CORPUS CHRISTI, TX — Many restaurants suffered when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Local business owner, Kristoffer Busk said closing a couple of his restaurant locations was difficult but came at a good time.
"My wife and I just had a baby and I wanted to be able to be a father," Busk said.
Owner of Shoreline Sandwich Company and Artesano, Busk said closing a couple of his locations hurt sales tremendously.
"Shutting down the downtown and uptown locations, probably about half a million dollars worth of sales," he said.
When re-opening locations, Busk said him and his team chose to try a different approach. Dinners to-go.
"Make dinner easy to go home to, ya know, toss it in the microwave or the oven and everything is done for you," Busk said, "just assemble a couple things and you have a great gourmet meal ready to go."
He said they have created meals from different cuisines,"we've done French food, German food, Vietnamese food, all kinds of things and we just play every single week."
The dinners to-go have been the saving grace for the businesses. Artesano does Thursday night dinners to-go, Busk said they can have anywhere between 60 and 200 meals a night ready for takeout.
"To have a $2000 dollar day or something like that, I mean that's like weeks worth of sales in one day for you," this helped Busk to not worry about bills and keeping a full staff of employees.
Busk believes it's the unique food that you can't get anywhere else in town that keeps people coming back, "you're only as good as your last meal, and we're going to try to win people over every single meal."
To order, you can contact Artesano at 361-452-8220
