Despite the ongoing pandemic, baddpizza still aims to open a new McLean location in the next few weeks, according to Joel Salamone, the eatery’s owner.
Though there isn’t an opening date set, the upcoming location at 6263 Old Dominion Drive will “100%” be open by June, Salamone said, adding that he might open it sooner if possible.
Inspired by Buffalo-style food, the pizza parlor not only serves medium-crust pizza, but also hot wings, salads, desserts and sub sandwiches, according to its website.
Unlike other joints, baddpizza has a sweeter sauce and places toppings right up to the edge, according to Salamone.
The new location joins another in Falls Church (346 W. Broad Street), which opened in February.
Photo via baddpizza/Facebook
In celebration of Virginia Business Appreciation Month, the Town of Vienna launched a new campaign called ViennaUnited.
ViennaUnited consists of community activities throughout the week and will benefit 1,800 of the town’s small businesses, according to a press release.
Events include bingo, a drive-by business challenge and “people’s choice awards” to local businesses given in an array of categories.
For the drive-by business challenge, people are encouraged to make signs supporting and encouraging their favorite spots by flashing the signs, the press release said. People are welcome to post pictures on social media and use the hashtag #ViennaUnited.
To score bingo points, people can engage in activities such as letter writing, ordering lunch from a local eatery and visiting a community coffee shop.
Though COVID-19 impacted small businesses, according to Natalie Monkou, the town’s economic development manager, event organizers hope this event will give business owners a boost.
“More than ever before, we need to show appreciation to our business community as we also consider the next steps toward recovery,” Monkou said in the press release. “This is a small but visual step in showing our support and showcasing the innovation and resiliency that is present in our town.”
Nightlife is zilch in Tysons at the moment due to the pandemic. After a brief hiatus, the “Tysons After Dark” series is back to highlight different online activities from local organizations and offerings from eateries that keep people busy once the sun goes down.
To promote its tenents during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tysons Galleria is offering various at-home activities and programming.
For those seeking lifestyle inspiration, the mall is offering five different courses from tenants, each of which help with interior design, personal style or food and drink, according to the web page.
For example, BoConcepts is offering free interior design advice from an expert. People can also explore the store digitally to see what’s showcased on the floor.
While spending more time at home, people are encouraged to take care of their health and step up their beauty routine with more offerings from mall vendors. Dolce Vita Salon & Spa is offering at-home hair touch-up kits for $65+ and the Tory Burch Foundation is offering a free wellness guide.
For those feeling crafty, the mall also now offers art project blueprints on its website as well. Offerings include chalk art, origami and floral drawing tutorials.
Anyone who wants to pick up a bite to eat from the mall can also take advantage of a spend $50 get $20 deal at participating restaurants.
Photo via Anastasiia Chepinska on Unsplash
With uncertainty about the future of social distancing requirements and community health guidelines, Fairfax County Public School Board members are discussing what the upcoming fall semester might look like for teachers and students.
Though they said they won’t be making an official decision until the June meeting, board members bounced around ideas for online schedules and smaller class sizes at a work session on Monday (May 11).
The main concerns for the board include how to respect social distancing measures, how to help students who might not be able to return due to health concerns for themselves or their family, training for teachers and staff and finally how to ensure the continued quality of education, according to a slideshow shared at the work session.
Given current conditions, though, the board said it is looking at several possible options for the fall semester and is waiting to make a final decision until it has more guidance.
“We lack clarity around the time and conditions we might return under,” said Sloan Presidio, FCPS Superintendent. “We are hoping to get that clarity from the state in the coming weeks.”
The first possibility would be to begin the school year virtually using distance learning, giving faculty to revise schedules and curriculum that “best-fits students needs.”
To help with child care services and other needs that are usually fulfilled with in-person education, Presidio suggested that FCPS would work with faith-based organizations and similar institutions to fill the gap.
Yet another scenario would be returning to school in the fall, but with social distancing guidelines.
“That would require us to serve students based on their needs,” Presidio said, adding that priority would be given to students who would benefit the most from in-person instruction. Examples include students with learning disabilities or students learning English as a second language.
He also noted that it is easier for middle school and high school students to transition online than for elementary school students who have shorter attention spans.
Melanie K. Meren, Hunter Mill District Representative voiced concern at the meeting over the best ways to build communities for younger students, who are familiar with touch and play in their learning process.
“I would like to have more information about how we are going to acclimate our youngest learners to school,” she said.
A final scenario would be fully returning to a normal school schedule and offering online enrollment opportunities for students who wish to stay home, according to the meeting documentation.
Ricardy Anderson, a Mason District Board Member also suggested that schools send out a survey to parents, asking if they would let their students return to school regardless of FCPS’s decision — so FCPS could plan ahead and offer a more advanced online learning opportunities and partnerships.
Karen Keys-Gamarra an at-large board member also suggested that FCPS should work harder to communicate plans with parents and said that better channels of communication would “relieve anxiety” that many people are currently feeling.
Going forward, Anderson said FCPS must develop a “robust infrastructure” to guide online learning.
For a worst-case scenario, FCPS is also working on a plan if, for whatever reason, students would have to once again transition back into distance learning.
To help with the mental welfare of students in the coming months, regardless of in-person or online instruction, the board said they want to implement a stronger social-emotional learning plan.
“That is foundational to everything else we want to do academically,” one of the board members said.
The cost of the program would cost roughly $7 million according to the documentation at the meeting, which when broken down includes roughly $1 million for development of the curriculum, another $1 million for the screening tools and the remaining $5 million for new staffers and instructors.
Photo via Element5 Digital on Unsplash
Two lifelong friends who work at Hoar Construction in Tysons and Clyde’s in Maryland recently teamed up to feed health care workers around the D.C. area.
By leveraging their connections at their companies, Bryce Yetso, the general manager of Clyde’s, and Mike Dramby, Hoar Construction’s senior project manager, said that they have handed out over $3,000-worth of food at two regional hospitals within the last few weeks.
Though Hoar Construction works on a variety of projects, Dramby specializes in hospital construction and expansion for the D.C. area office, so he said he was already somewhat familiar with the needs of hospital workers during this hectic time.
Meanwhile, Clyde’s was forced to furlough workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but was able to bring people back to work recently with the new request for meals, according to Yetso.
“Bryce was looking to get his people back to work and we were looking for a way to help front line folks,” Dramby said, adding that it made sense to join the two efforts together.
Hoar Construction managed fundraising efforts and coordination with the hospitals while Clyde’s was responsible for meal preparation and delivery, the men said.
Though Hoar Construction originally offered to front the meal order cost, Dramby said that almost all of his coworkers contributed to the effort.
Dramby told Tysons Reporter that his company has been especially busy during this time, because hospitals are investing money in wing expansions to boost capacity for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Going forward, the two men hope to cater meals to medical staff at two other hospitals in the near future.
Photo courtesy Clyde’s Catering
Like so many other local businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic shook up Curbside Kitchen, forcing the food truck management service to rethink its customer appeal.
Before the pandemic, the Tysons-based company centered its mission around building lunchtime communities for office buildings and catering local events. Now as people shy away from social gatherings and are working remotely, Curbside Kitchen’s owner Amy Katz said her team has been working “around the clock” to rethink the company’s marketing and help people in need.
“When I first heard the lights went out on commercial business, I panicked,” Katz said, adding that the team quickly put together a plan of attack for its “new normal.”
Instead of food trucks as a place to gather and connect, Katz said she sees them as a way for people to safely get affordable, quick and filling food options.
“As we see restaurants go out of business, food trucks are going to become more and more critical,” Katz said. “But I think things are going to change and food trucks have a distinct advantage in the new way of doing business.”
In an effort to help people during the pandemic, Curbside Kitchen also began supporting several organizations to help at-risk community members and minority food truck owners, Katz said.
Called Curbside Cares, the effort helps marginalized groups across the D.C. region.
“It’s been so heartwarming and wonderful to see the food truck owners to get out there and serve the people who are in the most need right now,” Katz said. “It helps us to build our social impact program.”
Community partners include Fuel the Fight, which collects money through a GoFundMe to feed frontline workers; Nourish Now, which helps to feed families fighting food insecurity; and Shepherd’s Table, which cares for women who are homeless and people in harms way from domestic violence around the D.C. region.
Fairfax County also works with the company to feed people around the area working in public sanitation. “No one has thought about the waste management people,” Katz said.
To follow new health codes and best practices, Katz said Curbside Kitchen isn’t taking any risks so its customers can feel safe enjoying their favorite food-truck meals.
“The main priority for us was to make sure they were following very strict COVID-19 health requirements, making sure they were using mobile pay and using [contactless] delivery,” she said. “This isn’t something they were all familiar with having to do.”
Though Katz wants to get back to some type of normal, she also said the food truck industry isn’t out of the woods yet.
“Revenue is down without a doubt,” she said. The business is staying afloat through purchases from biomedical tech companies that still have workers on-site and people ordering multi-family meals.
With meat plants shutting down and the price of ingredients rising, food trucks as a whole face another challenge — food shortages.
Wholesalers around the area have started limiting quantity available to food truck drivers, instituting caps and significantly raising prices, according to Katz.
It isn’t clear yet how trucks will adapt, but Curbside Kitchen’s spokesperson Meghan Tidwell had a more optimistic mindset, saying that as chefs, food truck owners will adapt using any items available.
“They’re just changing up their menus,” Tidwell said. “They’re getting creative and creating menu items from what is out there.”
Photo courtesy Curbside Kitchen
Caffe Amouri and the Vienna Business Association are hosting a social distance 5K benefiting community members facing food insecurity.
Beginning Friday (May 15), people can take part in the Feeding Families 5K by preregistering and then tracking their distance and time as they follow the arranged route.
To maintain social distancing, participants can run anytime through the end of the month, according to the event page. When complete, people can turn in their results through email.
Registration is $25 for individuals or $50 for a family, according to the event page, which added that all proceeds go to charity.
Winners in several categories including “best time running” and “best time walking” will receive prizes from Caffe Amouri and local sponsors.
People interesting in just donating to the cause can do so online.
Image via Caffe Amouri/Facebook
Grab the shakers, mixers and some ice because today (May 13) is World Cocktail Day.
The holiday was popularized by Drinkaware, a United Kingdom-based charity that raises awareness of alcohol abuse and encourages responsible drinking practices.
Though there is no “official” way to celebrate the holiday, people around Tysons can get creative in a variety of ways. Options include picking up a to-go cocktail from dozens of different eateries and bars, supporting Virginia distilleries or even crafting their own cocktails from ingredients at home.
The term “cocktail” originated in the early 1800s and was defined as “stimulating liquor with a wide variety of sweets, waters, and bitters,” according to The Balance, and Columbian Repository. The drink type only reached peak popularity after prohibition when people didn’t have easy access to high-quality alcohol and wanted to make drinks more palatable, the Days of the Year website said.
“The ‘Bee’s Knees’ cocktail was actually created to mask and sweeten the taste of illegally brewed bathtub gin,” Days of the Year said. “The roaring twenties took the cocktail and shook it up into some of our most popular modern-day cocktails.”
Tysons Reporter previously did a roundup of local places offering to-go cocktails.
Falls Church Distillers sells bottles of whiskey, rum, vodka and brandy.
Peruvian restaurant Inca Social regularly posts bartending and cooking classes on Facebook. In past weeks, the staff taught viewers how to make things like “Passion Chilcano,” which contains pisco Peruvian liquor, limes, passionfruit syrup and ginger ale.
For anyone who doesn’t drink or is underage, there are also a myriad of mocktail options online too.
Happy #WorldCocktailDay https://t.co/I4qNr2Prpg
— Condé Nast Traveller (@cntraveller) May 13, 2020
Photo via Kobby Mendez on Unsplash
Tysons-based company hatchIT launched a new site in February to connect independent engineers, developers and entrepreneurs in the D.C. area.
Called Hatchpad, the site allows users to create a social media-type account to talk with people working on new projects, seeking jobs, hiring or simply wishing to network in their field, according to the website.
People can sort through posts and project collaborations based on tech stack (a.k.a. coding language), region or work location — at home, part-time or in an office.
Hatchpad founder Tim Winkler said that the idea came to the team after realizing talent recruitment in the area was difficult for startups and product designers. “It’s often hard to cut through the noise of government contracting,” he told Tysons Reporter.
The site only caters to people in the D.C., Virginia, Maryland and Baltimore areas, but Winkler said there are plans in the works to expand the site’s capabilities — both geographically and feature-wise.
Though there isn’t a way for people to chat on the site just yet, startups and engineers are encouraged to post a blog or video interview showcasing their projects, according to Winkler. From there, people can get in contact with one another by finding contact information online.
Roughly 450 people have accounts on the site, Winkler said, adding that more than 1500 people are on their listserv for a weekly email update.
For example, Reston-based startup Hawkeye360 uses the site to advertise job listings and talk about its product.
Like almost every other company, Hatchpad adapted to changing norms prompted by COVID-19 within the last few months.
“There is a push for us to bring a new line of virtual events during this time,” Winkler said, adding that engagement with digital events can be more difficult than with in-person events.
Before the pandemic hit, according to Winkler, people were more likely to attend in-person events since it was easier to gather and organically network over food and drink.
“Folks seek that social interaction and that’s why they enjoy physical events,” he said.
To solve this problem, hatchIT and Hatchpad are considering putting together invite-only, “round table” digital events where roughly 10 industry professionals would come together over a specific topic.
These events, potentially called “Hatchpad Huddles,” would be around 30-45 minutes in length and give people the opportunity to speak up and stay engaged, according to Winkler.
Though a lot of companies are experiencing hiring freezes, Hatchpad is encouraging the use of its platform by offering fun ambassador perks for current members.
People who bring new users onboard may score prizes like Hatchpad socks or free tuition to certain online workshops, much like the podcast Morning Brew does, Winkler said. “We really want the site to grow organically.”
Photo courtesy hatchIT
The McLean Community Center won’t have fireworks for the Fourth of July due to public health concerns.
The community center recently announced that it plans on canceling almost all of its summer events and activities. These cancellations include McLean Day, which was set to be held this Saturday (May 16), all summer camps and the Independence Day fireworks and corresponding celebration at Langley High School, according to a press release.
“MCC has chosen to announce this decision now to allow patrons and their families the opportunity to make alternative summer plans,” the press release said.
Still, the community center plans to have things to keep people busy during this time of social distancing and staying inside.
“We will be offering, at no-cost, two- or three-day virtual activities during the time when we would have been holding camps,” George Sachs, MCC’s executive director, said in the press release.
Depending on what happens later in the summer, Sachs said that staff may reconsider hosting modified in-person camps once it is safe.
