local business

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

Man Arrested After Door Incident at DCA — “A passenger on a flight operated by Frontier Airlines was taken into custody at Reagan National Airport Saturday, after allegedly using the emergency slide to exit the airplane, officials said.” [Washington Post, Twitter]

Metrobus Rides Are Free, For Now — “To help stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, Metrobus riders will be required to board using the rear doors and will not have to tap their fare cards, according to a letter sent to employees Sunday.
The change, which begins Tuesday, means rides essentially are free.” [Washington Post]

Don’t Flush Wipes Down the Toilet — From Arlington County Board Chair Libby Garvey: “Do NOT put wipes, paper towels etc in the toilet! They severely damage water treatment.” [Twitter, CNN]

County Trying to Help Small Businesses — “To mitigate some of the challenges and hardships experienced by small businesses as a result of COVID-19 related closures and modifications, Arlington County is finding new ways to reach out to business owners with counsel, resources and other options.” [Arlington County]

County Offers Help with Utility Bills — “If you are struggling to pay a County utility bill (water/sewer/refuse) at this time, please call the DES Customer Contact Center at 703-228-5000, Monday-Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. You may be eligible for special payment arrangements without accrual of additional late fees.” [Twitter]

Coronavirus Fraud Task Force Formed — “In response to the increased threat of fraud presented by the coronavirus, federal and Virginia state law enforcement leaders announced today the formation of the Virginia Coronavirus Fraud Task Force.” [Press Release]

Marymount Mulls Commencement Alternatives — “This Wednesday, Marymount University announced to students, faculty and staff that the online-only class period that started this week will be extended through the end of the spring semester, including final exams. It was also decided that the traditional commencement ceremonies scheduled for May 2020 would be canceled.” [Press Release]

Overnight Lane Closures in Rosslyn — “N Lynn St, SB Lee Hwy and the ramps to and from I-66 in Rosslyn will see overnight work requiring lane closures or full closures Mon night 3/23 – Thu night 3/26 in relation to the Lynn St Esplanade project.” [VDOT, Twitter]

Small Business Shoutout: Groff Landscape Design

By ARLnow.com

This morning we’re continuing a series of articles to highlight the local businesses that advertise with ARLnow.com and help up keep the community informed during these trying times.

Our long-time sponsor Groff Landscape Design is a Clarendon-based business that takes a comprehensive, modern approach to landscape design. They help you design and build your dream backyard, and remove much of the stress usually associated with such a project.

There’s a reason why almost 75% of Groff business is either repeat clients or direct client referrals, and why they keep winning Houzz, Angie’s List, and Best of Arlington awards — they’re good.

Groff is continuing to serve clients and stay safe during the coronavirus outbreak, so if you wanted to take advantage of some extra time at home and start designing the landscaping of your dream, now is a good time to do it. Many of the consultations can be conducted via web-based video conferencing, and — of course — the work is done outside.

Thank you to Robert Groff and the team for your support of ARLnow.

Photo via Facebook

Weekend Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

About This Post — Due to lots of coronavirus-related news, we have a number of non-disease-related local links that we haven’t been able to get to over the past two weeks. We’re running a one-time Weekend Morning Notes post to clear our queue. This will replace the usual weekend discussion post.

Arlington Cherry Blossom Walk — “Cherry blossom season in the D.C. area is a wonderful time of year, and taking in the blossoms is a beloved tradition. WalkArlington has created a walk featuring a few of our favorite locations in Arlington where you can appreciate the blooms and enjoy all that springtime in Arlington has to offer.” [WalkArlington]

Median Signs Promote Census — “What is good for the goose apparently is not good for the gander – if, that is, the gander is the Arlington County government. Those driving the roadways of Arlington in recent weeks no doubt have seen a flurry of median signage calling attention to, and promoting participation in, the federal census.” [InsideNova]

Local Cat Makes Headlines –“An adorable cat with a jaw deformity can’t help but always stick her tongue out – and her owner has insisted she wouldn’t have her pet any other way. Pretty Kitty, five, from Arlington, Virginia, can only open her mouth a ‘small amount’, and has her tongue always sticking out thanks to the way her jaw formed.” [Daily Mail]

Instant Runoff Voting for Arlington? — “Voters in future Arlington County Board elections could find themselves using the ‘instant-runoff’ method rather than the current ‘winner-takes-it-all’ manner. Both houses of the General Assembly have approved and sent to Gov. Northam a measure allowing Arlington to conduct its County Board races using instant-runoff voting, also known as ‘ranked-choice’ voting.” [InsideNova]

Arlington-Based Textile Brand Profiled — “From a plant-filled studio in Arlington, Diana Johnson translates ideas in her head to paper by lettering, illustrating and painting. Using her background in graphic design, Johnson is able to transform her artwork digitally into handcrafted products like pillows, clutches, greeting cards and, most often, prints to add a little color to any space.” [Northern Virginia Magazine]

Green Valley Looks Forward — “Low-level sales of marijuana and other substances in the Green Valley community in the 1960s grew into a full-fledged, open-air ‘drug supermarket’ by the early 1980s, with the intersection of 24th Road South and Shirlington Road ground zero for the illegal operations. On March 7, leaders of the community looked back at those days, and committed themselves to ensuring a better future for their community.” [InsideNova]

Chamber Acquires ‘Awesome Women’ –“Awesome Women (AWE), the professional networking group founded in Arlington in 2014 that now has six chapters throughout the DC area, announced today that it will become a program of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce later this year. The Arlington Chamber will offer women-only networking events beginning in the fall, and will call the new program the Arlington Chamber Chapter of AWE.” [Arlington Chamber of Commerce]

Victim of Pentagon Stabbing Identified — “The man who was fatally stabbed Monday morning on the platform of the Pentagon Metro station has been identified as a 25-year-old from Northwest Washington, a spokesman for the transit agency said. Sean Ronaldo Golden, who lived near the District’s Brightwood Park neighborhood, died shortly after arriving at George Washington University Hospital, a report provided by Metro says.” [Washington Post]

New Pho Restaurant Opens on Columbia Pike — Pho Harmony, a carry-out Vietnamese noodle restaurant, has opened on the 3200 block of Columbia Pike. [Twitter]

And now here it is, your moment of zen…

Coronavirus Permanently Closes Champps at Pentagon Row

By Vernon Miles
1/4

(Updated on 2/23/20) The sports bar and restaurant Champps in Pentagon Row has permanently closed.

Coronavirus wasn’t the sole cause of the bar and restaurant’s demise — a staff member at the now-closed restaurant said they’d been struggling for months — but he said that it had been the final nail in the coffin.

“We’re battling through the leases but as soon as coronavirus came through [the company] decided they couldn’t keep operating the ones that were losing money,” the staff member said.

The Pentagon Row Champps first opened in 2001, shortly after 9/11, and donated the first couple days of beverage sales to a relief fund for victims of the attack on the Pentagon. It was one of the first large restaurants in the then-new shopping center.

In the classic Arlington cycle of restaurant death and rebirth, Twitter users both mourned the late restaurant and started wondering what could be next for the large space.

Local Catering Company Faces Possible Closure Due to Coronavirus

By Vernon Miles

Updated 3/23 — Owner Rich Vizard thanked the Arlington community for recent support, noted the sanitary precautions they are following, and thanked the County Treasurer for tax relief options passed after publication of the story.

Allspice Catering wants to thank the community for its support during these unprecedented times. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we respond to questions and orders. We want to stress that we are staying vigilant during this time and continue to follow all the ServSafe Guidelines to prevent the Coronavirus in a food establishment. We are committed to taking all precautions to protect our customers and our staff including being mindful of proper habits to follow outside of the workplace to protect ourselves and each other. I’d also like to thank Treasurer Carla de la Pava for taking quick decisive action on local tax relief options for restaurants and hotels. Be safe and take care of each other.

Earlier: In the span of a week or two, Allspice Catering (6017 Wilson Blvd) has gone from having a decent balance sheet to having roughly two months left to live — tops.

“There’s no business,” said owner Rich Vizard, owner of the company since he bought it from the original owners in 2013. “I normally do $15,000 a week. This week I had $235 in orders. We are completely, utterly dead in the water.”

Like Allspice Catering — formerly based in Rosslyn but now in Dominion Hills — businesses across Arlington have felt the strain of the coronavirus crisis. Allspice Catering has attempted to pivot to takeout, but it faces stiff competition against restaurants that are familiar and household names attempting to do the same, in a bid to survive.

Vizard said he recognized that people were more likely to order from a restaurant that they already knew and it puts his company at a significant disadvantage.

“We’ve done some takeout menus and had some personal takeout for people who want to order breakfast, lunch or dinner,” Vizard said. “We signed up for DoorDash and did a lot of promotion on social media.”

It wasn’t enough to keep the company from facing layoffs.

“In seven years I never had to lay off an employee, now I had to lay off all of them,” Vizard said. “The only one I’ve kept on is my chef because I can’t afford to lose him. I’m paying him full salary and I don’t know how.”

Vizard said his company has weathered government shutdowns and their original Rosslyn location being slated for demolition. Time after time, Vizard said his company had to fight its way to the finish line but he always knew they could come through.

“This one… we can’t,” Vizard said. “It’s so beyond our control. There’s just no business. We’re a heavily corporate catering company. Our bread and butter was corporate [events] and a few weddings, but everyone is teleworking and all the events are canceled.”

Vizard said all of the orders between the last week and the middle of April — $45,000 total — have canceled. Adding insult to injury was an order planned with Arlington County government that he called repeatedly to confirm, only to hear back after the meals had already been prepared that someone in the administration had forgotten to cancel the order.

“If we don’t pay a single bill and beg our landlord to extend us time, I think we could hold on for a month or two,” Vizard said. “After that we exhaust all lines of credit — two months max.”

While Alexandria is suspending its meal tax collection, Vizard shared an email correspondence with Arlington’s business tax supervisor saying businesses should continue paying their taxes to Arlington and there was no explicit permission from the state allowing Arlington to grant exceptions to tax collection for businesses in the event of a disease or other public health concern.

In the meantime, Vizard said he’s filed for a Small Business Association loan and he hopes takeout and gift certificates will be enough to weather the crisis.

“We have some inexpensive meals that can be delivered or picked up,” Vizard said. “Hopefully something good will happen… we’re going to try to ride it out as best we can and push off payments.”

File photo

New French Pastry Shop Coming to Rosslyn’s Colonial Village Shopping Center

By Vernon Miles
1/2

(Updated at 4:15 p.m.) A new French pastry shop is coming to Rosslyn this spring or summer, pandemic allowing.

In an era before social distancing and talk of quarantines, signs went up in the former Bean Good Coffee Pub space (1737 Wilson Blvd.) at the Colonial Village Shopping Center for Eclairons, a new cafe and bakery.

Signs in the window say the new restaurant will operate as a pastry shop, espresso bar and cafe serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The location is a spin-off of the Pastry Xpo Cafe in the Mosaic District in Fairfax. Staff at Pastry Xpo said that work is still ongoing inside Eclairons and the restaurant is not expected to open for “another few months.”

Arlington Restaurants Offer Free Meals to Families in Need

By Vernon Miles

(Updated at 5 p.m.) While Arlington teachers put together grocery gift cards for low-income families and nonprofits band together to address the economic impacts of the coronavirus, several local restaurateurs and the nonprofit Real Food for Kids are working to provide meals to families hit by the pandemic.

Chef David Guas, the owner of Bayou Bakery (1515 N. Courthouse Road) in Courthouse, has partnered with Real Food for Kids — a nonprofit that aims to promote healthy diets for children — to provide free, plant-based meals for Arlington children and their families.

Starting Tuesday, Guas committed to serving free lunches from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. during weekdays while Arlington Public Schools are closed, Real Food for Kids said in an email. This week the featured meal is New Orleans-style red beans and rice. Non-profit Fruitful Planet, associated with regional juice chain South Block, is also offering fresh fruit to accompany the meals.

“This is a complement to Arlington Public Schools’ efforts to serve at-risk families who are used to relying on the school lunch program,” a spokesperson for the organization said. “Many of these parents’ jobs are at risk due to the coronavirus, making a bad situation worse.”

Donations to help sustain the program can be made online. Other local organizations like the Arlington Food Assistance Center are also seeking assistance to provide food for those in need.

Separately, Joe’s Place Pizza & Pasta (5555 Lee Highway) is also offering free cheese pizzas and fresh salads to those most affected by the school closings and job cutbacks, starting tonight from 5-7 p.m. According to a press release, staff will deliver the food to the hood of cars to limit personal contact and maintain social distancing.

Medium Rare, meanwhile, has been delivering free meals to vulnerable seniors in the D.C. area since last week. The steak frites restaurant has a location in Virginia Square.

Even while hurting financially themselves, other restaurants throughout the region have been putting together specials and free meals to help families that frequently rely on school lunches have access to food during the pandemic.

Photo courtesy Real Food for Kids

Small Business Shoutout: Cook Bros.

By ARLnow.com
1/4

Today we’re continuing a series of articles to highlight the local businesses that advertise with ARLnow.com.

The coronavirus outbreak will bring significant hardship to many local businesses in Arlington, so we wanted to take an opportunity to recognize the advertisers who support us, in hopes that our readers support them.

Today we’re highlighting Cook Bros., Arlington’s No. 1 home remodeling firm and a long-time ARLnow advertiser.

Based in Arlington, on Lee Highway, and specializing in Arlington projects, Cook Bros. brings a wealth of local experience to those seeking to upgrade their homes. And renovating existing homes, when possible, can be a greener alternative to tearing down homes.

If you were thinking of a future remodeling project, now would be a great time to give Cook Bros. a call at 703-536-0900 or email at [email protected] and discuss the options.

Arlington Urging Restaurants to Close Dining Rooms

By ARLnow.com

(Updated at 9 p.m.) More than 80% of respondents to our poll this morning think Arlington restaurants should close for everything other than takeout or delivery.

Arlington County’s top officials agree.

Monday night, the county sent out a statement acknowledging that while it does not have the legal authority to force closures, it is urging restaurants to “take responsible action and switch from dine-in service to only offering carryout and delivery.”

The full statement is below.

States across the Country, including DC and Maryland have ordered all bars and restaurants to close for dine-in service as of 10:00 P.M.tonight (March 16). Arlington County does not have the legal authority to order the same.  However, we ask that Arlington bars and restaurants take responsible action and switch from dine-in service to only offering carryout and delivery. We have seen some restaurants get very creative with how to do carryout with social distancing. Encouraging carryout service is a good way to help these small businesses and their staffs make it through this challenging time.

We thank all those that have already done so, but we plead with all our bars and restaurants that have NOT yet closed their dining rooms; to do so as of 10:00 PM tonight (March 16) and not reopen until we can all work out safe ways for patrons to be served in person. Otherwise, we will likely be overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases and the health of everyone in Arlington will be in jeopardy.

We appreciate your partnership in keeping our community safe.

Libby Garvey. Arlington Board Chair
Mark Schwartz. Arlington County Manager

Among the restaurants in Arlington to close completely or offer takeout and delivery only are Ireland’s Four Courts, Jaleo, and — just announced tonight — The Liberty Tavern, Lyon Hall, and Northside Social.

It’s unclear how long local restaurants will be able to survive on takeout and delivery alone. Delivery apps take a large percentage of sales, while alcohol sales to dine-in customers make up a sizable portion of a restaurant’s profit margin.

Some are predicting an apocalyptic outcome.

“Many of the restaurants that close during the pandemic will not reopen their doors,” predicted an Eater article today. “Diners should also brace for a restaurant landscape that will be entirely different by the time — however near or far off it may be — they can be safely encouraged to enjoy a crowded night out again.”

Small Business Shoutout: Arrowine

By ARLnow.com

This morning we’re kicking off a series of articles to highlight the local businesses that advertise with ARLnow.com.

The coronavirus outbreak will bring significant hardship to many local businesses in Arlington, so we wanted to take an opportunity to recognize the advertisers who support us, in hopes that our readers support them.

Arrowine (4508 Lee Highway) is one of ARLnow’s longest-running advertisers. It recently renovated, expanding its cheese selection and adding a deli counter and a growler fill station.

It is considered by some to be the best wine shop in Virginia. It is certainly one of those community-serving businesses that make Arlington a better place.

Social distancing is important to help slow the spread of disease, and we hope that those who want to stock up on wine and beer ahead of an extended stay at home might a) do so now, rather than later, and b) choose to do so at Arrowine rather than a more crowded, chain grocery store.

Arrowine said in a social media post over the weekend that it is “exploring how to best implement [delivery] service.” In the meantime, if you’d like to place a wine order or pickup, or to buy a gift card, you can do so online. Arrowine is open from 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. on Sunday.

Thank you, Arrowine, for your support of our news coverage.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9rcy9FhjlO/

Morning Poll: Should Restaurants Be Closed in Arlington?

By ARLnow.com

Over the weekend, in the midst of a pandemic, some local restaurants and bars were surprisingly crowded.

With sports leagues, recreational programs, major events, schools and many other facets of everyday life suspended or cancelled, in an effort to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases, the sight of revelers crowding D.C. area bars and restaurants prompted some outrage on social media.

While Gov. Ralph Northam banned public gatherings of 100 or more people on Sunday, that’s below new guidance from the CDC to nix any gathering of 50 or more people.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows and urged young people to stop flocking to bars.

“Remember that you can also be a vector or a carrier,” he said, according to Axios. “And even though you don’t get seriously ill, you could bring it to a person, who could bring it to a person, that would bring it to your grandfather, your grandmother or your elderly relative. That’s why everybody has to take this seriously, even the young.”

Some states and cities are taking the spread of disease through bars and restaurants seriously.

New York, Los Angeles and the District, along with states like Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, California and Washington, have imposed varying degrees of restaurant and/or nightclub closures. In most cases, takeout and delivery are still allowed.

Elsewhere, Arlington’s pseudo sister city of Hoboken, New Jersey has imposed a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., for all but those required to be at work.

Some Arlington restaurants, including Ireland’s Four Courts and Jaleo, have already closed.

Unfortunately, restaurant closures will have a devastating effect on all but the strongest restaurant businesses — read: mostly chains — at a time when restaurants in the D.C. area, along with their employees, are already hurting. On Saturday, restaurant reservation website OpenTable reported that across Virginia, reservations on its platform were down 39% and continuing to fall.

While Arlington may be limited in what it can do by the Dillon Rule, ideally what do you think the county should do?

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