To say it’s been a tough year for restaurants is putting it hysterically lightly. After a year of transitioning to COVID-19 mandates and all that entailed, to finally seeing a glimmer of hope with the vaccine rollout, only to being walloped by a weather event of historical proportions, which included losing business on both Valentine’s Day and Fat Tuesday, the past year has been a doozy.
Now restauranteurs are trying to focus, once again, on performing CPR on their fragile businesses, with an eye towards things at home and within their communities.
Fork in Road chef and owner Josh Hopkins opened his small restaurant in central Arlington about seven years ago. He worked in big kitchens like Charlie Palmers, Goodfriends and Cock & Bull, but an independent streak drove him to open a place of his own.
During the worst winter storm Dallas has seen in decades, Facebook users found a way to use their love of food to help their neighbors. Since last year, Facebook groups created to promote local restaurants have been doing so with great success. When power outages made food and heat hard to come by, they helped with that too.
Just days after restaurants were ordered to close in March last year, Vu Ly and Tran Loh started the private group Asian Grub in DFDUB (DFW) with a mission to help Asian mom and pop restaurants survive the pandemic. Within six weeks the group had grown to 19,500 members; now it has nearly twice that number.
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