MONTPELIER — The patio and dining room at Woodbelly Pizza, the popular Montpelier restaurant, were a hub of laughter and conversation Monday night as employees, for the first time in a week, kneaded the dough and slid the pies in and out of the namesake wood-fired oven.
The restaurant, closed as workers repaired damage from last week’s flood, had reopened to the general public with a special invitation to colleagues from other establishments still shuttered by the devastation.
“It’s a pretty tight-knit community with all the restaurant people,” Woodbelly staffer Trev Bookmaster said as he took orders from a long line of customers.
Workers in the food industry and other service industries, including cannabis and sex work, were offered discounts.
“We love fellow service industry workers and feel like a lot of times there’s not really a time for us to celebrate one another,” said co-owner Kes Marcel as they were making the pizzas. “So we decided to do a special night to bring out other people who work in food we eat.”
Woodbelly’s basement had been covered by a foot of water, Bookmaster said, after historic flooding decimated the state starting on July 10, including many ground-level businesses in the capital.
Employees and volunteers cleaned it out in a matter of days. They are still taking apart the drywall, but the health inspector and the electricians approved the reopening, he said.
Inside, Ross Patten was mixing craft cocktails. Outside, at one of the tables on the patio, three people who work at Hugo’s, the still-closed restaurant on Main Street, relished the opportunity to connect with each other and with fellow workers from other restaurants.
“Between people who have lost their jobs and people who still have their jobs, there’s been an incredible amount of stress,” said Derek Temple, Hugo’s assistant manager and bartender.
People who did not lose their businesses are being bombarded with triple or quadruple the number of customers, he said. People who have lost their jobs have been helping businesses clean up. The Monday night reopening of Woodbelly’s offered a place for people from both groups to get together.
“It’s really beautiful to do this for everyone who’s been in a really heartbreaking situation,” Temple said.
The damage inflicted on the restaurant was severe.
“Hugo’s is a place where I found a home in a place where I wasn’t from,” said Temple, who moved to Montpelier from St. Louis.
For the last two years, Shawn Naramore, another newcomer to Montpelier, has also worked at Hugo’s. Now, she said, she feels lost.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “I’m actually still in shock at the loss of what businesses are going through.”
Being at Woodbelly gave industry workers “a sense of community again,” she said. “These are all my coworkers and my best friends.”
Aside from pizza, Woodbelly offered the service workers a staff meal of bread pudding with chicken and pork dripping.
“We’re not ready to let go of each other yet,” said Leslie Haviland, manager at Hugo’s. She had not seen Temple since Friday — three long days. “It’s a matter of going from seeing each other every day to: ‘Hey! Are you alive?’”
She said she was happy to see people enjoying themselves as if nothing had happened.
At a large party at a nearby table was Conor Casey, a Democratic state representative from Montpelier who works one day a week at Gram Central, a cannabis retail store in Montpelier.
“I think it’s a beautiful thing for the community,” Casey said of the evening. “You look around at our ravaged city and people are seeking out normalcy.”
At the same table was Henri June Bynx, a sex worker and co-founder of the Ishtar Collective, an organization that fights sex trafficking.
“The inclusivity felt really nice,” they said of the evening. “In the wake of such an incredible disaster, it means a lot more.”
