COVID pandemic restrictions and supply chain issues creating the perfect storm for many just struggling to get by.Since the start of the month, Ontario has been under tightened public health measures to try and halt the spread of the Omicron variant, with retail shops restricted to 50 per cent capacity and indoor dining closed at restaurants.Arepa Ink, London’s first Venezuelan restaurant, was started up a year ago by friends Maria Avilan and Carla Calderon.The two said their hope was to bring their love for their culture’s food – namely the Arepa, made from corn-based dough – to the people of London Ont.“Our vision when we started was to make the Arepa a stable like shawarma or taco, and in Venezuela, we eat it for almost every occasion,” Avilan said.But starting a new business during the pandemic presented its own challenges: from multiple lockdowns impacting customer flow to constant increases in the price of food due to supply chain issues.“When the government started saying they were going to do something we saw ourselves affected right away, and people reacted right away.
It was a rollercoaster for us because every week we had to plan what to buy,” Avilan said.Calderon noted when they started out, a box of containers for packaging their food cost $50 but in a span of months, the price had jumped to $130.
Likewise, other products like oil tripled in price, and they often had times when they could not even get ingredients. Businesses indirectly hit in lockdowns slipping through cracks of COVID supports “Everyone knows starting a business is hard, and that you have to maybe wait a while to see your investment back, but what we were seeing is instead of getting better, the environment surrounding us was not going.