Businesses

Photographs documenting Billy's on Burnet located at 2105 Hancock Drive during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photographs and moving images documenting the Easy Tiger bakeshop during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austin, Texas. The 5, 000 square foot bakery located at the The Linc in North Austin provides baked goods to their Bake Shops, plus local grocery stores, hotels, restaurants and other retailers in the Central Texas area.

Images of grocery stores in Austin, Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic. Images were contributed local Austin residents.

Social media posts created by SolAna Renteria in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photographs documenting Tacodeli during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austin, Texas. "Tacodeli opened in Austin in 1999, but our story began long before in Mexico City. That’s where our founder Roberto grew up and first fell in love with the magical flavors of the taqueria. Years later, his childhood memories mixed with Austin’s friendly vibes to inspire Tacodeli’s food and the way we share it. The result is a big, ambitious menu, prepared by hand every day. A healthy obsession with both the quality of our ingredients and the quality of our lives. And a merging of flavors from both sides of our heritage to create something all its own."

Photographs and text materials documenting The Cavalier's business operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Cavalier is a neighborhood pub serving homemade southern-inspired food in East Austin.

Born-digital media documenting the business operations of Tso Chinese Delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austin, Texas. "When COVID-19 lockdowns began to domino across the globe last year, the co-founders of local restaurant Tso Chinese Delivery — Min Choe, Jenna Choe, Eunice Tsang, and Angell Tsang — immediately looked for some way to help fellow Austinites. Many locals were suddenly out of jobs as non-essential businesses were forced to temporarily close to mitigating the spread of the virus. The three decided that the easiest way that their to-go and delivery-only restaurants could help was by offering free meals to un- or underemployed people. “We wanted to feed a few folks,” says Min Choe, an Austin native, and a long-time entrepreneur whose restaurants are located in Cherrywood and the Arboretum. With that simple directive, the couples launched charitable branch Tso Giving in March 2020, and began their path to supplying Austinites hardest hit with more than $220,000 worth of meals — equivalent to 22,000 portions. As part of the then-newly-formed Tso Giving in March 2020, the co-founders envisioned helping out the Austin service industry. They developed a donation infrastructure to offset the costs of food and production while paying their staff for their work through a combination of Venmo, GoFundMe, and Tso’s official website. From there, the Austin community pitched in: donations from individuals and from other local companies to contribute to the fund. Initially, Tso Giving’s goal was small: They wanted to hand out just a few hundred meals. The restaurant put out a call for email and phone call submissions from people who felt they needed meals from the restaurant. Co-founder Eunice Tsang sorted through those requests to determine who would receive what, which were then delivered by the staff. Once the number of requests became too large to manage, Tso set up a curbside pickup tent at its Arbor location instead, so that those people could just come and pick up food at designated times. Those springtime drive-thrus were initially run by the Choes and Tsangs. But, pretty soon much of the Tso staff were volunteering their time between shifts to the cause." - From the article 'Tso Chinese Delivery’s takeout operation grew a small token of kindness into an operation that fed thousands' by Nina Hernandez, Austin Eater, 2021

Photographs documenting unidentified Austin businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austin, Texas.

Photograph documenting Waterloo Records during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austin, Texas.