What It’s Like to Be a Restaurateur in Texas Right Now

It’s been awfully difficult to own a restaurant during the pandemic. Couple that with a state-wide power outage that left 4 million people in Texas without power last week and there you have another particularly complicated and heartbreaking scenario playing out right before our eyes.

According to the WSJ, Texas shifted 20 years ago from using regulated utilities to deregulated—meaning it required nearly 60% of Texans to buy their electricity from one of the few retail power companies. That’s all well and good, if “healthy competition” permitted retail companies to say…have a heart.

During the harsh winter storm in Texas last week, these retail power companies surged their prices—capitalizing on a crisis—which further magnified the mammoth gaps in our socioeconomic ecosystem. While the effects of climate change and infrastructure issues seem to be the cause of the power shortage and fallout, we were curious to know how women restauranteurs—already hit hard by the pandemic—were faring throughout another unprecedented crisis.

We spoke to some of Austin’s hardworking women in the restaurant biz: Erin Wade of Vinaigrette, Naijean Bernard of Jeany’s Ginger Elixir, and Heidi Garbo of Garbo’s to unpack their experiences and understand their perspective on the political structure that allowed for this crisis to unfold so chaotically.

Erin Wade of Vinaigrette

What's your experience been like so far? How are you feeling?

Because I have restaurants in New Mexico and Texas, I wasn’t in Austin when the storm hit. But I can tell you what it was like for my managers. We closed, like other restaurants did in town, first because there were no customers, then because there was no power. Then when we planned to reopen, the water trickled to nothing, soo we were put on a boil water notice.  

One of my managers slept at the restaurant, because for a couple days the restaurant power remained on but her power and heat at home were off. Yesterday, we donated 100 salads and soups to families still in need in Central Texas, where people are still struggling because the grocery stores are empty. My fiance’s house in South Austin lost power and water, his pipes froze and the pipes in his water heater burst. 

Last week, one of my former servers sent me video from the HEB grocery store around the corner from Vinaigrette. There was NOTHING on the shelves or in the freezers or reefers. It’s hard to believe this is America.

How has the power grid failure affected your business?

We lost about a week of revenue when sales were already less than half of what they were last year. So I’m feeling exasperated, but also sort of numb, incredulous and exhausted.

Covid has normalized businesses closing or operating with weird hours. It used to be that we would NEVER close our doors outside of major holidays. Closing just didn’t happen in restaurants; it was a point of pride. So much of our business is built on momentum, so a break in dependable hours would confuse and potentially lose us customers. Also, our lean margins meant that a single lost day of revenue was disastrous. Covid has changed all that as we’ve all had to pivot and respond to changing regulations. Also we already have disrupted revenues, so it’s harder to stay open through crises when we are already in one.

So much of this power crisis has to do with failed leadership--from federal to local. Beyond the extreme conditions of climate change affecting the grids not being able to handle the current magnitude & frequency of storms, high demand caused power prices to go up--which is further exhibiting the large gaps in our social and economic ecosystem and how fucked up everything is. Do you think we should all be demanding more from our country and state leaders? Or what are your thoughts as you process this outage in conjunction with the pandemic?

We have been underestimating the immediate economic costs of global warming. Extreme weather events have made running a consumer-facing business more difficult, risky and expensive. Weather and season affect my business’s sales more than any other variable and dramatic changes or unexpected bad weather is more deleterious than plain old seasonal bad weather. Awareness of seasons and seasonal fluctuation is built into our economy, into the financial quarters, into how we budget and plan.

This is actually the second boil water notice that I’ve experienced in Austin—technology juggernaut and city of SXSW—since we opened in 2016.  The first one was the result of the reservoir flooding from record rainfall and the city having to run excess water that wasn’t adequately filtered into the lines. It is practically impossible to run a restaurant without basic, functioning utilities. The logistics of boiling water in commercial food service is nightmarish.

Unless leaders make fundamental changes, what you will see in our industry is much more conservative business practices. The risk of a major disruption has gone way up. Businesses will hold onto more cash and invest less in growth, because we need a bigger cash buffer to literally “weather the storm.” Simply put, ignoring global warming is bad for business. I wish supposedly pro-business Texas lawmakers could understand that.

Also, it feels like small businesses who are integral to the middle class of our country have borne most of the costs of keeping our communities safe.  It’s not clear that our industry will recover, and our communities and food culture will be less healthy as a result. Restaurants are excellent at distributing money into local communities and the middle class; for every dollar we sell, about 30 cents goes to staff and then another 30-40 cents goes to vendors, many of them local.  Compare this to the wealthiest companies in our country right now, who have been enriched by the pandemic.  Most technology companies operate at hyper-scale, with fixed costs approaching zero and virtually no labor cost. 

If we want to fix what is really going on in our increasingly unequal economy, we need solutions that are as unprecedented as the problems we face.

Naijean Bernard of Jeany’s Ginger Elixir

What's your experience been like so far? How are you feeling?

My 9-year-old son woke me up on the morning of February 15th and told me that we did not have any electricity. I checked my phone and saw it wasn’t charging. Soon after, I realized that we had no water. I immediately went into action and turned on the gas fireplace, which we rarely use here in Central Texas. I thought I opened up the chimney flue correctly, but it turns out, I did not. A few hours later, the carbon monoxide indicators started going off. I quickly switched the chimney flue in the other direction and opened up the patio door. Although it was below freezing outside, I had no other choice. As a single mother, I felt immense guilt to see that I could have caused my child harm due to the potential carbon monoxide poisoning. I sent my son to stay with his cousins, and I stayed at home and bundled up, trying to keep the house warm enough to prevent the pipes from bursting. Thanks to our gas fireplace, our home stayed around 55 degrees in our living room. Other places in our home dropped to 35 degrees. I did receive notices from our gas provider, Atmos Energy, to reduce natural gas consumption, but I felt that I was left with no choice. I kept the gas fireplace going until we received power back.

I received no warning that the power/water were going to go out, other than a text at 2 am from Oncor (our local energy provider) stating that we should prepare for a rolling blackout. Like most people, I was asleep at this time. This blackout did not roll. We received power back around 8 pm on Wednesday, February 17. Our water was turned back on around 2 pm on Thursday, February 18. A neighbor was kind enough to turn off our main water valve, which I had no idea how to do. This likely prevented our pipes from bursting. Overall, we were fortunate.

How has the power grid failure affected your business?

Jeany's Ginger Elixir is my sole source of income for myself and my son. I primarily sell at three farmers markets in Austin TX, online and wholesale. I did not sell the weekend before the power failure due to the cold temperatures. I did have a few wholesale orders from two local hotels in Austin and a few online orders before the snowstorm. However, the main source of my income comes from the markets. I saved up money so I wasn't overly concerned about the loss of income. Then the snowstorm happened and my water source was wiped out. I had filled up three 5 gallons jugs of water a few weeks prior to the snowstorm. However, I had to make a choice whether to use the purified water towards washing the fruits/vegetables or using them in my juice blends. According to our local health district, we can boil water and then use it, but I didn't feel right about that either, especially seeing people posting on social media about how murky the water looked after boiling it. My commercial kitchen sustained a water leak due to a pipe bursting and the overhead sprinklers deploying. Luckily, my commercial juicer was not damaged or any of my other equipment. My concern was my staff, four ladies who help me in the commercial kitchen and selling at the markets. They were also without power and water, so I had no staff to assist me in the kitchen and had to do all the prep alone. A normal 3-hour job stretched into 8 hours easily.

So much of this power crisis has to do with failed leadership--from federal to local. Beyond the extreme conditions of climate change affecting the grids not being able to handle the current magnitude & frequency of storms, high demand caused power prices to go up--which is further exhibiting the large gaps in our social and economic ecosystem and how fucked up everything is. Do you think we should all be demanding more from our country and state leaders? Or what are your thoughts as you process this outage in conjunction with the pandemic?

Yes, we do need to hold our state and federal leaders accountable for this pandemic and statewide power failure in Texas. Sources show that Texas state officials knew that our power grid would not be able to sustain an event like this. Officials at ERCOT had to make a split-second decision to start the rolling blackouts, otherwise, we might have been without power for weeks or months. It is unacceptable. I do vote in every election and I intend to keep a short list of those official—including Ted Cruz—who abandoned our community to take shelter in warmth while we were left to fend for ourselves. I intend to do my part to mobilize communities of color to vote out officials who do not serve our best interests.

Heidi Garbo of Garbo’s

What's your experience been like so far? How are you feeling?

We were very lucky throughout the entire storm. Our restaurant didn’t lose any power; we think because we are near a hospital and a fire station is within our shopping complex. We feel overwhelmed by the high demand for support and we are doing everything we can to help people in need of food. We cannot thank the individuals, non-profits and businesses who stepped up along side us to offer up over 1200+ free meals to the community and breakneck paces. We only wish we could do more.

How has the power grid failure affected your business?

Being closed for a week—especially during Valentine’s weekend—was a hit to our bottom line. It hit everyone’s bottom line and our employees were out of work for a week. We were able to help pay their lost wages with individual contributions in the end. We feel super lucky. So many other businesses were hit harder, especially with water damage and loss of product.

So much of this power crisis has to do with failed leadership--from federal to local. Beyond the extreme conditions of climate change affecting the grids not being able to handle the current magnitude & frequency of storms, high demand caused power prices to go up--which is further exhibiting the large gaps in our social and economic ecosystem and how fucked up everything is. Do you think we should all be demanding more from our country and state leaders? Or what are your thoughts as you process this outage in conjunction with the pandemic?

We focus on serving our community and providing great food. That fills our mental plate all-day, everyday. We think that everything needs to be done to ensure this doesn’t happen again, but we aren’t the experts on who was at fault or what could/should have been.