By Greg Micek 

In downtown Sacramento, where small businesses compete with national chains and ever-changing consumer trends, one long-standing restaurant has managed to thrive thanks to loyal customers, outside help and a lot of resilience.

Tapa the World has served Spanish tapas and wine, often accompanied by live guitar music since 1994. It’s a place where anniversaries are celebrated and memories linger over shared plates and warm lighting. But like many independent restaurants across the region, staying open hasn’t been easy.

Chef Marcos Murillo began working in the kitchen just a couple of years after the restaurant opened. He was promoted from line cook to executive chef, and in February 2020, he and his wife, Brooke Murillo, officially bought the business from its original owners. A month later, COVID-19 shut everything down.

Brooke Murillo had concerns about buying a restaurant even before the pandemic — but a global shutdown wasn’t one of them. “It was going to be this really easy transition because everything was going to be exactly the same,” she said. “Then we were the only two working, trying to figure out to-go orders, running social media and everything.”

For a restaurant built on atmosphere and in-person experience, adapting wasn’t easy. “Doing to-go orders, bagging everything, packing it into boxes; that was just hard because that’s not tapas,” Marcos Murillo said. “Tapas means everything happening at once — small little bites coming from the kitchen to your table. It’s not the same experience. You’re here for hours; you’ve got the music, people laughing and having fun.”

The Murillos are not alone. Independent restaurants across Sacramento have spent the past five years navigating not only the pandemic’s immediate effects but also a wave of long-term challenges. Shifting customer habits, rising costs, labor shortages, and the need to invest in technology and outdoor dining spaces have made running a restaurant more difficult than ever for small-business owners.

Recognizing those ongoing needs, the California Restaurant Foundation launched the Restaurants Care Resilience Fund in 2021. The program offers $5,000 grants to independent restaurants with five or fewer locations and under $3 million in revenue per site. Funded by PG&E Corporation Foundation and SoCalGas, the grant can be used for almost anything the recipient needs such as kitchen equipment, technology, employee training or responding to unforeseen hardships. Since its launch, the Resilience Fund has awarded over $7 million to more than 1,600 restaurants across California, including dozens in Sacramento County.

“We want to help restaurant owners strengthen their businesses,” said Alycia Harshfield, president of the California Restaurant Foundation. “These aren’t huge chains, they’re family-owned spots that are an important part of their communities.”

Tapa the World received one of the first Resilience Fund grants. Though $5,000 may not seem like much in the capital-intensive restaurant industry, Brooke Murillo said it came at a critical time. “Stuff would just come up, like buying a new heater, more outdoor seating, more umbrellas,” she said. “Those things aren’t huge costs, but they add up.”

The grant helped them cover outdoor dining upgrades and maintain some level of customer comfort when it mattered most.

“We weren’t making any money. How can we spend $1,000 buying more equipment?” Marcos Murillo added. “It was a beautiful relief. When you’re in that situation, $5,000 feels like everything.”

Tapa the World has since scaled back its hours, no longer staying open until midnight as it once did. Brooke Murillo said the changes reflect the realities of changes in customer habits post-COVID. “Consumer behavior has changed a lot,” she said. “People who used to stay out late are home earlier now, and the newer generation doesn’t know the old atmosphere.”

Despite the changes, the restaurant remains familiar. They kept the decor, the music and even the same musicians — some now in their 80s — playing live on weekends. Brooke Murillo said the restaurant’s survival came down to a combination of grit, adaptability and community support. 

“Part of why Tapa was able to come back was because it had been established for so long and it had a following,” she said. “It had people who were just waiting to come back for their beef tips or their chicken pasta. They supported us with to-go orders.”

Marcos said it was challenging financially as well as emotionally. “I remember one time we made like $100 a day,” he said. “That was like, just kill me now.”

For Brooke Murillo, the application process for the Resilience Fund stood out compared to more complex government relief programs. “There wasn’t a strict restriction on how the money had to be used,” she said. “You didn’t feel like they were going to come back and ask for receipts or make you pay it back.”

That simplicity is by design, according to Harshfield. “We try to be the anti-stressful application,” she said. “It should take about 30 minutes. We try to make it as simple as possible.”

While the fund started during the pandemic, it has continued annually to address the broader needs of small restaurants across the state. Recipients are often family-run or culturally rooted businesses, often overlooked by larger funding programs. Other recipients in Sacramento County have included Cacio, Dubplate Kitchen and TAP Wine Lounge.

“Our neighborhoods and communities rely on those restaurants for so much,” Harshfield said. “They’re the first to help out when there’s a crisis. They donate gift cards, show up for tasting events and add vibrancy to neighborhoods.”

As the Murillos look ahead to Tapa the World’s 31st year in business, they hope more restaurant owners will take advantage of the Resilience Fund, and that customers keep supporting businesses like theirs. The most recent application round closed in April, with grant awardees expected to receive their funding in early June. But regardless of the grant support, customers can still do their part.

“If you love a place, support them,” Brooke Murillo said. “That’s honestly how we stayed alive.”

This story was written by Greg Micek, a student at Sacramento State, with photos by Jasmine Garcellano, a student at Sacramento City College. 

This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19. Support stories like these here, and sign up for our monthly newsletter.