During a normal time of the year, El Palmar’s is usually filled up with customers who are big fans of their food. But during the lockdown, El Palmar has struggled to remain open throughout the year, and even now that it is open it continues to struggle.
Their business started in the year 2006 by the founder and current owner Andrea Hernandez who immigrated to The United States of America from Mexico in 2001 to start up a new life in America.
“I was really struggling to find any type of work in Mexico at all so I decided to go to America and start my own business and since then I have not looked back on my decision to leave.” Andrea Hernandez said.
Going into the year 2020, they El Palmar was experiencing a record high in their business finances with the increase of customers eating at their restaurant and they were hoping to continue with that trend.
But on march 14th 2020 they had to close down their business because of COVID-19 and they were not givin the option to remain open for in-person dining.
Hugo Vasquez, one of the cooks at El Palmar talked about the struggle of not having customers in the restaurant.
“It was very tough for us during that time because we were losing a lot of money because of the circumstance and because of that we had to take pay cuts which was really tough for all of us because some of us who work here have families to take care of and if we don’t have the right amount of money then we could not support our families.” Hugo Vasquez said.
But during the time frame when they were closed for in-person dining. Andrea Hernandez noticed that some of the other restaurants were recieving more financial benefits from the city of Chicago then their own business was getting and she believes the cause of it has to do with race.
“If you were to look at the restaurants that got more help from the city then our restaurant you would notice that the people who run those restaurants are predominantly white,” Andrea Hernandez said. “Whereas if you look at us we have received less money and I believe that is because we are a Latino/a run business.”
But despite all of that, their business has been able to survive because of the huge demand for take-out and the reopening of in-person dining at El Palmar.
“We are very happy though to see that there are still ton’s of people who are interested in our food even during a pandemic and because of this we are 100% certain that we will end up surviving because we have seen a huge surge in take out orders and we also have a sizable number of people in our restaurant for in-person dining.”
