Wichita cafe’s tale of government shutdown struggle featured on national news site
A Wichita restaurant was featured today in a story posted on the HuffPost website about the ripple effects of the government shutdown.
Cynthia Wilson, who along with her husband Craig Bjork owns Parsnipity Cafe on the ground floor of the Epic Center at 301 N. Main, was the subject of the story, with the headline: “A Little Cafe in Kansas Feels The Ripple Effects of the Government Shutdown.” The story, by author Dave Jamieson, was being featured on the site’s homepage on Wednesday afternoon.
Wilson, who also owns the LumpiaPalooza food truck, said the article’s author found her after she responded to a post searching for people who were being affected by the shutdown, which began on Dec. 22. In her message to the site, Wilson said, she detailed how her sales have taken a drastic hit, and said that the start of the plunge coincided with the start of the shutdown. The Epic Center leases offices to several government agencies, whose workers are being affected by the shutdown: The U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Secret Service and the FBI are among them.
Wilson said the author e-mailed her a link to the article as soon as it was posted, and reading it brought her to tears. She also was contacted this afternoon by the BBC in London, asking for an interview, she said.
“It’s a terrible stress,” she said. “I’m a mess. I don’t know what to do.”
Wilson said she’s noticed about a 35 percent drop in sales overall from this time last year. On the worst day since the shutdown started, sales were down 54 percent.
Wilson said that big groups of office workers that she and her staff see on a daily basis haven’t been in since the shutdown started. The building feels empty, and the cafe is deserted. So far, she’s responded by cutting cafe hours — opening later and closing earlier. She’s also cut some of her workers’ hours and worries she’ll have to cut some of them altogether.
She’s hoping there’s an end to the shutdown soon, and in the meantime, she hopes people who see the Huffpost article will stop in and give the cafe a try. There’s free parking in the Epic Center garage for customers who have their parking tickets validated at the restaurant, she added..
“My message to Wichita is help us out,” she said. “Come try it if you haven’t tried it out.”
You can read the HuffPost article here.
This story was originally published January 16, 2019 at 1:47 PM.
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