South L.A. restaurants return to “normal”

Los Angeles county’s reopening on June 15 permitted restaurants to open at 100% capacity for indoor dining, relieving many who were financially impacted by the L.A. Department of Public Health’s restrictions. (However, masks are recommended regardless of vaccination status.)

Restaurant owners are now advancing with their plans to return to normalcy. The owners of Hotville Chicken, Holbox and With Love Market and Cafe spoke about their adaptation to change, the challenges the coronavirus inflicted and the value of face-to-face interaction with their customers. 

Hotville Chicken

Kim Prince, owner of Hotville Chicken, launched the Nashville Hot Chicken shack in Los Angeles about three months before the pandemic hit the country. The Prince family’s historic spicy fried chicken has been around since the 1930s and has migrated to the West thanks to social media.

When indoor dining was no longer a possibility, Prince made “a quick pivot” and partnered with UberEats — providing an exclusive online menu and third-party delivery service. 

“[When] I started off as a pop-up, social media was my main means of getting information out there that we were doing chicken in L.A.,” Prince said. “[It] seems to be one of the main ways that we’re finding a particular …niche of our customer base.”

Another boon to Hotville’s success was the public’s support of minority and women-owned small businesses in light of the Black Lives Matter protests that occurred last summer. Prince called the sudden publicity “a yo-yo effect” as sales rocketed. 

“Our adaptation has been to act like we’re a brand new restaurant. People are still finding us,” Prince said. “We’ve been adapting to what it’s like to truly market ourselves and make sure we get the exposure [to let] people know that we still exist and that we have indoor dining now.” 

Faith and family were Prince’s strongest motivators as she navigated a turbulent year as co-owner of the restaurant. Though Prince said her faith was surely “stretched,” the trait her and all her relatives shared saw her through: resilience. Prince preaches this perspective to her staff. 

“At Hotville, because we operate like a family, iron sharpens iron,” she said. “I feel like my staff is motivated because I’m motivated. They’re encouraged because they have some place to work that’s a positive environment.”

Prince’s motivation — stemming from her pride in her family’s legacy — is to make sure Hotville Chicken continues to prosper. She can now look back on 2020 and appreciate that Hotville managed to push through. 

More than anything, Hotville Chicken thrives on the familial atmosphere between the customers and employees. After all, dining at Hotville is meant to feel like being welcomed into a home.  

“Because, you know, [everybody] needs to walk out with a smile,” Prince said. “I want everybody to not only enjoy their meal, but enjoy their stay so they want to come back and we get lots of people that come back. So we’re winning in that regard. Definitely.”

Holbox

Holbox, located in community center Mercado La Paloma, serves a modern style of seafood influenced by the southern and coastal regions of Mexico. Holbox temporarily closed when the pandemic shut down indoor dining. Eventually, the business was forced to alter their typical dining experience to follow coronavirus guidelines.

To adapt to this new environment, their first step was mastering one important tool: technology. 

The Holbox website added an exclusive menu with family package meals and cook-at-home kits that were a great success. 

This virtual solution enabled a new path of opportunity for Holbox. In August, they will launch a partnership with nationwide platform, Goldbelly — an online marketplace that ships featured products from restaurants to people around the country. Customers will be able to order meal kits with instructions on how to assemble Holbox’s distinctive dishes. 

Chef and owner Gilberto Cetina expressed his gratitude for the steady business and the opportunity to learn how to better serve their customer base. By thinking about takeout service creatively, he discovered he could facilitate an unforgettable takeout experience just as special as being seated inside Holbox. 

“There is a newfound appreciation for being in the kitchen and interacting with guests, serving guests directly and collaborating with [the] team,” Cetina said. “So all of those things: the idea of coming in, and being able to cook and share my culture and my roots and where I come from with customers. That’s, I think, the main thing. It’s always been the main thing.” 

For now, Holbox will continue to develop their new home delivery and catering arms to offer a variety of options and services to their clientele. Eventually, they hope to open a second location in the future. 

“I think there’s a newfound joy in working, working hard, and having to work overtime some days that maybe wasn’t there before,” Cetina said. “As things are coming back and we start to feel the rush of busy services again, and that could be a thing. But just enjoying the day-to-day is what I’m enjoying the most right now.”

With Love Market & Cafe

With Love Market & Cafe is a community-owned business that addresses the needs of the Los Angeles populace. It provides access to healthy food, quality local jobs and a safe space for those in need. With Love has established itself as a “self-sustaining community, impactful social enterprise”.

The pandemic restricted several of their key core community outreach programs like free bilingual classes and food service. In response, grocery curbside pickup and home delivery became the center of With Love’s operations. 

“We started a bunch of food box programs, pay-it-forward programs where people could buy boxes of food with basic essentials for families in need.” With Love owner Andrew McDowell said. “We very much became a kind of hand-to-mouth service group, utilizing our grocery and our ability to source bulk products from different vendors.”

In spite of the difficulties coronavirus restrictions imposed, With Love refused to let the pandemic stop them from providing their staff consistent support and income.

“We told our staff, ‘Anybody that wants to keep working, we’re going to keep. We’re going to give you hours, [and] we’re going to make sure you get paid, so you can pay your bills’,” McDowell said. “We committed to all of our staff that [if] they wanted to stay, that [they] would have a job. So we never laid off one employee related to the pandemic.”

Listening to employees, community investors and customers allowed With Love to continue to be a safe space that could serve its community.

“‘How do we figure out how to invest, listen to the community and respond to meet the needs?’ … that really helped us pivot well because we asked a lot of questions and we listened to a lot of people, and that gave us a sense of where the needs were,” he said. 

McDowell is now working to transition back to prepared food and a safe environment for employees and customers to grocery shop and eat with minimal contact. He says “trying to create those safe spaces in our neighborhood [is] important.”

With Love has always been focused on how to best serve their neighbors in the community. Above all, they prioritize community impact to make lives better in any way they can.

“I think that people are beginning to realize that supporting your community is essential,” McDowell said. “The need and importance for supporting small businesses, specifically businesses that focus on your immediate community, is vital. It’s always been important, but I don’t think people were as aware of how important it [was] until the pandemic.”