Customers come to rescue
Mekong Cafe owner was ready to shut down over pandemic and power outage, but then help arrived
Sichanh Volp was about ready to give up. Mekong Cafe, the Milwaukee restaurant that Volp co-owns, was already hurting from the COVID-19 pandemic when on Aug. 10, a powerful storm ripped through the Milwaukee area, uprooting trees and knocking out power for days.
The power outage at Mekong Cafe, 5930 W. North Ave., lasted about two full days and caused an estimated $20,000 to $25,000 in losses, including from spoiled or potentially unsafe food, Volp said.
“I was ready to throw in the towel,” she said. But at the urging of friends, Volp launched a GoFundMe page seeking help. Since then, Mekong has received an outpouring of support from regulars, neighbors and other community members eager to help. As of Friday, the GoFundMe had raised more than $22,500.
“I was just beyond awe,” she said. “Everyone was just so ready to step in and help us.”
The restaurant has served Lao, Thai and Vietnamese dishes, some of them family recipes, since 2008 when it opened in Milwaukee’s Uptown Crossing neighborhood on the edge of Wauwatosa. Volp doesn’t think it would have survived without the outpouring of support.
“I think ... we would have had to close our doors permanently,” she said. “I was going to give up.”
That would have been a major disappointment to Mekong’s longtime customers and the surrounding community, which in recent years, has seen new businesses pop up along that strip of North Avenue, including the taqueria Paloma, craft brewery Vennture Brew Company and Italian
restaurant Ca’Lucchenzo.
“Right now we’re on the cusp of things really taking off, and that would be the worst time for them to fail, when we have all these other businesses coming,” said Tracy Staedter, a board member of the Uptown Crossing Business Improvement District and one of the people who encouraged Volp to start the GoFundMe.
‘It’s become a part of me’
The restaurant was the dream of Volp’s mother, Banh Phongsavat, who was born in Laos and cooked at the downtown Thai restaurant King and I before opening Mekong with her daughter.
Volp wanted to become a nurse, but she ended up giving up nursing school to help her mom run the restaurant. Initially, Volp didn’t know how to cook, but over time, she learned from her mom and has taken on more of the cooking responsibilities.
“I’ve been doing this for 13 years now, and it’s just become a part of me. I put my heart into every single thing I do now,” she said.
Despite that commitment, Mekong Cafe struggled during the pandemic, like so many other restaurants. When the state lockdown went into effect last year at the beginning of the pandemic, Mekong closed its dining room and its popular lunchtime buffet. It switched to offering takeout, which continues today.
For months, Mekong Cafe’s tables and chairs sat empty, until Volp decided to convert the dining room into an Asian grocery, which opened earlier this year and sells bags of rice, seasonings, cooking oils, canned and fresh vegetables and other staples.
Volp drained her savings making the switch from a dining room to a store with shelves, coolers and freezers, all filled with grocery items, she said. Volp had also added a sandwich counter, offering Vietnamese bánh mì and the Lao equivalent, khao jee pâté.
When the storm hit and Mekong lost power, the bags of mussels, shrimp, chicken dumplings, Asian vegetables and other food that packed the store’s freezers spoiled or could no longer be sold. The same went for the bulk meat items used by the restaurant side.
The restaurant had never lost power for so long, and never had to submit an insurance claim, Volp said.
Mekong Cafe regained power the evening of Aug. 12, a full two days after the storm, Volp said, but the restaurant and grocery didn’t reopen until Aug. 14. Even then, it wasn’t in full operation. Many of the freezer shelves remained empty and the sandwich counter wasn’t immediately reopened. Some dishes were out of stock. Initially, a disagreement with We Energies made it seem like she wouldn’t be able to file an insurance claim to recover the losses. That has since been resolved.
When Staedter heard about the problems Volp was encountering and the prospect the restaurant would close, she encouraged her to start the GoFundMe.
“I just went into problem-solving mode because I was like, ‘We have to keep this restaurant afloat,’ ” said Staedter, who lives near Mekong and is a patron as well. “People go to Mekong all the time. They’re like a go-to Asian carryout restaurant.”
Staedter’s husband, Andy Bochman, also encouraged Volp to raise the donation goal of the GoFundMe to $25,000, what Volp estimated she would need to fully recover her losses.
Volp was hesitant to start the GoFundMe, not wanting to thrust her problems onto other people, some of whom may have been experiencing power outages themselves.
But in the end, the community response was overwhelming.
Thanks from the community
Messages left by donors on the GoFundMe page detailed their favorite dishes or thanked the restaurant for its role in the community or simply voiced their support for small businesses struggling during the pandemic.
Volp said the money from the GoFundMe has helped pay outstanding bills from vendors and will act as a bridge between now and whenever Mekong Cafe receives its insurance money.
The recovery is ongoing. Though Mekong is back open, selling takeout and groceries, many of the coolers and freezers previously filled with food in its grocery section remain empty.
“This is definitely something bigger than me that has happened,” she said. “They don’t see us as just a business. They see us as part of them, a part of the community.”
Sarah Volpenhein is a Report for America corps reporter who focuses on news of value to underserved communities for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Email her at svolpenhei@gannett.com. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a taxdeductible gift to this reporting effort at JSOnline.com/RFA.