Richmond’s water crisis caused days of distress for thousands of residents. The proprietors and staff at local food businesses were no exception.

Starting Monday, Jan. 6, the City of Richmond (along with parts of Henrico, Hanover, Goochland and Chesterfield) were put under a boil water advisory (BWA) after a winter storm-related power outage led to a shutdown of the city’s water system, which includes plants that are 50 and 100 years old.

On Thursday, Jan.9, Mayor Danny Avula disclosed new information that an automatic power switch failed when the Richmond water treatment plant lost power Monday morning, and backup batteries ran out of charge within an hour. Affected residents either had non-potable water flowing through their pipes, or no water at all.

For food businesses—from traditional sit-down restaurants to bars, coffee shops, bakeries and ice cream parlors—having access to water is essential. These businesses must have clean water on hand for customers and employees to drink and use the restroom, as well as for proper sanitation, cleaning and preparing food and making ice for cocktails.

Without potable water, nearly all the city’s food businesses had no choice but to close throughout the week. The BWA was not lifted until Saturday, Jan.11, after multiple earlier predictions from the city.

“I was supposed to have a wine order dropped off this week and I had to cancel it, then I had to reach out to our food distributors and ask if they could hold off on charging us until next week because I don’t have any money to pay them with,” says Yael Cantor, owner of Susie’s, which only opened this past fall. “I had to tell the whole staff that no one can work this week. It’s been insanely stressful.”

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) held a meeting Thursday, Jan.9 specifically for Richmond’s food businesses in which they laid out guidelines for how these establishments could resume operations under the BWA. Outlining what to do both during and immediately after the advisory, these guidelines include using an alternative water source and providing hand sanitizer in bathrooms.

Now that the BWA has been lifted, these businesses will need to flush, clean, and sanitize equipment and run water through their pipes.

Several of the businesses Style Weekly spoke to were not aware of the Thursday meeting. Many owners shared they first learned that a water shutdown was coming via text threads or on Reddit and hadn’t received any direct guidance on how to operate outside of the VDH’s Thursday guidelines.

Others said they were not aware that workers impacted by the closures may be eligible to file a benefits claim through the Virginia Employment Commission (VEC).

Brogan Rogers, general manager of North End Juice Co., says she first learned about the possibility through a VEC statement published by VPM on Thursday afternoon.

Financial impact on restaurants

Nearly a full week of no business amounts to a loss of tens of thousands of dollars for Richmond’s food industry—not only from vanished potential sales, but also from past-its-prime product that will now end up in the trash, replacement product that must be ordered, rental bills that still need to be paid and the previous weeks’ wages that have to be distributed despite no incoming earnings to provide the typical balance.

Meanwhile, staff have lost the week’s wages completely.

“It takes our team out of work for an entire week, which is tough on them,” says Leah Branch, executive chef at The Roosevelt. “We’ve been able to provide people who wanted to work with some project hours, but after coming off such a busy holiday season, grinding down to zero has been a little jarring for everybody.”

For the food scene, the experience has been eerily reminiscent of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It came to light a lot during the pandemic and since then—you see how quickly a business that everyone thinks is doing really well can suddenly announce that they’re shutting down; this kind of thing is something that can cause that,” explains Brave Captain, Cobra Cabana, and Hot for Pizza co-owner Herbie Abernethy.

“We shut down the inside [of our restaurants] during COVID, but we were still able to provide a service,” says Abernethy. “With the water being potentially contaminated, we aren’t able to provide a service—unless we buy a bunch of extra product.”

Richmond officials have yet to make any statement regarding support that will specifically be available to businesses to supplement lost earnings.

“It’s frustrating to not know what kind of support we’re going to get on the other side of this,” says Rogers. “I’m not able to tell my employees when they’re going to be able to work again, and we’re learning about emergency financial support for food service workers on Instagram.”

Style Weekly reached out to the city’s Public Information Officer [multiple times] for more information but has not yet received a comment. As of this article’s publishing, the city has publicly announced that it plans to postpone Department of Public Utilities (DPU) payments and fines for water bills this month, and that Richmond will explore state and federal recovery funds that can be used for rental assistance.

“It shouldn’t be on the patrons—ultimately the city is responsible,” says Josh Novicki, co-owner of Brave Captain. “They need to take some of the responsibility for it and do something to make it right, because it’s not fair to say that everyone needs to go out and tip workers and buy a burger.”

In the meantime, several community organizations have come together to provide mutual aid and gather community feedback to share with the City Council, with plans to urge them to take action in order to prevent similar breakdowns in the future. On Reddit, one user shared a breakdown of how the City of Atlanta responded to its own water crisis caused by aging infrastructure.

“It shouldn’t be on the patrons—ultimately the city is responsible,” says Josh Novicki, co-owner of Brave Captain. “They need to take some of the responsibility for it and do something to make it right, because it’s not fair to say that everyone needs to go out and tip workers and buy a burger.”

As they begin to reopen, businesses are taking varied approaches to recuperating losses. Some are planning to run otherwise rare brunch or lunch services, while others are holding events: on Friday night, Susie’s held a “snowed-in dance party” (named appropriately as another winter storm that rolled in that evening, causing its own amount of nail biting) and launched an official merch line. But primarily, these businesses are looking to take advantage of the community’s excitement to be able to return to dining out.

“We’re hoping that even though we’ve lost this week, we can make it up to the community and the staff, just double our efforts once this is over,” says Branch. “We want people to go out and take care of restaurants that are open.”