SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The wild weather may have temporarily settled in Sacramento, but streets around the state capital remained blocked and further headaches for businesses like Magpie Café. Janel Inouye is a co-owner of the restaurant and said they lost power for a number of days beginning on New Year’s Eve, a major day for the hospitality industry.

“It’s a very low profit margin business," said Inouye. "It’s a pretty big blow to not be able to finish off your year strong and then start the next year in the way you had envisioned it. We’re still just trying to keep a place open for our friends and neighbors.”

Inouye added that the losses are in the thousands. They had planned to take advantage of New Year’s Day being on the weekend, which would have helped regain some of the lost revenue, but were unable.

“We were going to do a New Year’s Day brunch, which we stopped doing in 2020 when everything closed," she said. "We hadn’t gotten back to brunch. Our cooks said yeah let’s give it a go. So, we were going to try and do one day a year, but cards were stacked against us.”

Not only did they suffer a loss in sales, they also had to throw away a number of perishable food items as well.

A few doors down, Ramen 101 server Cheyenne Lo, who’s been at the restaurant for a year, said they have also been feeling the pain from the weather thanks to power outages.

 “We were able to preserve the meats at least," said Lo. "Everything else we had to throw out. So, I know we lost money through that as well."

Businesses in the city haven’t been able to gain the foot traffic once seen since many office workers now work remotely, Inouye and Lo both said. The constant deluge of rain and high winds Cheyenne said has further hurt what little foot traffic remains.

“I hear from my manager all the time, 'We’re going to go out of business if business doesn’t start picking up soon,'" said Lo. "I can already tell we are losing a bit of money due to the rain, but hopefully it does pick back up."

For Inouye, she said she too feels optimistic but says it hasn’t been easy.

“I want to say that I’m optimistic, but you know, it’s starting to feel like things are not as optimistic as maybe our minds want to tell us," she said.

With more storms on the way, Inouye added that she’ll have her chin up and do what she can to stay open.