RICHMOND, Va. — The Hofheimer Building in Scott’s Addition is known for its lively atmosphere and crafty cocktails, but this week, it’s been a different story due to the water crisis.
As the city’s water crisis stretched into its third night Wednesday, for managing partner Natalie McNamara, the lack of running water didn’t just close her doors, it brought everything to a screeching halt.
“It felt like COVID,” McNamara said. “A little bit devastating, without me having a teary eye.”
Her business had no water, no customers and no answers.
“I think it’s been devastating and so disappointing for all restaurants and everybody that was so hopeful to move forward with all the plans they had to have a wonderful January and just feel completely deflated right out the gates,” she said.
McNamara wanted answers for her staff of 50 employees.
“What do you tell people? Can you open? Can you not open? How can you open? What do you tell your staff? When can you tell them they can come back to work? And when you don’t have the answers, you don’t have the answers,” McNamara said. “It’s a lot of pressure to be responsible for their livelihood. A lot of them live paycheck by paycheck, and they have rent to pay, and they’re all looking to who they’re looking to, a leader, to make a decision, to make the right decisions.”
According to the Virginia Department of Health, the Hofheimer is just one of over 1,000 food establishments that went dry during the outage, losing thousands of dollars with each passing day.
“When you have a business to run, the bills don’t stop, the garbage doesn’t stop coming out of your checking account,” McNamara added. “The rent does not stop coming out of your checking account. I think we all feel that.”
The Hofheimer is now open for business, but business is far from normal.
“I would say 80% of our menu we’re not serving for a variety of reasons. I mean, think about it. You can’t wash vegetables. You can’t wash lettuce. There’s a lot of things you just can’t,” McNamara explained. “That’s going to make a huge dent financially for our food and the experience that we have to offer in a restaurant.”
Now McNamara is turning her focus to making up for lost time and revenue.
“I hope that it really helps us redirect how we are spending the tax dollars that we work so hard for, and that it can go to good use to support small business owners and others that are so greatly impacted by just the simple things, like not having water,” she said.
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