Too hot to eat out? As temperatures rise, Baltimore-area restaurants see sales drop

The temperature outside was just shy of 100 degrees Monday afternoon. Inside Lionel Campoz’s food truck, it felt even hotter.

As meat sizzled on the grill, Campoz, the owner of El Sopon Mexican Food in Elkridge, served taco platters to customers waiting in the sweltering heat. There have been fewer of them in recent weeks, he said, and he suspects that’s due to the climbing temperatures.

“It’s been so hot that people don’t want to go out,” Campoz said. “We have the disadvantage of being a food truck where people eat outside, and we have no air conditioning to make things better for our customers.”

So far, this summer has been a scorcher in Baltimore. The region marked one of the hottest Junes on record last month and faces a new heat wave this week , with the temperature forecast to hit 102 degrees Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. High humidity makes it feel even hotter, with the heat index expected to be 110 degrees.

Some restaurant owners say they’ve seen sales drop as the thermometer rises. At El Sopon, sales have declined 35% to 40% since the start of the heat wave, Campoz said.

The chef launched his food truck business four years ago in the parking lot next to Troy Farms Liquors and has stuck around thanks to support from the community, which backed his business after the liquor store burned down in 2022, and later, when the truck was robbed at gunpoint.

The extreme heat has been the latest challenge to overcome. The El Sopon truck was without air conditioning for several days during the current heat wave due to construction work at the liquor store.

Campoz brought iced coffee and ice cream for himself and his two employees to try to stay cool. Even so, it’s been hard to find relief, both from the heat and the slow sales. The food truck operator posted on Facebook last week, wondering if other businesses were taking a hit, too.

“April and part of May was OK, but after that it’s been a decline,” he said.

The extreme heat comes at a time of year when business is already slow. Baltimore Summer Restaurant Week, an initiative organized by the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore and Visit Baltimore to try to bring a boost to sales, kicks off Friday and will run through July 28.

In Locust Point, another outdoor-only dining spot has decided to take a hiatus until the worst of the heat passes. Key Neapolitan and Crushed Velvet, a pizza truck and shaved ice stand on the side of Key Highway, shut down Sunday due to the heat wave and will reopen Thursday.

“The weather has been a significant deterrent” to business, said partner Ed Bosco, who noted that sales are down compared with the same week last year. To compensate, the outdoor restaurant has set up a 22-by-45-foot tent with fans inside to help diners cool off.

“People want to be incredibly comfortable,” Bosco said. “In this kind of weather, it’s hard to do.”

Business has also suffered at his indoor restaurant, the Canton pizzeria Verde. Bosco said the building’s three air conditioning units can bring the dining room temperature down to 73 degrees, but not much cooler. When customers ask for more air, he has to explain the system’s limitations.

“You’re not going to get a restaurant that’s 70 degrees in this kind of temperature,” he said. “These A/C units just can’t keep up with the heat, given the fact that there’s other extenuating circumstances. One of the big extenuating circumstances is we’ve got a thousand-degree oven in the dining room.”

Some restaurants have been forced to close temporarily because the A/C isn’t working properly. BK Lobster, a lobster roll shop in Upper Fells Point, shut down early July 10 “due to HVAC issues,” the restaurant wrote on social media. Soul Kuisine Cafe closed its North Avenue location on June 26 “due to extreme heat,” according to an Instagram post.

In Savage, organizers of a new farmers’ market in Baldwin Common park decided to start later in the day last week in an effort to escape a heat index of 112 degrees. Rather than opening at 3:30 p.m., as it usually does, the Savage Farmers Market kicked off at 5 p.m. “for the safety and well-being of all our participants, vendors, volunteers, etc.,” according to a post on Instagram .

Norma Broadwater, one of the organizers, said the message didn’t reach all of the market’s customers, some of whom showed up at 3 p.m. anyway. The vendors, meanwhile, still had to set up in the heat.

In the future, she said, the market will focus instead on keeping vendors, customers and volunteers safe from the elements by moving stalls to areas with shade, providing drinking water and encouraging people to stay home if they are not feeling up for being outside.

“Sometimes it gets so hot that you aren’t even able to make decisions about what you want to buy,” she said.

Researchers say that climate change could heat up the summertime in Baltimore, bringing an increased number of high-heat days. At the nonprofit Climate Central, meteorologists estimate that the warming globe has added about 13 extra days above normal temperatures to Baltimore’s summer season, compared to 50 years ago. The average temperature during the summer is trending about 2 degrees higher than it was in the 1970s.

Unite Here Local 7, a labor union representing hospitality workers including employees at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium, recently secured hot weather-related rights for some of its members, including the right to wear shorts and to take breaks. Employers must also provide water when the heat index is more than 85 degrees, according to a contract signed in May.

The union is planning for a future where workers slinging hot dogs and beer at the stadiums are likely to encounter more sultry days, said Unite Here Local 7 president Tracy Lingo: “That’s why we wanted to push for those changes.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Christine Condon contributed to this article.