‘I had to close’: The snowstorm’s icy impact on Charlotte’s service industry

It’s been a weird two weeks. With two back-to-back ice storms and at least 11 inches of snow across Charlotte, from the perspective of a restaurant industry employee, life has felt a little off-kilter.

As someone who bartends and serves at a locally owned cocktail bar/restaurant, I understand firsthand the importance of a lucrative Saturday night. For the first ice storm, I worked limited hours, raking in a sad percentage of my usual Saturday night tips. This past weekend, the restaurant I work at closed.

“Mother Nature sure is inconvenient,” the servers and bartenders and even the owner of the restaurant commiserated last Friday night, before the snow began to fall. Why couldn’t this snowstorm, and the one before it, have come on a Monday night, a notoriously slow day of the week, instead? Closing on Saturday not only hurts the service staff’s pockets but the owner’s as well. It’s the difference between affording rent or — well, not. Saturdays can carry the team.

While financially frustrating for all involved, my story is just a blip on the radar of service industry experiences this past weekend.

I decided to reach out to a few small businesses in the industry to see how they coped with the consecutive weird winter weather. I found that for some, like Frank’s Beer Shop, it was business as usual — busy, in fact.

For others, business was put on ice, literally.

Freezing temps impact small business

On Jan. 21, just three days before the first ice storm, Michael Le, best known for his Southeast Asian pop-up series Hello Uncle, launched Uncle’s a brick-and-mortar food truck located in the back of Burial Beer in Plaza Midwood.

“ I opened and then it immediately went into a snow day,” Le told CharlotteFive. “Then back-to-back snow weekends.”

Due to the unprecedented winter weather and out of concern for his employees’ safety, Le decided to close this past weekend.

“ I had to close because I don’t want risk my employee’s safety just to come in for a day of business,” Le said. “I would rather prioritize them first.”

Le’s business model depends on fresh ingredients that are almost never frozen. He cooks classic Southeast Asian comfort dishes like khao man gai (Thai chicken and rice), khao kha moo (braised pork, pickled mustard greens and Chinese broccoli with marinated eggs and rice), and tangy charred cabbage with fish sauce — just to name a few.

Uncle’s is open Wednesday-Saturday, which allows Le to prep Monday and Tuesday for the week. Unfortunately, closing for the snow day resulted in a loss of product for him.

“I try to make everything fresh, so freezing it off kind of destroys it,” Le explained. “I have to take it as a loss.”

While the snowy weather was definitely an issue, it also came with freezing temperatures that caused frozen water lines in the food truck he operates out of. But Le, no stranger to the restaurant industry, which often begets ingenuity, got creative. Using space heaters, he was able to heat up the lines to get water flowing again.

“I have to be really clever about it,” Le said.

Despite the freezing temperatures throughout the week, Le says his loyal community still showed up to support him.

“I really respect the people that come out, but I think next year I’m going to close down for January,” Le joked.

Coffee closures

Carlea Recinos, owner of CHNO Coffee Co, a small coffee shop and mobile espresso bar, also closed due to the weather. Recinos recently relocated after a sudden closure in October from her location inside of Crown & Honey Boutique to a cozy corner inside Pure Pizza off The Plaza. Recinos has had to close both weekends and even cancel a ticketed menu tasting.

While disappointing, her attitude has been positive. She said over an Instagram direct message:

“I think my friend Valentina with La Bonbonniere said it best. It’s just one of those things in small business we can’t control. It’s super sad to miss out on time with our people, and our wallets are super sad too. But instead of living in that feeling, we’re taking the pause nature gave us, soaking up family time at home and planning new ways to collaborate in our community. Time and time again our people have shown up to support us in big ways when we needed it most — so we’re just trusting our community’s got us!”

Despite snowy conditions, community (and beer) brings people together

Frank’s Beer Shop is the proverbial new kid on the block. Frank’s is located off of Commonwealth Avenue in the center of a suburban area, just outside of Plaza Midwood. The cozy little beer shop opened in June and has quickly become a neighborhood favorite due to its family-friendly/dog-friendly vibes and walkability.

“A lot of our customers can obviously walk there,” owner Joe Smaldone told CharlotteFive. “We even had some people who walked over a mile on Saturday.”

Frank’s was open for limited hours on Saturday to much success. Smaldone says the snowy weather contributed to one of Frank’s best sales days since the business opened just over seven months ago.

“We were pretty slammed from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. — just all day long,” Smaldone said. “Then Sunday was one of our best Sundays we’ve ever had as well.

Luckily for Smaldone and his wife, getting to work is easy — they live in the neighborhood and can walk. The couple also has a community that seems to support the business pretty fiercely.

One of Frank’s bartenders, who missed out on work the previous weekend, was able to stay in a neighbor’s house in order to work the snow day and avoid icy roads.

“One of our bartenders, he was out of town last weekend when we had the snow day,” Smaldone explained. “He said he felt so much FOMO that one of the neighbors on Friday offered him to stay at their place. He actually just slept in the neighborhood for the weekend so he could help out bartending.

”As to what contributed to the success, it appears that people were looking for a sense of community (and good beer) during this weird winter weather.

“I think people were just really looking to get out the house and hang out with friends and neighbors,” Smaldone said.

This story was originally published February 4, 2026 at 6:00 AM.