Uptown Cafe has officially reopened for business as of Monday, Oct. 14 after approximately eight long months of reconstruction following the devastating flood of the Uptown complex.
“It is the first week, but it’s one of the craziest weeks we’ve ever had,” said store manager Aris Fetterling-Hood. “It’s been insane, but in a really nice way. We got to see all our regulars that we haven’t seen in months, which has been awesome. Everyone’s excited to get back in.”
While the cafe wasn’t able to do any structural renovations due to leasing, the amenities inside have been updated.
“We took this time as an opportunity to update. We changed all the light fixtures, [added] to a lot of the soft seating, chairs, some of the tables and [even] got new fridges,” Fetterling-Hood said. “We’re going to start doing more retail, like grab-and-go and frozen [offerings].”
While the shop was being reconstructed, staff remained employed and patient for reopening.
“We were lucky in that our building insurance and our business insurance overlapped, so we were able to get paid most of what we would make this whole time. We had [staff] come in as needed, but probably six months of it was just, ‘Hope you’re doing well,’” Fetterling-Hood said. “Some people got a second job to fill time. It was so boring. It was like a second pandemic for us.”
Not only were the rebuilding efforts long and tedious, but the staff’s connections were strained.
“I’m so used to seeing my family at work every day, so while we were gone, I texted everybody the first week that we were closed, ‘Hey, I’d still like to see all of you. Let’s get together every Sunday and have a family day.’ We did that for a couple of months,” said store manager Basil Lindner.
In addition to new amenities inside the cafe, changes to the menu have been implemented, including expanded vegan options.
“We did some pretty big menu changes that we were a little bit nervous about, and everyone’s been really positive about it, which is great,” Fetterling-Hood said. “It’s just the food menu right now, but we took a lot of our classic uptown meals off the menu. One, to keep things a little bit more affordable, because meat prices have been crazy, and two, because it’s time to do menu updates. We no longer have bacon, so we don’t have turkey avocado anymore or the BLT. We changed our breakfast menu, so both of those breakfast sandwiches are different now, and people have been overwhelmingly positive about it, which is great. We’re excited about [the changes]. We added a lot more vegan options, or things that could easily be made vegan, but still keeping a lot of those meat options on there as well.”
Located right off of campus by the Promenade apartment complexes, Uptown Cafe welcomes Valpo students, and the greater community, to their establishment.
“We’re excited to see everybody and [welcome you all] back,” Lindner said.
Based in New York, Stephen Freeman is a Senior Editor at Trending Insurance News. Previously he has worked for Forbes and The Huffington Post. Steven is a graduate of Risk Management at the University of New York.