A few D.C. restaurants are feeling the brunt of America’s environment right now – citing a “perfect storm.”
With inflation affecting the cost of food and supplies, and the National Guard’s presence, many say it’s all contributing to the decline of foot traffic in their businesses.
“We noticed significant decrease of traffic on the street because of couple of factors. And I think that since August was very hot and very slow for us,” Rinata Gafarova, the General Manager of Belga Cafe told 7News.
Although the DC Council , phasing out the tipped minimum wage earlier this summer, restaurants say its still hard to stay afloat.
The management of Belga Cafe, which has been on 8th Street for over 20 years, said they’ve watched restaurants come and go over the decades, but they’re now feeling the brunt of slow service.
“We noticed that people are going out less, spending less obviously, there’s less private events, less drinking at the bar and so on,” she added. “There’s less tourists in our opinion.”
Gafarova said returning to work has also been a contributing factor for D.C. residents and low dining traffic.
“Two years ago, we would have a line on Saturday, Sunday brunch, we would do about four to 500 people; now we start with about 100 to 150,” she said.
Most restaurants in D.C. will say August is typically a slow month for traffic. Others said they didn’t bounce back in September.
“It’s been slow in August and then August 10,…whatever date it was, they brought in a whole bunch of military and ICE agents and FBI and everything else, and people are staying in the house and they’re not coming out,” Rach Pike, a co-founder of ‘As You Are’ told 7News. “What would usually be like a 20 to 30% drop off in business has been like a 50 to 60% drop off in business; this is an industry of tight margins, and so we can’t really afford that.”
The owners say they were forced to launch a as a major effort to keep their doors open to the community.
“We are fighting for our lives,” Pike said.
“We’re a queer bar; our customer base is heavily sapphic and trans. We want it that way. It’s intersectional. The whole intent behind creating ‘As You Are’ was to create a space for communities that don’t have spaces or aren’t prioritized in the spaces that they’re welcomed in,” Pike said.
The group is trying to avoid raising prices to stay true to their purpose.
“We have to play this game, but ultimately, if we raise our prices too much, we’re not serving the community we opened for, if we cower to these pressures, then we might as well, like, lock the door, because it’s not why we’re here,” Pike added.
Despite President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department ending, National Guard presence is expected to stay at least until November.
