison Confectionary in Baltimore City. Israel’s brother Sol had two sons: Jack, who owned a clothing store, and Leonard Weinglass, nicknamed “Boogie” for his dancing, who became wealthy as the entrepreneur behind the Merry Go Round clothing stores and Boogie’s Diner chains.
If “Boogie” sounds familiar to you, it’s because Mickey Rourke played a part based on his early life in the 1982 film Diner.
It seems as if films or videos and restaurants all come together in the world of Amanda Rothschild, a Jewish citizen.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. Your comment may be posted in the space provided below or sent to donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
Wonderful and enlightening article.