The Silver Lining of Covid

“I have very much enjoyed taking a well established, understood, and wonderful restaurant and being able to say I can break everything that we have established and reimagine El Barrio in a new light”

• Neville Baay, Owner, Operator, and Executive Chef at El Barrio

For mostCovid-19 has wreaked havoc.This continues as we approach, arrive at, and pass the one year mark of lockdown in the United State. And yet for others, this has been just the opportunity they needed to “reimagine” their business. The shove they needed to move from the groove they were stuck in. 

That some include Neville Baay, Owner, Operator, and Executive Chef at El Barrio; a traditional Mexican restaurant located in downtown birmingham. For the owner of El Barrio there has been one huge silver lining to Covid-19, and that has been the fact that because of Covid-19 he has been given the chance to tear down El Barrio and rebuild it to fit into this ‘new world’ that Covid-19 has created. 

Covid-19 has caused a breaking down of norms within the restaurant community that has allowed several restaurants, including El Barrio, to change their perspective and horizons. 

Comparatively owning a restaurant in the time of Covid-19 the situation has been far from ideal, but in some aspects it has been eye opening. 

For El Barrio their to-go orders have increased tenfold. While the business has gone down overall, it has allowed them to turn attention towards reimagining El Barrio and recreate it in a new atmosphere–an atmosphere filled with new expectations and new norms from customers and other restaurants alike. 

Overall covid has been, as can generally be agreed upon, bad, but there is one silver lining, and that has been the shift in people's expectations, norms, and perspectives. Because of this, places such as El Barrio have been given an opportunity that they have seized and taken full advantage of.