After two years of running a bakery out of their home, Rick and Tyes Cook now refer to their dining table as a “murphy-table.” It might make an appearance at dinnertime, but otherwise, it’s moved to make room for what’s become the family’s bread and butter—their cottage bakery, Manifest Bread.

Today, the couple announced that they are moving out of the house and will open a commercial space in the heart of Riverdale, by the farmer’s market and MARC train station. Open six days a week, the bakery will offer more than the usual sourdough boules, baguettes and bialys—they plan to expand into pastries like pain au chocolat or canelés, a pastry with a caramelized, crunchy outside that gives way to a custardy center.

Along with the announcement, they launched a fundraising campaign to help with the purchase of equipment, including a stone mill, oven, and commercial-size spiral mixer. The official opening date will hinge on the equipment and when the contractors pour the concrete for the floor.

Their search for a space started five years ago, but at the time, they weren’t intending to operate a bakery. The plan was to open a full-service restaurant, given their respective experiences. Before managing the bakery full-time, Tyes worked in customer-facing managerial positions around town, most recently at Obelisk, the Esther Lee fine-dining trattoria Peter Pastan opened in Dupont Circle 35 years ago. Rick worked different kitchen positions, including as the chef of seafood destination BlackSalt on MacArthur Boulevard NW. Today, when Rick isn’t baking, he works at Pastan’s 2Amys Neapolitan Pizzeria, preparing small plates for guests at the bar.

Rick’s start in baking goes back to Etto, the Pastan-founded location on 14th Street NW where he worked before 2Amys. There, they bake bread in-house. Rick noticed the difference between their product and what other restaurants were serving. He knew then that an in-house bread would be a component of his own restaurant. 

Rick began baking with leftover Etto flour, to which he attributed his bread’s great flavor. Comparing freshly milled flour to supermarket flour is like comparing a cup of coffee made from freshly ground beans to a cup of Folgers. “It’s a similar idea,” Rick says. “There’s oils that bring along a certain profile.”

At Manifest, they mill about 50 percent of their flour and usually use it the day after milling. They source the grains from Baltimore County, Maryland, and Southern Pennsylvania farmers. The mill they will purchase will let them mill even more; however, they don’t intend to mill all their grain in-house.

The immediate results of Rick’s baking were not worth sharing. “It took from 2015 to 2017,” Tyes says. “That’s a couple years until we were like, this is awesome and people should try it.” Rick then baked for dinner parties. “The feedback that we got from that was actually a big confidence boost,” Tyes says. “It was one of those things where we realized like other people will enjoy this journey that we’re on.”

Starting in 2018, they sold loaves at weekly wine tastings at Weygandt Wines, a Cleveland Park wine shop. “It just seemed like a kitschy thing that made sense for that neighborhood,” Rick says. “If you’re buying some wine, you could use some bread as well.”

Regularly selling at Weygandt forced Rick to produce a consistent product. It was tough. “The loaves that came out, it was like a great bake or not so great bake. It was everything in between,” Tyes says. “Sometimes it wouldn’t sell out,” Rick says. “It was quite discouraging, but that’s how it all starts.”

As word spread and Rick’s technique developed, that changed. By the time the pandemic hit, their side hustle had grown to the point that all their loaves were spoken for before they even arrived at Weygandt. “This research and development thing just spun out of control and turned into what it is now,” Rick says.  

During lockdown, a customer added them to the neighborhood listserv and they sold monthly bread subscriptions, the lump sums from which gave them enough cash to buy equipment, like a commercial oven and bigger fridge, allowing them to produce more. “Everything just kept doubling, but eventually when you double double double, it gets really big,” Rick says. 

“At the beginning, we were doing 12 loaves at most and that would take 6 hours. Now on a 12-hour bake, I’m usually doing 350 cakes, cookies, baguettes, loaves, sandwiches, all for one day,” Rick says.

In their current form, they make the menu on Wednesday evenings, publish it on their website Thursday, and mill the flour that day. On Friday, Rick makes the dough, and Saturday, he bakes. A 350-piece menu will sell out within 20 minutes of publishing, Rick says. 

During lockdown, they began baking twice a week, doing deliveries and realized that baking could be their future. “It gave us the luxury of time, which people in the restaurant industry don’t have,” Tyes says. “We said, ‘We can definitely do this.’” 

The bakery grew to the point that Rick altered his schedule completely, going to bed at 9 p.m. and waking three hours later at 12 a.m. to start baking. “You roll out of bed and turn your oven on,” he says. “It makes you a little nuts. You’re wearing sunglasses at noon, as a necessity because your eyes burn.” A co-worker from 2Amys, Enrique Mendoza, helped with deliveries.

In the early morning hours, Rick enjoyed the company of an online community of cottage bakers. “All across the country, there’s a bunch of little hermits doing the same thing as you. You get a text from somebody at two in the morning, [it] isn’t alarming because they’re up at the same time as you doing the same thing,” Rick says. Many also volunteered tips, as there aren’t the same incentives to guarding recipes in baking. “It’s not like cooking, where you can implement molecular gastronomy,” Rick says. “Bread is bread is bread. The ingredients around you are what makes you different.”

In recent weeks, they’ve scaled back after Tyes gave birth to their second son, but at their height of production, deliveries could take Mendoza up to four hours. They have also switched to a pickup model. Customers can either pick up orders from the Cook’s Brentwood home or at Bold Fork Books in Mount Pleasant.

Despite knowing at the end of the summer of 2020 that they wanted to open a bakery, it took them another year to find a location and sign the lease. Finding an affordable spot has become even harder for small local businesses over the past several years, to the point that local chefs had to come up with alternatives. Paolo Dungca, for example, had to turn to preparing their 8-course prix fixe menu in food courts. 

Even at the height of the pandemic, that didn’t change. “We ran into a lot of that. Here’s a good deal for the first maybe year or 18 months and then after that, it goes skyrocket to where we think the market is going to bounce back to,” Tyes says. 

They expect to quadruple their capacity once they move into the new space and expand their menu. “I’m most excited about the fact that we’ve only played around with different things like pastries for basically just recipe testing and development and it hasn’t been in any kind of volume because we want people to get a pastry shortly after it comes out of the oven,” Tyes says.

For example, the previously mentioned canelés: “You have to eat them within like four hours of being made,” Rick says. “We just don’t have that outlet right now to where we make a dozen and the first 10 people can get their choice and sit down with a cappuccino and eat that and be like, ‘Fuck, this is really great.’” 

In addition to coffee and pastries, there will also be sandwiches made to order and beer and wine available. “We really intend to be a place where you can kind of come and build your picnic basket or build your little hostess gift or what have you,” Tyes says. 

They plan to have a small wholesale component as well. “[It] feels natural, since we know so many people in the restaurant industry from our years of working in it,” Tyes says.

Opening day is still undetermined, but for now, they’ll keep manifesting bread. “Manifest is just what it ended up being and it made sense in describing what has happened,” Rick says, explaining the name, from the promise of freshly baked bread for a dinner party to their output today and output once the bakery arrives.

For more information, visit their fundraising page.

Americana Hour at Right Proper Brewing

Eli Waltz is rekindling an old flame. Hosted at Right Proper Brewing in Shaw and put on by Indivisible Art Collective, Waltz’s Americana Hour program is a musical showcase for folk and blues artists from the DMV. The show will feature Waltz on guitar and harmonica for the first half, and then Danah Koch of the Dead Pens, a Maryland-based artist known for her powerful vocals. Waltz, a founding partner of Dupont cocktail bar Astoria, will showcase his past skills as a blues harmonica session player and songwriter. Waltz tells City Paper he and his booking partner Doug Burdette want to highlight the area’s unsung impact on blues and folk music. “D.C. has this rich history that’s not just about politics,” Waltz says. “There’s this history of blues, and folk, and country.” Alongside its rich go-go and punk scenes, the District was also a source of inspiration for artists like Bob Dylan and Delta blues artist Skip James, Waltz says, and the larger area was the birthplace of other artists, like the father of American primitive guitar John Fahey, who started Takoma Records. “The goal is to keep this fire burning, and it’s the artists that are the ones that are keeping it alive, whether they’re in D.C. proper or outside in the neighboring states,” Waltz says. Waltz and Burdette hope the Right Proper sessions will become a longer series, forging a place where local folk and blues artists can shine and listeners can return to. If you miss the show, Waltz will be playing again with his band, Eli and the Waltz, at Hill Country Live on April 2. Americana Hour runs from noon to 3 p.m. on March 26 at Right Proper Brewing, 624 T St. NW. rightproperbrewing.com. Free. Proof of vax required.

“People don’t think that you can take 25 pizzas on a bicycle,” says Chris Rabadi. “But a Bring It! courier can.”

Rabadi leads operations for Bring It!, a bicycle courier service for local restaurants and other food and beverage businesses. During work hours, he helps run things from the Bring It! office in Naylor Court, dispatching couriers to their destinations and supporting them as needed, whether with a wheel change or a backup cell phone. The erstwhile bicycle racer handles many of the orders himself on a signature Omnium Cargo bike. Bring It! has wholesale deals with Omnium and a few other bicycle makers to ensure they’re riding the bikes that will get them there the fastest. 

The brainchild of Rabadi and his partner, Kimmie Harlow, who owns the company, Bring It! began in 2020 when the pandemic was in full swing and takeout and delivery were the only options diners and restaurant owners had. For the two of them, both of whom previously worked as food deliverers, it was about creating a company that put delivery workers first; however, a few dozen restaurant owners have also found it to be the solution to their Uber problem.

“We looked into UberEats and some of the other apps and we were really opposed to their pay structure,” says Oliver Cox, a co-owner of Pearl’s Bagels in Mount Vernon Triangle. There’s still a limit to what people are comfortable spending on a breakfast sandwich, Cox says. “Once you factor in that Uber is going to take 15 percent of that, it’s almost not worth even being on those sites,” he says. The sourdough bagel shop works exclusively with Bring It! now.

The delivery commission fee for companies like UberEats and Grubhub used to be even higher. Prior to the pandemic, fees typically cost up to 30 percent of every order, taking a sizable bite out of restaurants’ earnings. Given the expanded role that delivery orders suddenly played for District restaurants during the pandemic, the D.C. Council passed a law, tied to the public health emergency, capping delivery fees at 15 percent.

The public health emergency expired this past January. What will happen now remains to be seen, but if D.C. makes those delivery caps permanent, tech platforms such as UberEats and DoorDash won’t go down without a fight. When San Francisco passed such legislation in 2021, DoorDash and Grubhub quickly sued, calling it an “irrational law, driven by naked animosity and ill-conceived economic protectionism.”

For restaurant owners, however, their issues with third-party delivery apps don’t stop at the fees. Bob Daly, the owner of DC Pizza downtown and another Bring It! partner, says third-party app workers have shorted customers on their promised number of pies multiple times. “Things can get wrecked along the way. They drop a $200 order of pizzas and now we’ve got to make them over again,” Daly says. “So many things can go wrong in delivery.” 

Complaints like these spurred the team behind Shaw bar Ivy and Coney to create their own delivery platform, DC To-GoGo. Launched in 2020, the platform ultimately didn’t capture enough market share to become sustainable. Ironically, they lost their edge over the third-party app when D.C. enacted the delivery commission cap legislation.

Where DC To-GoGo offered an alternative to third-party delivery in the name of restaurant workers, Bring It! did so in the name of delivery workers. “We collectively got together to avoid being mistreated,” Rabadi says. “That’s what this whole project is about.” 

Delivery workers run a gauntlet to deliver a meal for often very little pay. There’s a new algorithm for every app; people take food they didn’t order; a parking ticket might nix earnings; bathrooms can be scarce; and bad weather can make for a miserable ride for a bike courier.

Third-party app workers suffer particularly bad conditions. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine sued DoorDash in 2019 for pocketing millions of dollars in workers’ tips and using that to cover labor costs. Fritz Fellow Katie Wells of Georgetown University argues that gig delivery workers are set up to fail. While they can dictate their own hours, because they’re classified as independent contractors, they don’t have the same protections in-house employees have, like a guaranteed minimum wage or overtime pay, all while risking their safety in a city where traffic fatalities continue to rise.

Having worked for third-party apps before Bring It!, Rabadi knows what it’s like. “You’re not getting paid very much on DoorDash to begin with,” he says. A large order might fetch a better tip, but otherwise earnings hover around minimum wage. “DoorDash does not take care of their couriers at all,” Rabadi says. 

For some, the apps alienate them from the work. “Having these huge companies take over the industry is a major disconnect from the courier to their work and being able to get paid fairly,” Rabadi says. It makes a big difference to have an actual human dispatcher looking out for the couriers, he says. 

“Math and courier work don’t go hand in hand at all. There’s no way that you can write a math problem that’s going to predict the headwind that a vehicle has to go through to get the job done,” Rabadi says. “There’s a huge amount of trust and attention to detail that comes into courier work.”

Coming up as a courier, Rabadi didn’t have the same flexibility in dictating his schedule that gig workers have. But his efforts on rainy or cold days were recognized by dispatchers who would route him to $600 days when the going was good, a huge windfall by industry standards. “[Courier work] is a lot of time in the saddle dedicating yourself in cold and rainy weather,” he says.

For their workers, Bring It! counters third-party apps by guaranteeing at least minimum wage, though often workers make more. The seven couriers cover less ground, use a dispatcher app made by bike couriers, and have technical support, including backup bicycles. “We focus on making sure our couriers are successful,” Rabadi says.

Bring It! remains small, but the model can be an inspiring alternative to dispirited delivery workers and fed up restaurant owners. A few restaurant owners have even used Bring It!’s couriers to deliver third-party app orders. “People don’t want their couriers to handle it, but we’re very highly trained, well-equipped individuals,” Rabadi says.

For Pearl’s Bagels, Bring It! was a solution after Grubhub added them to their app without consent. They noticed Grubhub workers putting in orders based on outdated menus and put a stop to it after seeing that the deliveries weren’t going smoothly. “Then you have people giving you a one star Yelp review,” Cox says. 

The experience made Cox realize that there was a market for delivery, but because Bring It! limits their delivery range to what’s manageable on a bicycle, Pearl can’t reach everyone. For Cox, the trade-off is worth it. “We’re trying to make sure that what we’re putting out is as good as it can possibly be in our eyes,” he says. “If it goes out of our control, we can look bad and so for us that’s been a more important business decision than the quick, easy way of sort of getting higher volume in sales.”

The two businesses started working together late last year. Cox considered hiring an in-house delivery driver beforehand but decided against it because they weren’t sure how much delivery business there would be. It’s become a small percentage of their business, but they’ve established regulars who order multiple times a week, even if they’ve never come in person.

The relationship between the delivery workers and the restaurant is also different from what third-party app workers can expect. “They’re basically an extension of Pearl,” Cox says. Between rides, couriers might hang out, enjoy a cup of coffee, and talk about where they’re off to next. 

Daly doesn’t say Bring It!’s couriers are part of the DC Pizza team, but at least he knows who to call if there’s a problem. Before partnering with Bring It!, they had an in-house delivery worker, but they decided to partner with Bring It! because they couldn’t rely on just one worker to fulfill all their deliveries. “There’s a lot involved with doing your own deliveries and it’s hard to find employees right now,” Daly says.

Working in a still somewhat deserted downtown, Daly says DC Pizza and many of the other downtown restaurants are just holding on. But delivery has helped and it’s become a larger part of their business, growing from about 5 percent before the pandemic to the 15 percent it represents today. “[Delivery] has been a big help,” Daly says. “At this point, any incremental sales are very helpful.” 

DC Pizza stipulates Bring It!’s delivery range on its website, but still partner with third-party apps for those outside of it. Customers can still order from third-party apps if they’re within the delivery range, but it’s better for the restaurant if customers order through it directly.

Bring It! handles their biggest orders. “We are focused on the delivery personnel,” Rabadi says. “When you focus on people or the means of getting a job done and they’re fully equipped, stoked for the job, know they’re getting paid fairly, you can trust those individuals.” 

At Baan Siam, rapid at-home testing kits for COVID-19 are as readily available for staff as Singha beer is for customers. The Thai restaurant in Mount Vernon Triangle began ordering tests in bulk on Dec. 10, when they first heard about the omicron variant. Now, whenever an employee feels sick or a bit tired they can test when they show up to work. “We hand these things out like candy,” says managing partner Tom Healy. 

The restaurant has taken COVID precautions seriously from the outset of the pandemic and went two years without any closures tied to employees testing positive. But when omicron arrived, the highly contagious variant forced them to dial-up their strategy. “Omicron annihilated everybody’s plans that they had for how to protect themselves, so we moved to mass testing,” Healy says.

Baan Siam has a lean team, which heightens the stakes of preventing an outbreak. “The difference between having the entire staff out and having one staff member out is early detection,” Healy says. “We spent thousands of dollars on tests. Did we save thousands of dollars by not being forced to close? Absolutely.” According to Healy, being closed for a weekend could cost the restaurant as much as $75,000.

A wave of such temporary closures hit restaurants when omicron ripped through the District in December and January. The city responded to the surge by reinstating an indoor mask mandate and a proof of vaccination requirement for indoor dining. But when places reopened, it was often with a new emphasis on testing given that even vaccinated and boosted people can contract and spread COVID-19. Employees say they’ve take a rapid test every day over certain periods, but, in reality, that’s tricky to pull off. 

Between the dearth of workers and sometimes unpredictable supply of tests, District restaurants have found themselves in a tough spot as they try to remain open. A few have responded by implementing routine testing, while others have adopted a hodgepodge of make-it-work strategies mirroring how they’ve tackled other pandemic problems like staffing up and sourcing ingredients.

The workers who spoke to City Paper for this story over the past week and a half requested to be identified by their first names because they wanted to protect future employment opportunities, weren’t authorized to speak on behalf of their employers, or were fearful about being identified because of their immigration status. 

“We don’t test as a group, but it’s expected that if you’re feeling sick, if you test regularly and if your tests results aren’t negative, then you’ll alert a manager and won’t come in,” says Laura, a food runner at a restaurant in Silver Spring. According to internal memos from the restaurant, all unvaccinated staff are supposed to get tested every other week, but she doesn’t know if that’s being followed. 

Laura tested positive a few weeks ago. She only missed a few shifts as she had already taken off for family reasons, but she estimates that she lost about $1,200 in income.“Working six days a week is not what I want to do with my life, but it’s what I have to do in order to cover rent and have enough left over for not even luxuries, but small luxuries like going to dinner and being able to grab a drink,” she says.

A few restaurants have wooed workers back to the hospitality industry by offering better benefits like free mental health counseling, but few offer paid sick leave beyond what’s required by law. The Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act requires employers to offer a certain amount of paid time off depending on the size of the business. Employees who exhaust their ASSLA benefits might also be eligible for unemployment insurance, provided a separation from employment, a lay-off, or a reduction in hours has occurred.

That said, Laura feels safer at her restaurant job than at her daytime job. She trusts her restaurant colleagues to get tested if they feel sick, but she’s not so sure about the people she shares an office with. “There’s so many of us and we’re all in the office sharing those close quarters, that’s what scares me,” Laura says. She isn’t sure if the entire staff there is vaccinated. She also believes that’s where she caught COVID. 

Still, Laura wishes her restaurant job was in the position to test employees more regularly. “I don’t think that’s a thing that [the restaurant] can handle just because of getting the tests,” she says. “Even if it’s rapid, it’s still very difficult to find mass quantities of rapid tests on an ongoing basis. I don’t think that’s possible, which sucks, but that would make me feel safer.”

The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington recommends a few resources for finding tests. Some companies, such as Acme Paper and Supply Co. have tests available for bulk purchase and some restaurants have been ordering through them. The same goes for Reditus Laboratories. As a last resort, RAMW has tests available for those who are having a hard time finding them.

Will, a bartender at a restaurant near Union Station, says there’s no real procedure for when someone tests positive beyond the scramble to find workers to fill in. “There’s only seven people we can rely on now,” he says. A COVID-positive staff member can only try to give those on the schedule enough notice so they can either scramble to find someone or prepare to work with a leaner team.

“That’s just the restaurant industry standard right now,” Will says. “Before there were at least a lot more part-time and full-time workers that were able to pick up a shift. Now, if one person can’t do it, it’s like, ‘OK, we’re gonna be a little short staffed tonight and go from there’. Or, ‘Someone’s pulling a double.’” Back when he first started in the industry in 2015, Will could plan weeklong vacations on short notice and easily find coverage. “There’s no perfect solution. It’s as good as it can get right now.” 

Will thinks keeping rapid tests on site at the restaurant could make a difference. He’s a District resident and has relied on getting the free at-home kits in order to know that he’s clear to work. He thinks the city has done a decent job at making rapid tests available. Some of his co-workers coming from Virginia have had a harder time finding tests and thus feel less confident clocking in.

Carlos, a sous chef at a restaurant in Shaw, tells City Paper that his employer keeps rapid tests from CVS on hand just in case employees haven’t been able to get tested on their own time because they have other jobs or childcare responsibilities. If someone tests positive, there’s an established procedure. 

Whichever department the employee is a part of will isolate until they can all get tested. Anyone who was working the last day the infected staff member was at the restaurant also gets tested. Worst case scenario, the restaurant can switch to serving takeout only with a skeleton crew of healthy employees to stay afloat. Still, Carlos worries about asymptomatic spread. “In a restaurant, if one person gets sick, everybody gets sick, whether they like it or not,” he says.

When omicron hit in late December, that’s just what happened at The Commodore in Dupont Circle. They were one of many spots that had to shut down between Christmas and New Years. “[COVID] tore through us like it tore through so many other places,” says general manager Rob Van de Graaff. “I physically didn’t have the staff to be cooking or doing any of that.” 

Van de Graaff picks up free tests at a nearby library to have available just in case an employee hasn’t been able to get tested on their own or they learn at work that were exposed. After his own battle with COVID-19 almost a year ago, he remains cautious about spread. He spent a week in the hospital and it was almost two weeks before he was back on his feet. Now he gets tested every week. 

After a brutal winter when reservations dropped off across the city, Van de Graaff  is cautiously optimistic that things will improve if restaurants can just hang on a bit longer for warmer weather to arrive. He expects his restaurant’s patio business to pick up, though the pandemic could still derail operations. 

“Say it’s in the 60s, the patio’s gonna be packed, and I don’t know if I’m going to get texts from one or two of my staff members being like, ‘Hey, I just tested positive,’” Van de Graaff says. “When you are this short staffed, there’s not any margin for error. …You got to thread that needle perfectly every time.”

Securing tests and testing employees regularly is just one more step of service hospitality workers and managers have had to add to their routine over the past two years. “If we restaurants and bars hear, ‘Well, you’ve got to figure out how to do this or that,’ one more time, I’m going to pull my nearly nonexistent hair out of my head,” Van de Graaff says.

Van de Graaff was right to expect change. This morning, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a plan to lift the vaccine requirement for indoor dining starting on Feb. 15 and will let the indoor mask mandate for bars and restaurants expire at the end of the month. Bowser says cases have dropped by 90 percent and hospitalizations have decreased by 95 percent. 

But as of Friday, the weekly case rate per 100,000 D.C. residents was still above 100. Anything above 100 is considered high transmission by the Centers for Disease Control. D.C. has also reported 16 known COVID-19 deaths since Feb. 4. Healy from Baan Siam says the loosening of D.C. government restrictions won’t impact his testing strategy. 

“D.C.’s policies regarding masks and vaccine mandates may have changed again, but that won’t affect our testing strategy,” he says. “We were testing before this, we will keep testing going forward. It’s just good business sense to know as much as you can, as quickly as you can.” 

At Central Michel Richard downtown, Annie Boutin King greets three young adults as they come in for lunch. “Happy New Year,” she says. “Do you have a reservation? Do you have your vaccination card?” No, no reservation, but they have photos of their vaccine cards on their phones. One says she didn’t know it was required. “We’ve done it since mid-September—that way you feel safer to come here,” Boutin King tells her.

“[Being] vaccinated doesn’t mean a thing as far as getting COVID,” a woman in the group responds. “Eh, you won’t die,” Boutin King says. “You’ll catch it still,” the woman responds. Boutin King shrugs. “I prefer that to dying,” she says and leads them to a table. 

“One will always comment, but that’s alright, you know,” Boutin King says. While City Paper stood at the host stand to observe proof of vaccination enforcement for an hour and a half during a recent Wednesday lunch rush at Central, discourse never escalated beyond this sort of back and forth. Even the diners Boutin King turns away without proof of vaccination leave without much of a fuss.  

In a few days, workers at all D.C. bars and restaurants will be in Boutin King’s shoes. The first phase of the District’s indoor vaccine mandate takes effect on Jan. 15 at 6 a.m. While it will be a new step of service for most hospitality businesses, about 100 restaurants and bars have been asking for proof of vaccination dating back to the summer. City Paper spoke with employees at establishments that have had a little practice so their industry workers and customers can learn what to expect. 

The vaccine mandate arrives after the omicron variant derailed the D.C.’s command of COVID-19 in a matter of weeks. Mayor Muriel Bowser calls the current crisis, during which the city is seeing thousands of new confirmed cases per day, a “winter surge.” The vaccine mandate and the reinstated mask mandate form part of her response. Other cities, like New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle enacted their own citywide mask and vaccine mandates last year. 

Some spots that required proof of vaccination ahead of the city, when the delta variant was the primary concern, were rewarded with a glut of patrons. At Mr. Henry’s on Capitol Hill, the policy inspired a confidence unseen during the pandemic. General Manager Cathy Nagy found herself serving a crowd four-people deep at the upstairs bar for Wednesday night jazz jams. “People are afraid of making people angry,” Nagy says, referring to vaccine requirements. “I don’t think they realize it’s really gonna help you overall.”

Omicron, however, has quickly eroded that level of confidence. Dozens of businesses enacted temporary closures over the usually profitable holiday season. A few said they were acting out of an abundance of caution, while others had too many staff members out sick to operate. Dining rooms have been sparsely populated and the winter weather has stifled the appetite for eating outdoors. 

Even the definition of “fully vaccinated” is in flux for businesses with their own policies. Sweet Science Coffee in NoMa wants its patrons to demonstrate they’ve gotten a booster shot. If they haven’t been boosted, they can show the results of a negative COVID-19 test from the previous 24 hours. The city is only requiring proof of one dose from Jan. 15 to Valentine’s Day. Come Feb. 15, the mandate shifts to one dose of Johnson & Johnson or two doses of Moderna or Pfizer for people 12 and older.

Despite breakthrough cases, experts hold that omicron shouldn’t diminish confidence in the vaccine. “It just solidifies it,” says Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Our goal has never been and could never have been to eradicate a virus like this. It’s always been to tame it.” To that extent, the vaccines are performing as expected by preventing severe disease, hospitalization, and death.

When early adopters in the hospitality industry announced proof-of-vaccination policies, it wasn’t always the road of least resistance. When Cotton and Reed’s rule took effect Aug. 13, earnings fell 38 percent from the previous month. It’s unclear why.

 “This is always the bartender’s Monday morning quarterbacking of why was our Saturday slower than normal,” says Jordan Cotton, who co-owns the rum distillery near Union Market. “Is it because it rained? Is it because Congress is out of session? Is it because of the vaccine mandate?” They didn’t consider changing course, but it was hard. “You want to make the right decision and feel great about it,” Cotton says. “We felt like we made the right decision and felt just OK about it.”

Sales evened out, but not before some workers moved on. One employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of his documentation status, left after his tips fell by half. We’ll call him Eric. “It became frustrating to be there for like eight hours and if you make $200, that’s a lot,” he says. “I was happy they were requiring it, I just didn’t think that D.C. was going to be so pushy against it.”

Many patrons were understanding, but it just takes one unvaccinated individual in a group for the whole party to walk away. “It just makes you feel like shit,” he says. It became frustrating to tell people they couldn’t stay when he knew that also meant he would earn less. Some of the people he turned away became confrontational. One would-be patron who got caught faking a vaccine card threatened staff, according to Cotton. 

Some believe a citywide mandate will spare workers some of these kinds of unpleasant interactions. Cotton says when the business enforced its own policy to try and maintain the “healthiest space possible,” the security personnel checking proof of vaccination experienced harassment that sometimes escalated to violent threats. “If that decision gets taken out of our hands, then we’re not the bad guy.”

Songbyrd Music House co-owner Joe Lapan has been advocating for the requirement to come from the city since the beginning of the pandemic. “If someone asks me, ‘Well, justify your policy based on science,’ that’s not what I’m equipped to do,” Lapan says. “Businesses aren’t necessarily in the business of arguing with their customers.”

At Songbyrd, they’ve had to refund some tickets purchased before they announced their policy, but most customers have tolerated it. Lapan questions how much an establishment’s location informs how clientele will respond to proof-of-vaccination requirements. In parts of the city that see many tourists or areas where there are lower rates of vaccination, workers may not be able to predict what responses they’ll receive when working the door. 

The Bowser administration has said one of the chief reasons behind the forthcoming mandate is to increase vaccination rates in the District. A study from Oxford University found that requiring vaccination for things like dining out led to increased vaccine uptake 20 days before and 40 days after introduction in countries with lower-than-average vaccination participation. People 30 and younger raced to get vaccinated the fastest. That said, the study also found that requiring proof of vaccination did little to persuade those who were staunchly against the vaccine.

The impact private business mandates have is only a drop in the bucket by comparison, but it’s something. Nagy can count a handful of Mr. Henry’s regulars who got vaccinated because of the bar’s policy. “That isn’t why I did it, but if it makes you safer and lets you live a better life, thank goodness that’s what pushed you,” she says.

Not every business that instituted its own vaccination requirement stuck with it. Pho Banh Mi Bar and Grill in Woodbridge, Virginia, abandoned its policy in early November. In a phone call with City Paper, the restaurant cited low case numbers. They have not reinstated it as Fairfax County has returned to high levels of community transmission. The restaurant’s owner, Francis Do, previously told the Post sales fell 25 to 30 percent after he began requiring proof of vaccination.

Jose Andrés’ downtown D.C. restaurants, which include Jaleo, Zaytinya, China Chilcano, Oyamel, and barmini/minibar, downgraded their requirement to a “request,” in October. The reversal was surprising given ThinkFoodGroup was one of the first major local restaurant groups to announce a proof-of-vaccination policy in August. “I’m proud that many small businesses have stepped up with smart decisions showing bigger guns the way,” Andrés said at the time. 

ThinkFoodGroup declined to provide a reason for the change, but falling revenue and the burden put on understaffed crews may be factors. “When we did have folks who were visiting from out of town, I did notice a certain amount of guests walking back out and not staying to dine in,” says one worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak for ThinkFoodGroup. Let’s call them Adrian. 

Not all left quietly. “Every now and then, there would be someone who would take out their frustrations on our host,” Adrian says. Their earnings remained largely unchanged, but given how many parties decided not to dine, they estimate that waitstaff lost money overall. Regulars, Adrian says, didn’t bristle at the policy and posted up at the bar.

“With vaccination requirements, there’s no way [I’d host]” Adrian continues. “No, I’m sorry. I’d rather dishwash, I’d rather bus, and that’s the terrible part. It’s not the actual job, it’s the people. It was jarring. I’ve never seen so many people be so rude and disrespectful and mean to the hosts and, at the same time, [I’d never] seen so many people be so nice and grateful.”

Checking proof of vaccination has been like “pulling teeth” at points, according to Chris, an assistant manager at Bedrock Billiards in Adams Morgan. He says some people who were denied entry would later call the bar to berate a bartender or security. Chris also says they caught others using fake vaccine cards or cards that didn’t match their IDs. Most of the interactions were civil. “We’ll call them out and they won’t argue,” Chris explains. “They know it’s fake, we know it’s fake.” Cards lacking the CDC insignia are a dead giveaway, he says.

But the policy also drew back a close-knit crowd of pre-pandemic regulars. “They stopped showing up when COVID originally hit,” Chris says. “Once we implemented the vaccination policy, that day, they started coming back in because they felt safer and as staff we felt safer.” Employees told Chris they felt less stressed when customers weren’t wearing masks.

At Oyster Oyster in Shaw, general manager Laura Jackson has seen similar levels of appreciation. “People feel safe and we have gotten business because of that,” she says. “So many people, especially older and immunocompromised people, have told me specifically that they’re eating here because they feel safe and they know that they can relax and enjoy themselves.” 

Jackson agrees with Chris. Oyster Oyster’s vaccination requirement alleviates the anxiety of having to police guests, allowing her to feel that she works in hospitality and not a hospital. 

She hasn’t noticed any fake cards, but after meeting one customer whose vaccine card was allegedly left blank after receiving their second dose, she’s on the lookout for incomplete cards. “Do I challenge that person and say, ‘I don’t believe you?’” she wonders. “It’s going to be a different kind of storm to weather, I guess, because you want business, you know?”

Some workers feel like proof-of-vaccination policies have offered some protection against getting sick. “Whatever we’re doing has been working out because not many people at 2 Amys have gotten sick,” says Enrique Mendoza, a senior cook at the pizzeria on Macomb Street NW. This is especially salient for small independent restaurants operating on thin margins, even though the city’s mandate won’t apply to employees when it launches. “Once you’re protecting your employees, you’re also protecting your business,” Mendoza says. Before widespread vaccination, working in kitchens was identified as the most lethal profession during the pandemic.

Ismael Mendez, chef and owner of Qui Qui DC in Shaw, made a similar calculus. “Everybody has a right to be vaccinated or not,” he says. “But as a small business, we can’t afford to have somebody get sick and then shut down.” Restaurants are already dealing with rising prices of ingredients and being short staffed as restaurant workers seek jobs in new fields with better pay, benefits, and hours. “At least asking for a vaccination card—it gives us some peace of mind. It’s not 100 percent. But we can breathe a little bit.”

Soon, Mendez imagines, showing your vaccine card will become normalized to the point that patrons won’t think twice about it. “It’s like going to a bar,” he says, referring to when a doorman checks ID to verify that customers are at least 21. “That’s how I see it in that I think that’s going to be the norm for a while.” 

Even in Virginia, where restrictions have generally been more lenient than the District, there are signs of shifting attitudes. Requiring proof of vaccination at the Sweet Science Coffee location in Arlington has been harder compared to D.C. “It’s been a point of contention,” says Kelton, a barista at both cafes. But, in the new year, the sheer volume of cases seems to be making an impression. “Most people see it less as a political issue and more as a safety thing. I think people are getting better about that.”

Stepping into the Mexican Cultural Institute at 2829 16th St. NW feels like stepping into another era well outside of D.C. Built in 1911, the mansion is decorated with murals and traditional ceramics from the 1930s. This month, it is also home to Oaxaca, Lo Tiene Todo (Oaxaca, it has everything), an exhibition of Oaxacan art and culture as part of novel Oaxaca in the U.S. festivities. The monthlong celebration designed by the government of Oaxaca showcases the cultural patrimony of the state. 

Contemporary Oaxacan artists Amador Montes, Sabino Guisu, and Bayrol Jiménez are featured in the exhibit, as is a range of folk art titled “Hecho en Oaxaca” (“Made in Oaxaca”). The Montes and Guisu galleries are on the first floor; the Jiménez and Hecho en Oaxaca galleries on the third. The exhibition, as it coincides with Día de los Muertos festivities celebrated in Oaxaca, as in other states in central and southern Mexico, includes a traditional ofrenda or altar, located in the solarium on the second floor.

Curated by the government of Oaxaca, the exhibition is a response to the precipitous drop in tourism from the pandemic: Since March 2020, spending by international tourists fell by more than half, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). “The month of Oaxaca in the U.S. is about understanding on a deeper level Mexico and Oaxaca, so we can reach new proposals for mutually beneficial relationships,” Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Esteban Moctezuma said at the exhibit’s opening ceremony

The exhibition is the third at the Institute since reopening to visitors in July 2021. It follows Catharsis, which featured work from the Institute’s permanent Kimberly Collection, and another exploring the history of the house, which was purchased by the Mexican government in 1921 and served as the embassy until 1989. It’s since been the home of the Institute, which serves as the cultural attaché of the embassy and, in addition to art exhibitions, hosts lectures and workshops on Mexican history and culture.

By D.C. standards, the house isn’t very old, but it is singularly preserved. The Mexican government made few modifications including the addition of a porte-cochère and the three-story mural by Roberto Cueva del Río. It also features Cueva del Río’s solarium redesign, and another mural by Rafael Yela Günther from 1925 (which was later covered in 1946 for unknown reasons).

In the tradition of Mexican Muralism, Cueva del Río’s work depicts historic moments and celebrates the diversity of Mexican society (though it offers little of the social critique found in the work of his contemporaries such as Diego Rivera). A self-portrait of the artist sitting in a tree can be found on the first floor. The solarium features traditional Talavera Ceramics from Cueva del Río’s home state of Puebla, with representations of the twin volcanoes there and the coat of arms for all the states of Mexico except Baja California Sur, which hadn’t yet been established when the space was redesigned in 1933. 

Otherwise the house is original, from the furnishings and tapestries in the library on the third floor to those in the Château de Fontainebleau-inspired drawing room on the second floor. It also houses a rare Aeolian organ, the pipes of which run from the basement to the fourth floor. “We’re very proud of the house,” Executive Director Ix-Nic Iruegas tells City Paper. “We know that you cannot even fathom what is inside here from the outside.”

Of the three artists spotlighted in Oaxaca, Lo Tiene Todo, Montes is the most established and calls the abstract works on view “Portraits.” The mixed-media painter blends oil painting, printmaking, photo collage, and text to evoke his subjects. “[The work] has to do with what’s forgotten, with those who passed away,” Montes says. “It’s an experience of seeing the dead from a different perspective.” Though the theme honors Día de los Muertos, the work is monochromatic when compared to the folk art upstairs.

Montes’ work follows the tradition of Mexican Breakaway Generation painters such as Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo, both of whom were also from Oaxaca. In form, it has little in common with Tamayo, but they share a similar tone; the melancholy of memory and nostalgia captured by Tamayo is found in Montes’ art as well.

Guisu and Jiménez were chosen to represent the next generation of Oaxacan artists—their work breaks from the expressionist tradition Montes comes from. A multidisciplinary artist known for his neon light installations, Guisu creates works that include sculpture and paintings with the same vibrant electric-like color of his installations.

Jiménez’s work includes paintings and ceramics done in collaboration with fellow Oaxacan painter and multidisciplinary artist Rolando Martínez. Jiménez refers to the paintings—abstract works with vibrant colors like Guisu’s—as “pop art.” Unlike Montes’ pieces, his ceramics draw clearly from Oaxacan festivals, and are overtly political. His “Serie ‘El reposo de la máscara’” is a series of paper-mache masks done in the calenda or carnival style and painted with ceramic paint. Like the masks actually worn at such festivities, they have an almost surrealist quality, albeit with the vibrant coloring reminiscent of Jiménez’s painting, and they’re meant to evoke the same function as Jiménez explains: “When you wear a mask, you’re always playing the role of some other thing.”

“You don’t represent yourself, but something else so that that spirit can make peace with you,” adds Jiménez. The diablito (or little devil) mask, for instance, might traditionally represent a Spanish colonist, according to Jiménez; however, in the artist’s work, global capitalism is the new conquistador. On each mask there is a discrete logo from megacorporations such as Google.

The Hecho en Oaxaca galleries feature garments, ceramics, photographs of Oaxacan carnivals, and Waldo Hernández’s alebrijes (handcrafted figurines) of imagined animals. The term “Hecho en Oaxaca” refers to the protected designation of origin status of the work, which is available for purchase. The protected designation of origin status ensures that a product cannot be reproduced outside its area of origin or at least is not legally recognized as such (which is why any Blue Weber Agave spirit produced outside of Jalisco and some areas of Nayarit, Guanajuato, Michoacán, and Tamaulipas cannot be called tequila). Along with stimulating tourism, the government of Oaxaca is trying to secure the patrimony that a designation of origin can bring. Similar objets d’art are available in the first floor store.

The ofrenda was designed by Oaxacan artist Carlos Guzmán with contributions by the Institute’s artistic affairs director Enrique Quiroz. Guzmán’s design features traditional components, including Calaveras Catrinas (skulls of Oaxaca), cartolería, the paper-mache puppets, papel picado (decorative perforated paper), and marigolds.

The tradition of the altar refers to pre-Columbian conceptions of death, in which being forgotten is the most absolute death one can suffer. It is a space to remember the dead and a place mourners can invite the departed to return to, hence Quiroz’s contributions of mezcal, pan dulce, and chocolate. He added the elements traditionally used to protect the space as well, including salt, the indigenous incense of copal, and a sacred or religious figure, in this case St. Michael.

The altar also incorporates elements from the Catharsis exhibition, which was dedicated to the people who died from COVID-19 and offered visitors the option to leave notes for their dead. Quiroz has repurposed those notes here, where they are now on display. “If this culture or this tradition [is] going to help you to grieve your family members and remember them, and if Mexico can bring that to the world, like it has given so much, by all means take it,” he explains. 

Quiroz notes that the tradition of the altar is not widespread in Mexico, but it’s become more widely known in the U.S. following representations in the James Bond movie Spectre and Disney’s Coco. Also there are 1.5 million Oaxacan-born people currently living in the U.S., according to Moctezuma. Among Mexican states, Oaxaca has the second highest percentage of people immigrating to the United States, according to INEGI. That migration has been precipitated by a lack of economic opportunity for Oaxacan residents. On the opposite end of that spectrum are the tourism-rich states of Quintana Roo and Yucatán. 

The tourism industry and revenues from Oaxacan exports such as mezcal offer a clear path to growth, hence Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa’s slogan, “Oaxaca wants more of the world in Oaxaca and more of Oaxaca in the world.” Tourism had been growing consistently in the state before the pandemic hit. In 2019, the state surpassed the national tourism average breaking its own records, but COVID hit the industry hard. Oaxaca’s hotel occupancy rates fell from the typical 60 percent to 10 percent during Independence Day holidays last year. 

“Oaxaca needs allies like you,” Montes says. “To bring a little of what is Oaxaca to the world in these moments, as an artist, as a human being, is vital.” 

But ambivalence about the impact of outside influences persists. After the Hierve el Agua petrified waterfall in Oaxaca first closed because of the pandemic, local residents decided to bar tourists from visiting it, citing the exploitation of locals by travel companies and the degradation of the site due to the number of visitors. The site was reopened recently for its potential to create jobs.

This ambivalence is present in the exhibition. Jiménez may not overlap with Toledo in style, but he does share Toledo’s wariness of globalization. In 2002, Toledo famously stopped a McDonald’s from opening in downtown Oaxaca. In “Reposo de la máscara,” the first mask is a pig with a noose hanging from its mouth. Above its snout, there’s the gold key logo of Coppel, a department store found throughout Mexico and known for extending easy credit to its customers. “Then they get you, [they’re] like the executioner of Mexicans,” Jiménez says. “It’s the new type of colonialism.”   

The exhibition and the Institute are open to the public Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays; noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. 

As Thor Cheston remembers it, it happened in the middle of a Saturday. The weather was temperate and the taproom door at Right Proper Brewing Company in Brookland was open. Cheston, the brewery co-owner saw Prima wander out, past the guests enjoying a pint and toward the street. He didn’t expect what happened next. She dove straight into the bushes and, after a brief struggle, dragged out the body and laid it in front of the door. It was a rat, now dead.

Right Proper adopted the black-and-white cat in 2019 through Blue Collar Cats, a Humane Rescue Alliance program created in 2017 that pairs cats who aren’t suited for traditional adoption with spaces where they’ll have space to roam. Most of them aren’t ideal candidates for traditional adoption because they get depressed in confinement or they’re scared of people. 

“These cats were physically healthy,” says Erin Robinson, a former HRA program manager. “But [they] had no socialization with humans and would not themselves benefit from living inside with people. They hadn’t done it, they didn’t want it, they didn’t like it.” Living indoors was negatively impacting both their mental and physical health.

Releasing these cats outdoors isn’t an option either. They might try to return home and become disoriented; there are environmental hazards like traffic; or they might run into a “cat colony” that shares territory and doesn’t always welcome newcomers. HRA calls these “community cats.” Their notched ears indicate that they were trapped, neutered, and returned to the area by HRA. Many Blue Collar Cats are former community cats who had to be rehomed because of construction or their feeder (a designated neighborhood resident who feeds them) moved. 

Created for this niche cat population, the BCC program was inspired by barn cats, which are typically unsocialized but play an important role in their environment as pest deterrents. With few barns in D.C., Blue Collar Cats felt more appropriate.“These guys do a job,” Robinson says. “These cats are like manual labor kitties.” The goal is that, like Prima, they’ll kill any pests, or their smell will deter them. 

For those with rodent problems, the right cat can be a godsend. Before Rue arrived in 2018, Greenstreet Gardens in Alexandria was losing hundreds of dollars to mice chewing through seed bags. At first, operations manager Tim Williams worried Rue was a dud—the cat with a smushed face preferred loafing on cacti. Then she entered a phase where she caught a mouse daily. Afterward, any rodent problems became minimal. Today, you’ll find her lounging on the seed bags in triumph.

The experience isn’t always like that. Rossen Tsanov adopted Sam and Lucy in 2019 to help protect the garden he keeps in Eckington. But, unlike Rue, they were ineffectual, Tsanov realized one evening, when he saw some rats scare them away from their food. “The rats punked them,” he says. “It’s like you have a kid and they’re supposed to be the track champion and then they get dead last.” Partly, he blames himself for feeding the cats in the evening when rodents are active. He started feeding the cats less food earlier in the day and hasn’t seen the rats since. “They figured out that there’s no constant supply of food,” he says. 

Tracy Stannard, owner of Broad Branch Market in Chevy Chase, reached out to HRA last year after she found herself packing up her store every night like it was a pop-up, though she never saw more than one mouse at a time on the cameras. “Mice don’t jump into a loaf of bread and eat the whole thing,” she says. “They jump into every loaf of bread.” It was her first rodent problem in 13 years of business.

But by the time Mac and Cheese arrived, Tannard had already hired a professional and had the problem taken care of. HRA adoptions director Ashley Valm says there are fewer cats in the program today as the HRA has developed better relationships with community cat feeders and the behavioral team has improved its training. They also took in fewer cats this year. Pet advocates speculate that could change as eviction moratoriums are lifted. 

The program is not currently taking applications. Previously, applicants would fill out a form online and then HRA representatives would reach out to confirm that the space would be appropriate for these cats. “We have these undersocialized cats that previously we had no outcome options for and now there are people climbing up the walls to get these cats,” Valm says. This is a good problem for a shelter to have, in her estimation, even if adopters don’t like to hear it. Similar programs are being developed at Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center and Laurel Cats.

Although there’s little work at Broad Branch, Mac and Cheese now have a home in Chevy Chase. A brown tabby and a Russian blue, respectively, they stick to the basement where they have the run of the place. They can be hard to find and when found, they look at you as if you’re interrupting. Outcomes such as these—a home where the cats can thrive—are what the program aims for. “We are not a store where you go to pick up a product to solve a problem for you,” Valm says. “We are an animal welfare organization.”

For employees, the cats can be a welcome addition. “[Rue’s] been a good outlet for the employees,” Williams says. “It’s relaxing to just interact with her.” She still prefers the outdoors but in the years that she’s been at Greenstreet, she has grown comfortable with employees to the point that they can pick her up, though she meows softly in protest. 

For Tsanov, enjoying that relaxing presence, like he did growing up in Bulgaria, is part of what piqued his interest in the program. “Cats in the neighborhood bring calm, comfort,” he says. “I really like that and I missed it.” Today, Sam and Lucy are cherished neighborhood characters.

But it’s a gamble. “[The HRA] gave me the scenario,” Tsanov says. “Some of them could be more amicable and affectionate, others remain wild forever and you just keep your distance.” In this case, it turned out to be the former. Of the two, Lucy is friendlier, approaching visitors for pets while Sam watches wide-eyed from behind.

Sam and Lucy represent another program trend, which is that most cats end up with homeowners rather than at businesses. But when they arrived, some neighbors raised an eyebrow. Moving the cats somewhere new entails keeping them confined for at least two weeks until they’re accustomed to the area, but unwitting neighbors called the cops. “People walking by see a giant cage with two cats inside for two weeks and you can imagine what they’re thinking,” Tsanov says. 

Others remain skeptical of people, but the pandemic seems to have had some effect on Prima. She used to scarcely be seen during operating hours, but now she walks freely among groups of people, wandering the bar like she’s part employee, patron, and owner. “COVID has changed her,” says Bri, a bartender in the taproom. “It’s made her more social and a better cat.” She notes that children still cause her hair to stand on end.

Still, the scars she gave are hard to forget. “She’s a killer,” Cheston says. “She’s good for three pets and then she’s done with you. It’s all a ploy to bring you in close and then she can eat your face.”

This story has been updated to correct the name of the owner of Broad Branch Market.

Last year, Jessie Marrero and Lou Bernard quietly celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month, which spans from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. The general managers of Qui Qui and Roy Boys, respectively, used their social media platforms to highlight their Hispanic colleagues in the hospitality industry, but kept it limited in deference to ongoing Black Lives Matter demonstrations. This year, they had greater ambitions.

D.C. restaurant workers came together to mark Hispanic Heritage Month by making specialty cocktails and offering food specials throughout the month. To cap things off, they’re throwing a fiesta at Roy Boys in Shaw on Oct. 13. Highlighting Hispanic employees’ contributions to the D.C. dining scene remained a focus, but they also wanted to share more Latin cuisines with District diners and create a space to gather.

Bars participating in the Oct. 13 fiesta include Espita, Allegory, Never Looked Better, and The Mirror. A bartender from each location is crafting a cocktail showcasing their Hispanic heritage. James Lanfranchi of Never Looked Better will serve a spirit-forward cocktail called “Nelumbos” with Dominican rum, while Oaxacan-born Daniel Sánchez will make “A Tale of Two Cities” at Espita with either mezcal or gin. The fiesta starts at 4 p.m. No tickets necessary.

Hispanic restaurant employees also paused to take stock of what they survived over the past 18 months—from cooking becoming lethal to staffing crises, violent diners, absent transportation, grief, and shifting mandates. Some couldn’t qualify for unemployment benefits and faced food insecurity. 

“We’re all talking about [the] food and beverage industry and how a lot of us suffered,” says Qui Qui chef and owner Ismael Mendez. “But a lot of us didn’t look at the people who were behind the scenes. They had it way worse, honestly.” 

Marrero and Bernard have long wanted to shine a light on Hispanic workers in diner-facing positions at both high-end restaurants and neighborhood bars. “People forget that Hispanics do just as much in ‘front of the house,’” Marrero says. “I want people to see that we’ve been serving you this entire time and you may not have noticed.” Marrero is the granddaughter of Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants and Bernard immigrated from Bolivia.

Showcasing them matters, Marrero says, because bringing greater visibility to their work could inspire others to grow and take on new roles in the restaurant and not feel pigeon-holed into working either in the kitchen or as support staff. 

Immigrants fill many critical roles. “Hispanics do the majority of [work],” Mendez says. “They deliver food, they’re in the kitchen, they’re dishwashers, they work at the laundromats, dry cleaning. They’re the backbone.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey, there were nearly 1.9 million foreign-born workers in the accommodation and food services industry, a number which doesn’t include the adjacent industries Mendez refers to. Some are still reeling from losing their jobs or experiencing a reduction in hours. “People that have worked for major companies or companies for a long time, they feel betrayed in a sense,” he says.

For many denied unemployment benefits because of their immigration status, the pandemic was devastating. Restaurants like Succotash in Penn Quarter donated meals to unemployed restaurant workers, but Bernard says some Spanish speakers missed these opportunities, especially if they weren’t on social media.

Some started cottage industries to stay afloat. Margarita Crespo, a sous-chef at Roy Boys before the pandemic, began selling tacos like her mother made in Guerrero, Mexico. They were simple and something she didn’t notice others selling in the area unlike the pan dulce pastries she first considered. She considered the business a success after bringing in between $600 and $800 on weekends from customers.

Crespo advertised the pop-up on Facebook. It went so well that Roy Boys incorporated her tacos into a rebrand. Demand was slacking for their then oyster-focused menu and after a co-worker tried her tacos, she proposed a menu change to management and arranged a tasting. The restaurant appointed her head chef, and today, next to the Roys Boys sign, there’s another for Rita’s Tacos.

Crespo will serve her tacos at the fiesta on Oct. 13, alongside dishes from a few others. The Commodore’s head chef Noah Ramirez plans to make fried plantains and smoked beans—a Southern twist on the meals he had during summers spent with family outside of San Miguel, El Salvador. A number of Salvadoran-inspired specials have also made their way onto Commodore’s menu.

Like Mendez, Ramirez says he joined the festivities to share new dishes with D.C. and to show support for unemployed and underemployed kitchen workers. Some of the proceeds from the fiesta will go to CASA de Maryland, an “immigrant and Latino advocacy organization.”

In addition to Qui Qui’s Puerto Rican fare, Mendez serves rotating Mexican and Salvadoran specials at his Shaw restaurant. His mother is Mexican and one of his staff members is Salvadoran. For the fiesta, the team plans to make pernil (Puerto Rican pork shoulder) and pupusas. 

Marrero hopes to draw a range of people, from those familiar to those curious. That’s what happened at Casa Kantuta—a Bolivian pop-up Bernard helped run in August that was packed nightly. Kantuta brought the Hispanic community together while simultaneously introducing people to Bolivian culture.

Despite making it through the first 18 months of the pandemic, and inspiring stories like Crespo’s, memories of the darkest months haven’t been wiped away. Some Hispanic restaurant workers are still looking for recognition for perseverance and willingness to keep working in dangerous situations. “It made a big difference that we never left our jobs,” Sánchez says. Without us, he adds, “everything falls apart.”

Correction: This story initially misspelled Jesse Marrero’s last name.

When Bobby Bump, a former lead brewer at Right Proper Brewing Company, first proposed having non-brewing staff members create their own beers, he thought they might suggest a name and possibly a flavor profile. What he didn’t expect was a fully-formed recipe, like the one bartender Eamoni Tate-Collier shared for Strawberry High in 2019. The hazy IPA is brewed with a strawberry purée, hibiscus, and rose petals. It sold well, and she brewed another beer with Right Proper in early 2020.

This fall, Tate-Collier will take her brewing aspirations further by launching her own company, Urban Garden Brewing. The beers will build on the style she developed at Right Proper where she brewed with herb blends. Chamolite, for example, is an ale brewed with chamomile and honey. To start she’ll use Right Proper’s existing facilities, doing what’s known as “contract brewing.” UGB joins two other Black-owned breweries in the District—Sankofa Beer Company and Soul Mega, that use the same strategy. Of the roughly 8,500 breweries in the U.S., less than one percent are Black-owned.

UGB will double as a distribution company with the aim of helping other BIPOC producers get their products in front of more Washingtonians. And after starting a brewery, structural barriers interfere with the next step of getting beers onto store shelves and into kegs at bars. UGB joins a recent wave of Black-owned local businesses working to help others succeed. 

Tate-Collier’s interest in beer can be traced back to working in the hospitality industry as a teenager. Before she could legally drink she says she had to learn the difference between beer varieties based on their smell. When she joined Right Proper six years ago, a manager gifted her equipment so she could try her hand at home brewing.

While Strawberry High wasn’t her first beer, it was the one that focused her ambitions. “To watch it come from a thought in my head and for it to taste exactly like I thought it would, it was the best opportunity in the world,” Tate-Collier says. “It solidified that I can do this, that my beer will be good.”

Her clarity of vision impressed Bump. “All the questions that I would have asked she already knew the answer to,” he says. Bump admired the style and ethos of her brewing as well, from developing flavor through herbs and spices to sourcing ingredients from local, Black-owned businesses. Bump also started as a home brewer. Many commercial brewers start that way. 

Tate-Collier decided to pursue commercial brewing in 2019 after attending a conference hosted by DMV Black Restaurant Week at Georgetown University. She met other Black brewers and interacted with representatives from city agencies who provided information on business licensing. “[DMV Black Restaurant Week] helped me figure out the next step,” she says, noting that she has attended other DMVBRW trainings as well. 

Where DMVBRW and Right Proper supported Tate-Collier, she says others haven’t. An important step for upcoming brewers is collaborating with established breweries, like Tate-Collier’s beers with Right Proper. After being invited to collaborate by another local brewery owner, she says the onsite brewers shunned her. “I left in frustrated tears,” she says. “They looked at me like, ‘Who is this girl? Who is this Black girl?’”

Tate-Collier declined to identify the brewery. “I don’t want to throw an establishment under the bus as a whole,” she explains. “Because it wasn’t necessarily the brewery itself, but it was the people that work in the brewery.” The experience only further motivated her. “I learned, I grew, and I’m actually happy for the experience because it just gave me more fuel.” 

Elsewhere she says her beer was dismissed as “girly.” “Baby, I lift kegs,” she says. “I don’t make ‘girly’ beer.’ There’s no such thing as ‘girly’ beer.” Her beer, however, does appeal to beer drinkers who don’t love an intensely bitter flavor profile, like her grandfather. She takes it as a positive sign that he requests a case of her home brew when she visits. “The flowers and herbs that I use balance with the hoppiness.”

Then there are market challenges. D.C. isn’t saturated with breweries like Seattle—which Red Bear Brewing Co owners cited as the reason for their move from the other Washington— but the current distribution system can keep newer producers from entering, according to Right Proper co-owner Leah Cheston. “They’re good at what they do,” Cheston says, referring to major distributors. “But they generally cater to the larger accounts.”

Bev (Anheuser-Busch) and MolsonCoors, for example, sell around 65 percent of beer available and are the primary clients of 90 percent of beer distributors in the U.S. Their dominance lets them sell at cheaper prices and sometimes even dictate who distributors work with, effectively outpricing smaller producers and keeping them from retailers. While D.C. does allow producers to sell directly to retailers, and many liquor producers take advantage of these policies, most beer sold in D.C. still passes through a distributor. 

Tate-Collier saw these hurdles early on in a conversation with Cheston and realized that if she started a brewery, she might not find a distributor. In an “aha moment,” Tate-Collier decided to make distribution of her beer and others’ nascent products part of UGB’s ultimate goals once her business is fully operational. “What’s important for me is to be able to create an infrastructure that’s going to help the next brewers, the next winemakers,” she says. 

Her mission echoes those who supported her along the way, like the founders of DMVBRW. “These small businesses are not only the fabric of our community, but they cycle the economy, keep the dimes, and keep the culture,” says DMVBRW co-founder Furard Tate. He’s also Tate-Collier’s uncle.

The name Urban Garden Brewing only partly refers to Tate-Collier’s penchant for sourcing fresh ingredients. It also hints at Tate-Collier’s goal of uplifting Black-producers. “D.C. began to feel like a garden of dreams deferred,” she says. “As we watch the city that we grew up in rapidly change, we wanted to begin ‘planting our seeds’ by starting a movement that uplifts the urban community.”

Try UGB starting Sept. 25 at Culture Coffee Too in Fort Totten and at Right Proper in Shaw for as long as supplies last. Chamolite, a light ale brewed with chamomile, will be available at the former in a can; and Collective Consciousness, a wild ale brewed with passionfruit and guava, will be available on draft at the latter. The Collective Consciousness is a collaboration with An Indivisible Art Collective. Both will be available on the 25th at Right Proper as part of the Black Beer Garden, an event celebrating Black breweries put on by the Black Brew Movement. DC Beer has more details about the event.

UBG is planning its first large-scale production for early November following a crowd-funding drive. The fundraising link isn’t live yet, but more information will be posted here.

Behind the bar at The New Elroy, alongside the Jim Beam and Patron, sit several new bottles: Durante Rum, Seven 16 Vodka, E’Thal 56 Vodka, Ma’Hees Brandy, Sankofa Gin, and Whiskey Wright. They stand out because they all come from local Black entrepreneurs. Donna Durante-Miller owns the H Street NE bar, which has become a hub for sampling Black-owned spirits like her namesake rum. 

Even though figures like Nathan “Nearest” Green, a formerly enslaved person who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey are present throughout the history of American spirits, the industry is dominated by White men. None of the distilleries in D.C. proper are Black-owned, even though the District’s population is roughly half Black. Six newcomers hope to shake up the market.

Given the high costs of distilling in D.C., the business owners behind the young brands distill out of Whiskey Wright’s facility near Charlottesville, Virginia. You can find the products in pockets of D.C. and Maryland, bringing locals a taste of something different—whether that’s Sankofa’s berry-forward gin or Whiskey Wright’s smoked cherrywood whiskey.

Edwin Wright laid the foundation for these brands to succeed by opening his Virginia distillery in 2018. His business partner, Ray Robinson, visited The New Elroy the same year and chatted up Durante-Miller. She spoke of her desire to produce rum and the inspiration she took from watching her grandmother make it during the summers she spent in Puerto Rico. They helped each other out. The New Elroy became the first bar to serve Whiskey Wright and the Charlottesville distillery helped Durante-Miller realize her dream of recreating her grandmother’s rum.

“It was meant to be,” Wright says. Durante-Miller shared what she remembered about her grandmother’s recipe and they refined the flavor profile over several tastings. Durante debuted in 2019. The other entrepreneurs forged similar paths.

In addition to supporting Black entrepreneurship, the incentives for Wright are financial. The biggest spirit companies have diverse portfolios. Diageo, for example, is behind dozens of brands from Johnnie Walker to Captain Morgan. Locally, distilleries like Jos. A. Magnus offer both Joseph Magnus Bourbon and Vigilant Gin. Wright wanted similar flexibility.

That reasoning gave rise to Seven 16 Vodka, whose owners are investors in the distillery. “We elected to move our portion to a new brand that had to be developed, but one that we could come up with,” says co-owner Aaron Person. They went with vodka because they like the neutral spirit and thought it would play well with consumers who don’t enjoy whiskey. Seven 16 Vodka was ready in 2019, but the pandemic delayed its release. Its name comes from the legislation that created the District in 1790. The Residence Act passed on July 16.

Renae Davis created E’Thal 56 after picking up on the business potential at a Durante rum launch party. The spirit is named after Davis’ mother, Ethel Callahan, who was born in 1956. “I can have other people help me celebrate my mom in a good way,” she says. “That’s just bringing family and friends together.” It’s 80 proof, compared to 100-proof Seven 16 vodka. They taste different because of distinct filtration processes.

Sankofa’s founders knew Person and saw an opportunity to create a fruit-forward alternative to commonly found dry gins like Tanqueray and Beefeater. “First rule of business is don’t start a business,” says co-founder Mike Lee. “Fill a void.” E’Thal and Sankofa debuted in 2020 and 2021, respectively. (Sankofa Gin is not affiliated with Sankofa Beer.)

Ma’Hees only launched this summer. Founder Glenn Stewart, Sr. became interested in distilling after meeting Robinson and seeing the potential to create a family business. The two-year brandy finishes with notes of cherry and vanilla. Because of Whiskey Wright’s small size, they source the unfinished brandy from a California distillery and age it at Whiskey Wright in French oak casks. 

Given the barriers to entry in the distilling field, strategies like sharing a distillery or sourcing base spirits from existing distilleries are common and offer emerging producers a way in. A distillery license alone can be prohibitively expensive. In D.C., they cost $6,000 annually as compared to $2,000 in Maryland and $450 in Virginia. Factor in rent and opening in Virginia becomes an easy decision, especially with warehouse space being somewhat rare in the District.

Then there are required legal endorsements, like a federal Certificate of Label Approval. “The COLA process was challenging just because that was completely brand new,” Wright says. It took several tries to get the label wording approved. After opening the distillery, almost a year passed before Wright could actually make a sale. “We were young and hungry and thought, man, we’re gonna make this and we can make a whole bunch of money. It didn’t materialize as quickly as we thought it would.”

After that experience though, Wright was able to guide others through the same steps. “We’ve helped so many other people in this business [by] giving them a lot of information that a lot of other people wouldn’t give because they want to charge a lot of money for it,” Wright says. By now he feels he has the processes down pretty well.

Getting legal approval isn’t the same as getting into stores and bars. There are further hurdles. First, you have to find a willing distributor. “You have a product,” Wright explains. “You like it and other people like it, and you just expect the distributor to take it and make you a millionaire. That really doesn’t happen.” Larger distributors sometimes help with legal endorsements, like registering the brand in a new state, which can cost $500, according to Wright. “They’ll get you into more markets more quickly.”

But making those connections is difficult when a distributor feels that they are already full up on gins, for example. “Like with any industry,” says Sankofa co-founder Alpha Lee, “it’s more important who you know than what you know.” Alpha and Mike are brothers. Without a distributor, spirit owners are left going from one liquor store to another asking to hold tastings. This proved difficult in 2020. Person was told to return when more people recognized their vodka even though tastings are how spirit owners build that recognition. 

Fortunately they found allies in The New Elroy, Minnesota Liquors in Randle Highlands, and Culture Coffee Too in Fort Totten. The liquor store sells the Black-owned liquor brands and the coffee shop hosted a series of tastings in partnership with DMV Black Restaurant Week. 

Wright believes the role of distributors is waning, especially because the pandemic accelerated online ordering. “With the internet, it’s becoming less of a need,” he says. “People demanded certain things and that changed the industry.”

He hopes that Maryland will soon pass legislation mirroring a new law in Kentucky that allows distilleries to ship directly to consumers in states that have reciprocal laws. Legislation like this, Wright says, would be “momentous” for smaller distilleries that feel hampered by distributor fees. Most of Wright’s customers are in Maryland. The Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control board briefly allowed distilleries to ship directly to consumers during 2020, but no longer. 

Like with Wright and Durante-Miller finding each other at the right time, the distillers feel they’re hitting the market right when consumers are looking to support BIPOC-owned brands. “With all the social things going on in the past two years, there’s a lot of people that wanna buy Black,” says Mike from Sankofa. While distributors haven’t come easy, neighborhood tastings, like those at Culture Coffee Too, have been successful.

Wright calls it a renaissance for Black business owners. “[The industry] is dominated by White men, but it is very attractive because you wanna drink something that is made by somebody like you and you wanna support people who are building and trying to put money in your community,” he says, noting that he doesn’t charge Black-owned brands the prices they would potentially encounter if they tried to distill elsewhere. “You can be an entrepreneur, but if you can’t help other people be an entrepreneur, then what are you doing?”

Beyond creating a high-quality spirit, Wright stresses that ownership is critical. “One of the main things we started for was giving something to our kids,” he says. “Being able to provide something down the line.”

For the others, ownership holds the same appeal. “It’s about building something,” Stewart says. “My kids, my family—I gotta give them something before I leave this earth. My people, my family never had the chance to and I have this chance now. I put in all the leg work so that when they get older they don’t have to.”

You can find bottles at select stores throughout D.C. and Maryland, according to the founders. All of them are available at The New Elroy and Minnesota Liquors. Shop for Sankofa, Seven 16, and E’Thal 56 at Riggs Liquors in Fort Totten. Ma’Hees and Whiskey Wright are for sale at Good Ole Reliable Liquors in Langdon. Durante and E’Thal 56 can be found at Kovak’s in Trinidad. Seven 16 and Whiskey Wright are on the shelves at the Georgia Avenue Food Barn in Brightwood.