CLEVELAND — Mexican restaurants around the state are hoping sales from this Cinco De Mayo will help them recover from the struggles they experienced during the pandemic.
Ed Galindo is the co-owner of Luchita’s Mexican restaurant on West 117th street in Cleveland.
For almost 40 years, Luchita’s has been serving delicious food and drinks. Then, the pandemic hit.
“Cinco de Mayo is the biggest day of the year. After the year we had last year, the last Cinco de Mayo was a disaster. Like I said we (were) down at least 70% of our sales on Cinco de Mayo last year as opposed to the previous years hoping to make some of that back,” said Galindo.
Luchita’s managed to stay open because of loyal customers and steady flow of deliveries, but they also had to make some very difficult decisions.
“It was just very tough to get through. We had to lay off a lot of people, people we didn’t want to layoff, but we needed to do what we had to to survive. Again, things are starting to get back to normal. Now we are having trouble finding people to work because we are getting a lot busier,” said Galindo.
The crew at Luchita’s is cleaning up and getting the restaurant ready for their big day.
“Hoping to catapult us into spring and summer, you know, get it started right try and do the best we can ya know serve as best as we can,” said Galindo.
