Nonprofit steps in to help small minority-owned restaurants across Atlanta stay in business

The owner of many smaller metro area restaurants, especially in underserved areas, say they are really struggling.

Channel 2′s Berndt Petersen was in southwest Atlanta where a local nonprofit is working to lift them up.

The Buenos Dias Café is inside the La Bodega Market. Business is good, but the cost to stay in business keeps going up.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

Jeannette Flores-Katz says she was taught how to make them when she was a little girl in El Salvador.

“Pupusa is a corn-stuffed tortilla. Back home it comes super-hot,” Flores-Katze said.

She learned from an expert.

“Oh, my God. Definitely my grandma, Juanita,” Flores-Katz said.

“How good is it?” Petersen asked.

“Delicious. You haven’t eaten pupusas all this time? Now you’re gonna live,” Flores-Katz said.

Flores-Katz and her husband Ken have run the Buenos Dias Café for 12 years, but the last three of those years have been hard.

“The majority of people think because the pandemic is gone everything is better. Actually, it’s worse,” Jeannette Flores-Katz said.

She says ingredients and rent cost much more.

TRENDING STORIES:

• Georgia rapper among 19 named in sweeping gang, drug indictment

• A man pushed a woman out of a Lamborghini to her death. He just learned his sentence

• A man offered a 13-year-old girl a ride, then trafficked her for 3 months at a metro Atlanta home

“We’re talking about recession. We’re talking about inflation,” Karinn Chavarria said.

Chavarria was at the restaurant along Murphy Avenue in southwest Atlanta on Tuesday to help. She’s with the Feed the Soul Foundation and Latin Restaurant Week.

In 2022, the nonprofit distributed $1.3 million to dozens of small minority-owned restaurants all over the metro, including the Buenos Dias Café.

“You guys are really bringing Salvadoran culture to the forefront of Atlanta cuisine,” Chavarria told Jeannette and Ken Flores-Katz.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

“These are all done. They’re cooling off,” Jeannette Flores-Katz said as she brought out another order of pupusas. She says the help from Feed the Soul arrived just in time.

She needs to be able to pay more employees to make more pupusas.

“You just grab it and take a bite,” Jeannette Flores-Katz said.

“How do I spell that,” Petersen asked.

“Mmmm! Mmmmm,” Jeannette Flores-Katz said.

IN OTHER NEWS: