Instagram <\/a>that day, Koffeteria showed an empty sidewalk outside the shop and asked where the promised FIFA rush was. Regulars had trouble accessing the bakery, employees had no assigned parking, and food trucks had been placed in front of brick-and-mortar businesses, siphoning away customers. That post drew nearly 12,000 likes.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Andreas Hager and Chef Vanarin Kuch, the married co-owners of Koffeteria, sat down with the Houston Chronicle opinion section’s summer intern Lajward Zahra to discuss everything going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
Lajward: What happened when the FIFA Fan Fest setup began around Koffeteria?<\/p>\n
Andreas: The preparations have been going on for months. Starting Jan. 1, it\u2019s been really difficult. Each week has been more difficult to get into the neighborhood. They started the actual FIFA setup the first week of May.<\/p>\n
Vanarin: They didn\u2019t even tell us they were doing it. We literally drove up on a Saturday, and Saturdays and Sundays are our busiest days. Four streets were completely shut off.<\/p>\n
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People need to realize we are also going to be enduring a month of breakdown as well. What everyone perceives as a month of FIFA, for us, has already been about four months. And it\u2019ll end\u00a0 up being six to seven months total.<\/p>\n
Lajward: What did that do to business?<\/p>\n
Vanarin: It made operating two to three times harder. It\u2019s not just about foot traffic. Parking is already an issue in East Downtown, and we had been asking for three months: Where are we going to park?<\/p>\n
They told us we weren\u2019t allowed to park in front of our shop because that was for emergency egress. Then they turned around and put food trucks there.<\/p>\n
I literally had a person quit because of the parking situation. It was so hectic. We almost didn\u2019t get a dairy delivery because they couldn\u2019t pull up to deliver.<\/p>\n
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If we didn\u2019t make a stink with the post on the first day of FIFA, we would have never gotten parking. We\u2019re the only company involved that has designated parking. We got two little spots that FIFA is personally paying for, but I had to ridicule them on social media and get on six to eight different news networks to have something happen.<\/p>\n
Andreas: For the past few months, we had to work hard to prepare for the demand that was projected. I hired about five to six seasonal employees, and I\u2019ve had to fire them all. We scaled up and then had to scale right back down.<\/p>\n
We ordered extra food. We changed some suppliers. We bought ice cream from a local vendor, decorated cookies from another local vendor, and croissants from a friend who owns another bakery. We thought the workload was going to be overbearing. It turned out to be the biggest letdown ever.<\/p>\n
Lajward: How did that make you feel?<\/p>\n
Vanarin: Disheartened. A little brokenhearted. I\u2019m not going to lie, last Thursday I cried for hours just feeling like Houston was trying to make me quit. Like Houston was trying to tell me that I don\u2019t belong here.<\/p>\n
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As a brown gay man, I moved to New York City because, at the time, gay marriage was not protected federally. I felt then like the only way I could feel whole was to live in New York City.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m getting those feelings again. I\u2019m not sure Houston really appreciates us.<\/p>\n
Lajward: What was the response from the city after the Instagram posts?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Andreas: One of the councilmen reached out to me directly, and I believe that is the reason we ended up with two parking spots. The city itself has been very quiet.<\/p>\n
Vanarin: What I was asking for was responsibility from the city. If you\u2019re going to displace our business so that the street that is our storefront is completely inaccessible to the public, you need to buy us out to cover the money we lose while we\u2019re inaccessible. That is what\u2019s reasonable.<\/p>\n
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When Southern Smoke did an event in East Downtown, they used our area, but they paid us a buyout because they knew we were going to lose business. The city spent $50 million doing Fan Fest. You\u2019re telling me you couldn\u2019t pay us a daily payout or a monthly payout?<\/p>\n
Lajward: You used the word \u201cgentrification\u201d on Instagram. How do these Fan Fest problems connect to the larger changes you\u2019re seeing in EaDo?<\/p>\n
Vanarin: I barely call it EaDo or East Downtown, to be quite honest. I still call it Old Chinatown because for me, in my mind, it will always be Old Chinatown.<\/p>\n
My parents were married in my uncle\u2019s restaurant, The Silver House, on Chartres Street. We had a seafood and donut spot, Navigation Seafood and Donut, right on Canal and Franklin. My grandmother was in the same refugee camp as the woman who owns Kim Hung, the grocery store across the street from us.<\/p>\n
I have a lot of ties to this area. I grew up here. I played Street Fighter in the little Chinese barbecue spot that was in the middle of the grocery store. I used to eat dim sum down here all the time.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s sad for me to watch what has happened to the neighborhood. It was sad to see Midtown, the old Vietnamtown, turn into Midtown. Once you started losing street signs written in Vietnamese, you knew things were changing. And now, with Old Chinatown, I feel like we\u2019re seeing that same kind of loss again.<\/p>\n
Lajward: Final question, and I\u2019m sorry I have to ask: Are you considering leaving Old Chinatown?<\/p>\n
Vanarin: Girl, I\u2019ve got five years left on this lease. So I will be dealing with a bunch of stuff, and I\u2019m not looking forward to it. We will be chatting again, I promise.<\/p>\n