LEXINGTON, S.C. — A final chapter today in a Lexington restaurant with a rocky history. On Wednesday, dozens of people gathered on Main Street in downtown Lexington as the last remaining pieces of Alodia’s Cucina were auctioned off.
That’s the reason why restaurant owners like Denita Blackwell and her mother came to the auction at Alodia’s restaurant. She says they own Flavors Buffet & Grill in Camden, and this auction will help them expand.
“We came today because we are opening up a restaurant in Camden; this is our second restaurant,” Blackwell said. “We’re trying to furnish it with all types of furniture, and there’s an auction going on here, so we’re trying to make sure that we can get furniture at a great price.”
Kitchen supplies, stoves, tables, and chairs are just some of the many things that attracted restaurant owners like Sonia Beckford, who traveled from North Carolina to attend Wednesday's auction. Beckford was another buyer looking to stock her food truck, Taste Jamaica, with the auctioned items.
“You can bid on what you see. The price is more or less, you can decide whether or not you want to get that versus, okay, the price is too high. When you walk into a store restaurant equipment place, you know, you got to just stick to that one price,” Beckford said.
But these new items came at a cost. Trouble began at Alodia's last year when News19 spoke to workers who said they hadn’t been paid. According to the town of Lexington, the restaurant's business license expired on April 30th of this year.
Just next door, Tina Kotlarek, owner of Barrio Tacos, says the closings of restaurants in the area can impact other businesses downtown.
“Any time you lose one, you lose traffic," she said. "The more people that come downtown, the more people hit all the restaurants. Anytime something closes down, that's definitely not a bonus. Whether it's yours or not, it’s still traffic for the downtown community."
While Alodia's is permanently closed, Kotlarek said many new restaurants are opening in downtown Lexington.
“It impacts what's available and the more that's downtown, the more people we're going to have. If there's only one place downtown, you might come once a month, but we have several announced so people might come down once a week or once every other week, because there's more to do than just the chain restaurants.”
