SAN ANTONIO — The Comfort Cafe at Bandera and Loop 410 was so badly damaged by severe weather in July, it had to be shut down.
Almost two months later they are still trying to recover, but recently the restaurant owners found out they are getting some much needed help.
When those who work here at the Comfort Cafe arrived to survey the damage that morning after the flood they were gutted. But now, the inside of the restaurant had to be gutted too.
"It's really sad because it was such a beautiful, loving environment and the community really loved it," Teri Lopez, the owner of the Comfort Cafe/Serenity Star told us.
The day of the flooding mud coated the floors, tables and chairs were nowhere close to where they used to be, and shelves had been toppled over. Today all of that is cleaned up, but the restaurant for now is a shadow of what it used to be. Clean but empty inside for now, and debris still littered in the parking lot. The workers, who are recovering addicts themselves, were crushed, but had this new location off northeast loop 410 to fall back on.
"Everyone here knows how to kind of get over adversity. So they're good now. But we love the Bandera location. I mean we love this one but they have two different characters," Lopez told us.
That's where Yelp came in with their $100,000 Make It Happen Day. The Comfort Cafe awarded $10,000.
"Just in hopes of helping folks all across the state make updates and repairs to their homes and small businesses," Jando Shum, the YELP San Antonio Community Manager said.
"We were so grateful, losing all that revenue from Bandera as well as having to, you know, put money into this. We just got and just put all the money into this to renovate it. So it was a godsend," Lopez added.
If you want to help other Texas businesses win $10,000 that were affected by the pandemic or the severe weather, Yelp wants to help.
"If they want to do that, all they simply need to do is go to makeithappenday.yelp.com," Shum told us.
If you would like to donate to help the Comfort Cafe recover you can go to their northeast side location at 2015 NE Loop 410, or check out their website here.