The Brief

On a Saturday afternoon at Milk Jar Cookies in Mid-Wilshire, Courtney Cowan tells customer after customer the same thing. She’s completely sold out.

“We opened at 10, so they started lining up around 9:15 or 9:30," she says. "We’re certainly serving everything we’ve got, trying to keep up with the beautiful demand."

Customers new and old have flocked to the shop to get one last taste of her delicious, signature dough. They’ve all heard the news: After 10 years, Cowan is reluctantly closing Milk Jar Cookies on Jan. 15.

Milk Jar Cookies has been inundated with orders since they announced their upcoming closure in late December.

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“It’s been bittersweet, because a lot of old faces have come,” she says. “My hope when I opened was to be like the Cheers of cookies, where we know everybody’s name. We’ve done that.”

Milk Jar Cookies is a true labor of love. Back in 2012, Cowan left her job in television to pursue her cookie dream full time. She opened a second Encino location in 2022. But in December, she announced both shops will close due to untenable financial hurdles.

“We’ve been fighting for our life for about six months,” she says through tears. “Unfortunately, it just became a mountain too high for us to climb.”

Cowan’s experience echoes that of many L.A. restaurateurs in 2023. Between steep food and labor costs, lingering pandemic effects, and six months of Hollywood strikes, it's been a devastating year for the food business. A long list of establishments were forced to reduce their operations or close their doors permanently.

Courtney Cowan opened Milk Jar Cookies in 2012, after leaving her job in television to pursue her cookie business dream full time.

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“When we’re busier than ever and we’re still overdue on bills … it just wasn’t enough,” Cowan says. “We’re just being squeezed from all sides.”

Pandemic pressure

Nearly four years ago, the world’s introduction to COVID-19 irreversibly changed the restaurant industry. Without the option of on-site dining, consumers moved toward carry out and delivery — shuttering countless restaurants.

Many of those that stayed afloat did so with the help of government relief programs that have now dried up, like Paycheck Protection Program loans and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund.

Walter Manzke's Petty Cash Taqueria closed on Oct. 20 after 10 years serving tacos and cocktails.

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Those were crucial for seasoned chefs Walter Manzke and Margarita Manzke to keep their signature restaurant, République, open throughout the pandemic.

Unfortunately, the opposite happened at two of their other businesses: Petty Cash Taqueria shut its doors in October, and Sari Sari Store followed in December.

“Financially, they just couldn’t take the hit. There was just not enough volume going in there where it made sense to continue on,” Walter Manzke says.

James Beard award-winning chef Margarita Manzke ran Sari Sari Store at Grand Central Market for nearly seven years until it announced its closure in mid-December.

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Courtesy Manzke Hospitality Group

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Sari Sari Store — which built its home in Grand Central Market — relied on the steady flow of downtown L.A. office workers. Manzke says that’s completely changed with hybrid work. Offices just aren’t as bustling as they were in 2019.

Almost 75% of restaurant traffic today remains “off premises,” according to the National Restaurant Association. Before March 2020, it was closer to 61% — meaning people are more reliant on their takeout options than they were pre-pandemic.

On top of that, Southern California consumers are far less brand loyal compared to previous decades, according to San Diego-based restaurant consultant Ben Brown.

“People are always looking at that shiny next object, and it’s very difficult for a restaurant to keep up with that,” he says.

He also points to a boom in competition right after pandemic closures were lifted, which may have backfired for the industry.

“A lot of groups wanted to bring a new dining experience to the world once the world reopened. It seems that the market wasn’t really there to support all those new concepts.”

Rising costs

Los Angeles is expensive. Running a restaurant here isn’t cheap — or easy. Food service is a notoriously low-margin business within a competitive market, says Brown.

The traditional restaurant model splits things 30/30/30/10: 30% of revenue toward labor, 30% toward food and beverage, 30% toward fixed costs like rent and utilities, and 10% (at best) left over in profit.

Nowadays, rising costs of rent, food, and labor are distorting that breakdown.

“What you’re seeing is restaurants getting squeezed on all levels for that 10% to dissipate, and for a restaurant to be lucky to turn a profit whatsoever,” says Brown.

The rising cost of food is a top concern for operators nationwide. In Los Angeles, 65% of restauranteurs reported that all or most of their vendors increased prices in the past year, according to data by restaurant management system TouchBistro.

Labor is also pricey. California offered one of the highest minimum wages in 2024, at $16 — up from $15.50 last year. Under Assembly Bill 1228, hourly wages at large fast food chains will increase to $20 starting in April. Small business owners hiring from the same pool of workers say they can’t compete.

“Of course, people need to have a living wage. There's no question about it. The problem is: how do you operate a business successfully in order to accommodate the rising cost of labor, when your customer is not willing to pay the price premium that comes with that?”

Silver Lake Spanish restaurant Bar Moruno closed in early November.

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Bar Moruno

In November, chef Chris Feldmeier made the painful decision to close his beloved Bar Moruno, an upscale Spanish restaurant in Silver Lake.

“Even if you’re running the best restaurant … your labor is up to 40%. It’s really hard, there’s not a lot of profit or anything left over,” he says.

As a “kitchen guy,” Feldmeier is all for higher wages. But he says the restaurant industry as a whole hasn't been able to keep up. “We ran a fantastic food cost to try to mitigate some of these hourly wages and stuff, and we still had a tough go at it.”

Restaurateurs like Feldmeier haven't been going down without a fight. Cost-saving measures like mandatory service charges and smaller menus are more common. "Many of these operations have had to fundamentally re-engineer how they conduct business," says Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association.

Menu prices are 10-25% higher than they were in 2022, according to the James Beard Foundation.

Empty shelves within Milk Jar Cookies' industrial refrigerator are common as orders pour in during their final weeks in business.

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Over the years, Cowan raised her cookie prices from $3 to $4, and began selling supplemental items like snackable dough, ice cream, and merchandise. She still couldn’t keep up with steep rent increases and a utility bill now 50% higher each month, while still paying her staff a competitive wage.

“Every single facet of owning a business has become more expensive and more difficult,” she says.

Hollywood strikes

In this company town, small businesses struggled through last year’s dual strikes by writers and actors — even while supporting them.

Cowan offered discounts for both guilds, and passed out cookies on several picket lines. However, she says the stall hit some small business owners even harder than COVID.

“When all of the orders from that whole industry cease and evaporate for almost eight months, that makes a massive impact,” she says.

The California economy lost up to $7 billion from the strikes, according to estimates by Todd Holmes, professor of entertainment industry management at California State University, Northridge. He says restaurants saw a 20-40% loss in revenue.

“Normally, they might have three different deliveries they’re doing in a day to studio sets, and it went from three a day to maybe, one or two a week,” he says.

Milk Jar Cookies was among the places that counted on set deliveries and gifts for agents and managers, in addition to events that were canceled during the strikes. “Our whole town depends on that industry, whether it’s toy stores or doggy daycares or bakeries or restaurants,” says Cowan.

Bar Moruno’s business also suffered from the loss of industry clientele in Silver Lake. Chef Feldmeier likens the entertainment industry to Los Angeles’ “steel mill" — if it shuts down, everything shuts down.

“I think that was a death blow to a lot of restaurants, including mine."

Winter blues

December was especially flooded with closure announcements, from classic gems like Marco’s Italian Restaurant to The Federal Bar in North Hollywood.

That’s probably not a coincidence; winter is a notoriously difficult time for restaurant operators, according to restaurant consultant Brown. 

“It’s colder out, and people dine out less. That said, if a restaurant is going to stay open during the winter, they’re typically going to want to stay open through the holidays.” 

Many places depend on that holiday bump to get them through the rest of winter. January and February is when they’ll assess whether it was enough. That means more closures are likely over the next few months.

For Cowan’s Milk Jar Cookies, even the holiday rush — which they can usually count on — didn’t cut it this year. They didn’t get a single order from an entertainment industry company.  

“It just wasn’t enough,” Cowan says. “With all the other steps we had taken, I was really hopeful that we could get on the road to recovery. It just became very obvious that it was a hill too steep.”

Closing up shop

In its final weeks, the energy inside Milk Jar Cookies resembles its bustling, pre-pandemic self, filled with “beautiful, blissful chaos,” as Cowan puts it.

Orders spit out of a kitchen printer as she greets dedicated customers with teary eyes and hugs, thanking them for years of patronage and heartfelt words. They jot notes in a guest book before saying goodbye.

Between taking orders, Cowan says goodbye to long-time customers and friends who pass through Milk Jar Cookies.

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Sallie Patrick — screenwriter and former co-worker from Cowan’s television days — walks into the shop, two kids in tow. Cowan gets emotional at the sight of her friend, who encouraged her to pursue her cookie dream in the first place.

“I’m so proud of her. It was so cool to show my kids an example of this woman who just decided to start this business, and was so successful at it,” Patrick says.

For Cowan, it’s always been bigger than cookies. The outpouring of community support has reminded her that she’s not alone in that sentiment.

She's not sure what's next, but she's sure how she'll remember Milk Jar Cookies: “On the best of days or the worst of days, you could come in and leave feeling a little better than when you came in.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District is preparing for possible “Super El Niño” storms that could damage schools and lead to closures, the district announced in a media release Tuesday.

District staff are clearing drains, trimming trees and checking roofs, windows and doors. LAUSD is also testing emergency equipment, including pumps and emergency lighting systems, and stocking supplies such as flashlights and drinking water.

“Preparing for severe weather starts well before the first raindrop,” Superintendent Andrés Chait said in a statement. “We can’t control the weather, but we can take steps now to protect our students and employees and help our schools stay ready.”

The district will monitor weather patterns using information from the National Weather Service and local emergency officials, it said.

LAUSD encouraged families to update their contact information to ensure they receive district calls, texts and emails. Families should also monitor weather alerts, follow emergency officials’ instructions, avoid flooded roads and review safe routes to and from school, according to the release.

“Preparing for a storm is a shared effort — from the crews maintaining school buildings to the principals reviewing emergency plans and the families making sure they can receive critical updates,” LAUSD said in the release. “By taking these steps before the rain begins, Los Angeles Unified is working to help students and employees stay safe and keep school communities as prepared as possible for the winter ahead.”

Southern California is likely in for a solid dose of rain this week, just days after heat and Santa Ana winds helped fuel several wildfires across the region.

Forecasters expect the bulk of the rain to roll into the Los Angeles basin Wednesday night and continue into Thursday morning, with a small chance of thunderstorms and hail.

The San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and coastal areas across L.A. and Orange counties could get around an inch over the next few days. Hills and mountains could get up to 3 inches.

“We could see some pretty high rain rates,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford. “It's a good storm for this time of year — it's a little stronger than what we would see normally.”

The possibility of significant rain in the mountains raises concerns about flooding in areas recently burned in wildfires, particularly around the Bryson Fire burn scar near Malibu, which is only a few days old. Burn scars can’t absorb heavy rainfall and are susceptible to landslides.

The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding communities from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday. That means heavy rain there could flood streets, creeks and rivers. The flood watch area includes both the Bryson Fire and Palisades Fire burn scars.

This will also be the first nontropical storm of the season, meaning it’s moving into the region from the north. Most storms that hit Southern California follow a similar path, especially during the winter, unlike the tropical storms that formed off the coast of Mexico and brought muggy weather to the region this summer.

Nontropical storms also bring cold air to the region. On Wednesday and Thursday, forecasters expect highs in the 60s and 70s. High elevations will be even cooler.

The science research institute that would likely receive $4.2 billion in public taxpayer money if voters approve Proposition 38 this November had only three employees as of last month — far fewer than the 51 staffers it planned to have hired by last year.

Public statements and public records CalMatters obtained raise questions about how well prepared the institute is to shepherd so much money if the bond measure passes.

Prop. 38 would allocate up to $8.4 billion in bonds for scientific research on diseases and cures concerning the immune system, with an emphasis on finding treatments for Alzheimer’s, cancer and heart disease. The ballot language stipulates that a single, unnamed research institute would receive half the bond’s money to conduct research and partner with other researchers if it meets highly specific criteria. Bonds are a type of debt that must be repaid.

Previous reporting by CalMatters found only one institute in California currently meets those criteria: the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy. The institute’s principal funder is billionaire Gary K. Michelson, who wrote Prop. 38 and is by far the largest donor to its political campaign.

Backers of the proposition said state bond money is needed to stabilize research funding after President Donald Trump repeatedly attempted to cut existing and future federal science grants.

The measure’s critics say Prop. 38 is well-intentioned but poorly designed because it overlooks the many established public and nonprofit university and hospital research labs in California. They also say California should not subsidize subsets of scientific research and instead should support research more broadly.

CalMatters obtained documents that included the five-year business plan of the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy. The plan was part of the formal affiliation agreement between UCLA and the institute, which the two parties signed in August 2024. Among other details, the agreement requires the institute to pay UCLA 7.5% of the net revenue of any drugs and technologies developed by the institute’s staff. The institute is one of the founding tenants at a UCLA-owned research park in West Los Angeles, where the institute is leasing 235,000 square feet of research space, the institute says.

Far fewer employees than plan called for

Between summer 2024 and summer 2025, the institute committed to hiring “approximately” 51 employees, including six executives, five “world-class” scientists who can lead research labs, and 40 other employees, such as data scientists, lab technicians, biologists and administrative personnel. Between 2025 and 2027, the institute would hire roughly 90 more workers, including 10 research lab leaders, according to the agreement.

But John Mazziotta, a senior UCLA official who also serves as a board member of the immunology institute, last month said the institute has hired just three employees: a chief operating officer, a general counsel, and a scientific advisor, and “they're well into the search” for a director. Mazziotta, the CEO of UCLA Health and vice chancellor for health sciences at UCLA, made his comments during the Sept. 16 UC Regents meeting.

The Yes on Prop. 38 campaign has repeatedly refused to comment on whether the bond was written specifically for the immunology institute. Claudia Briggs, a spokesperson for the campaign, told CalMatters in July that whichever nonprofit receives the $4.2 billion portion of the bond fund should be a sophisticated one that “is prepared to accelerate lifesaving research immediately while maintaining the highest standards of scientific quality, accountability, and stewardship of public funds.”

At a September press conference, a Yes on Prop. 38 spokesperson appeared to confirm CalMatters’ findings that only one institute currently qualifies to be the one to receive half the bond money. “It is very likely that CIII, which is a research institute affiliated with UCLA, will qualify for half of the funds under the current criteria,” said Robin Swanson. CIII is the initialism for the immunology institute.

According to the five-year plan, the institute was supposed to spend $25 million on personnel between 2024-25 and 2025-26 and $45 million total on operating expenses in that time, including maintenance, utilities and rent. It was also supposed to spend an additional $167 million in that time on capital expenses, such as construction and demolition. However, Mazziotta told UC regents that the institute had so far spent a total of $20 million on “operating expenses, hires” and other expenses.

The Yes on 38 campaign refused CalMatters’ request to interview Michelson for this story, as did Michelson himself in a separate email. A spokesperson for the institute, Becky Warren, sent a written statement that didn't answer CalMatters' questions about employing far fewer people than the five-year plan laid out. Instead, she highlighted the promise of the institute and a few of its milestones, including signing the affiliation agreement with UCLA and clearing a state environmental review of its forthcoming research facility.

The institute won’t get state bond money if it isn’t ready to begin work, “plain and simple,” wrote Swanson, the Yes on 38 spokesperson, in an email. She stressed that though the institute very likely qualifies, the ultimate decision to award half the bond funding is up to the California Department of Public Health.

Institute facility will be built by 2028

The UCLA research park that houses the institute isn’t slated to be fully built until at least late 2028, according to the agenda item of the September UC regents meeting. The research park is a former mall UCLA acquired in late 2023 that’s now undergoing major retrofitting.

But the 2024 affiliation agreement between UCLA and the institute anticipated this. The agreement permitted the institute to use UCLA health research space on another campus property on an interim basis. Mazziotta told regents that research is underway there.

Mazziotta also told the regents the institute's construction costs are not fully funded — it still needs roughly $100 million. He said UCLA was in serious talks with a donor to provide about $50 million to the institute.

If Prop. 38 passes, the bond funding would be provided in increments based on how often the institute requests new money that senior state officials approve. If all the funds are depleted, Californians would repay the bond at a rate of $500 million to $600 million annually for about 20 years.

Institute would be exempt from public records act

CalMatters submitted the public records request to UCLA, which must comply with the California Public Records Act. The institute, as a private nonprofit, does not have to comply. And while Prop. 38 would channel billions of dollars in taxpayer money to the institute, the proposition’s language specifically exempts the nonprofit that will receive the $4.2 billion from state public meetings laws, political reform laws and the public records act. The other half of the funds would go to a council that’ll pick projects led by researchers from a limited pool of universities and nonprofits. The council would generally be governed by the state’s political reform act, which prohibits financial self-dealing.

Briggs defended the institute’s exemption in Prop. 38, writing that applying state transparency laws to existing private organizations would “not fit well with how private entities are organized and operate.” Instead, she noted the selected nonprofit institute would be required to publish annual reports on its research progress and financial plans plus commit to annual state audits, among other disclosures written into the ballot measure.

Still unclear to the UC regents is the relationship between UCLA and the institute on matters of public disclosure. Four senior UCLA officials sit on the institute’s board. So is a document held by those UCLA officials public because it’s related to UCLA affairs or private because it’s related to the institute’s affairs? UC’s general counsel couldn’t explain where that dividing line is after a regent member asked him. The regent member, Michael Cohen, said he wants more clarity when the regents meet again in November.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Democratic Party endorsed Prop. 38, as have dozens of patient and research advocacy groups, plus the state GOP. The union of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, whose pay often relies on science research funding, has also endorsed the proposition. The union doesn’t represent faculty.

Money raised in support of Prop. 38 now exceeds $66 million, including at least $61.2 million in contributions from Michelson and his policy institute. Roughly $14 million of that includes loans from Michelson. The no camp has raised about $8,800

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.