Business hurt by road closure

Road closures on state Route 299 caused by the wildfires burning in the region are cutting supply lines to local businesses who rely on goods that are brought into Humboldt County through the route’s westward lanes.

Portions of highway have been fully closed to traffic for over a week, with the stretch from Junction City through Hawkins Bar currently closed to all traffic and two stretches of the route in the Willow Creek area only currently open to one lane of traffic.

Kevin Dikes, chef and manager at Arcata breakfast and brunch kitchen Egghead, told the Timesstandard his kitchen prioritizes sourcing local ingredients. However, the route has interrupted the availability of many items from

out of the area at restaurant and warehouse stores.

“We try to buy as local as possible, but there’s still some things that I can’t get steadily enough locally, so there’s certain things that we do buy up from Cash and Carry and some bigbox truck distributors, but there’s a whole line of distribution that’s been cut out,” he said.

Most notably, Egghead is temporarily unable to serve items including pork belly, one of its most popular attractions.

With a small production of local pork and much higher prices at other nonwarehouse retailers, sourcing this ingredient along with bacon has been particularly difficult and costly.

“Bacon at Winco is way, way more (expensive) than at Cash and Carry or at Costco or any of these other places,” he elaborated. “Bacon is literally $10 more per five-pound box at Winco, and you know you’re talking about buying 50 pounds of bacon… you’re talking about an extra $50 on top of your food order. It skyrockets my plate percentages.”

Dikes says some patrons have not been happy with finding out their favorite item is temporarily unavailable. “We got a one-star review the other day because we’re running out of stuff and I was just like ‘these people don’t realize that like the supply lines are completely down,’ “the manager said.

SR 299’s closure has also affected Egghead’s access to other supplies such as disposable utensils, to-go boxes and other supplies necessary to run his business under current COVID-19 precautions and increased demand for takeout meals.

An employee at the US Foods Chef’s Store, formerly known as Cash and Carry, confirmed the store is experiencing a short supply because of the closure of state Route 299, but would not speak on the record.

While the closure is affecting businesses that depend on state Route 299 299 to bring in supplies, other businesses who fulfill their inventories from trucks driving on Highway 101 and other routes are not experiencing such troubles.

Wildberries general Manager Aaron Gottschalk told to the Times-standard his Arcata store is not having any issues to date due to the fire-related closures.

“Our main distributors come through (state Route) 20 and up (U.S. Highway) 101 or they come directly up 101 from the Bay Area,” Gottschalk stated.