Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...Gwyneth Paltrow’s newest Goop Kitchen in the Bay Area has drawn criticism for a couple reasons: being a delivery-only operation inside a ghost kitchen, for instance, and calling itself “Berkeley” when it’s clearly in Oakland. But at least it had managed to avoid falling into the imbroglio of Middle-Eastern politics.
No longer. The Arab Resource and Organizing Center, a group with pro-Palestinian leanings in San Francisco, has formally announced that it won’t support “Goop salads or anything else a genocide supporter is peddling here in the Bay Area.”
The center’s issue is not so much in the existence of this Goop Kitchen, which opened in June at 5333 Adeline St. in Oakland’s Longfellow neighborhood, a street art-covered ghost kitchen that somehow shelters more than 30 restaurants under its roof. Goop Kitchen has been around in the Bay Area since at least last year, with other locations in San Francisco, Sunnyvale and San Jose.
The issue is that the lifestyle guru recently starred in a promotional video that appeared in early June for a luxury Israeli development near Gaza, where reportedly more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
When The Mercury News asked the Arab Resource and Organizing Center for its thoughts on the Oscar winner’s latest restaurant expansion, it issued this statement:
“The absurdity of Paltrow promoting her ‘health-centric’ businesses while whitewashing Israel during its ongoing genocide and wholesale denial of basic humanitarian aid to millions of Palestinians is not lost on anyone, particularly those of us who have lost — and continue to lose — loved ones in Gaza. She deserves the outrage for choosing to be a mascot for Israeli apartheid in her ad for luxury apartments built on land stolen from Palestinians, and we’re not interested in Goop salads or anything else a genocide supporter is peddling here in the Bay Area.”
Paltrow has yet to respond to criticism that erupted on social media over her appearance in this advertisement, according to a report this week in Washington Jewish Week. The backlash has become intense enough that she’s been nicknamed “Gwynocide.” But being the target of online outrage is nothing new for the founder of a company, known for its upscale “quiet luxury” beauty, fashion and lifestyle products.
Paltrow’s famous vagina jade eggs were the focus of controversy over what many complained were unsubstantiated, pseudoscientific health claims made about them and other Goop products, as they were promoted in the company’s advice columns and on its e-commerce site. Such claims led to complaints by physicians and consumer groups and a lawsuit by 10 California district attorneys who make up the state’s Food Drug and Medical Device Task Force.
Paltrow and Goop settled the lawsuit in 2018, with then-Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley lauding the task force’s work. She said that “false claims” that promise specific health outcomes “can put the public at risk.” Shortly before settling the case, Paltrow was not-so-positively profiled in the New York Times Magazine, with one famous anecdote describing the way the actor appeared to revel in any controversy. She excitedly quipped to a class at Harvard Business School, “I can monetize those eyeballs.”
It’s hard to quantify what average, on-the-ground people in Oakland think of Paltrow or her new Goop Kitchen. The business isn’t listed on Yelp or Google Maps, so those star ratings used as quality indicators don’t exist, although it does have a high rating on Uber Eats. But on an Oakland subreddit, people have mocked its calling itself “Goop Kitchen Berkeley.” Wrote one user: “I’m pretty positive she purposely didn’t call it ‘Oakland’ because that would scare off her white customers … which is probably all of them.”
On a broader scale, Goop Kitchen has also drawn backlash for recent layoffs reportedly due to its embracing artificial intelligence. Citing reporting from Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me substack, TMZ wrote in May that “the cuts were reportedly ‘justified via pivot to A.I. workflow’… and claimed Gwyneth herself led the meeting announcing the layoffs.”