Austin, TX
East Austin taqueria closes due to permit issue; restaurant asks for help
AUSTIN, Texas – An Austin taqueria has been closed for over a week due to a permit issue with the City. The owners are now asking the public for help.
Nixta Taqueria in East Austin remains closed to the public on what should be a busy day at the restaurant.
“There should be people here eating for lunch, but unfortunately not. We have now been closed for upwards of about a week,” said Edgar Rico, co-owner of Nixta Taqueria.
Rico says he never wanted to make this decision because this place has been a dream come true ever since he and his wife opened up in 2019.
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“My wife and I opened this restaurant with no investors, with literally our life savings of $50,000, and we’re just going to hope that it turns out okay and by some miracle of God, we made that happen,” he said.
The problem started last week when the restaurant’s electricity was randomly shut off due to high usage. It was an issue Rico says he was not worried about at first because Austin Energy told them it would be an easy fix once they got an emergency 24-hour permit.
“[They said] ‘we do these all the time. Just hire an electrician and we should have someone out. You should be up and going in 24 hours’, so we went through those channels,” he said.
However, Rico says a simple fix turned into a nightmare. He says not only did they not get the permit, but Austin Energy also immediately halted operations at Nixta Taqueria to do a full site plan after seeing some issues with the building on Google images. This included an undersized electrical panel and an illegally installed AC unit that were both installed previously.
“During the nine months when we were opening, all city officials told us that this was plenty, this is good to go, you guys can open a full-sized restaurant, and now we’re going into year four of business and unfortunately, we were told now that we’re potentially having to close,” said Rico.
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Rico says they were originally looking at a 24-hour repair that would have cost around $10,000, but now, they were looking at a multiple month-long project that would cost upwards of $100,000, their staffs’ livelihood, and the restaurant as a whole.
“People’s jobs are at stake. We have 35 employees who right now don’t know when their next paycheck is going to come and that’s scary for us and that makes us feel terrible because we feel like we’ve let our employees down,” he said.
In the last four years, Nixta Taqueria has faced its share of highs and lows. Highs include winning a James Beard Award in 2022. The lows include dealing with COVID-19 restrictions and the ice storm.
Rico says this business is not giving up. They decided to turn to the public and put up a GoFundMe asking for monetary help. Rico says they hit their goal of $80,000 in under 24-hours.
“We’re very fortunate, and I think that shows a testament to all the work we’ve done here in Austin,” said Rico.