San Jose business says its struggling due to city blocking some of its customer parking

By Kelsi Thorud

Bernadette Garcia has owned and managed Los Garcia’s Restaurant alongside her husband Francisco for more than 20 years.

“We make everything in-house, including the tortillas,” said Garcia.

The two are a match made in heaven. Francisco has been cooking since he came to the US from Mexico when he was just a teenager. Bernadette comes from a family that owned a restaurant in Milpitas for 30 years.

Los Garcias means the world to them and has helped put their kids through college.

“It’s been our life. We’ve worked and worked, all of us. My husband is here morning to close six days a week and, on his day off on Monday, he’s here to clean,” said Bernadette Garcia.

The restaurant has been a neighborhood favorite for decades, packed at all times of the day with newcomers and regulars alike. But a few months ago, that all changed.

“We just can’t serve our customers, we can’t do it,” she said.

She told CBS News Bay Area that back in July, the motel right next to her restaurant was converted by the city into temporary housing for the homeless.

Her restaurant shares a parking lot with the motel, but when the city took over, they put up a fence blocking her customers from using any of the motel parking spaces.

“Our guests don’t have parking. They’re not able to come in and get out right away, either they’re waiting, or they have to come back,” said Garcia.

She said the reduced number of parking spaces has wreaked havoc on her business.

“If we fill up the parking spaces in what we have currently, we’re halfway filled here, halfway. That just doesn’t cut it for me, I mean, we have half customers and people drive in and they think we’re crowded or we’re overfilled but it’s because we don’t have enough parking,” she explained.

She said she reached out to the city to try to work with them on getting more of the parking spaces back. CBS News Bay Area also reached out to the city.

They sent a statement saying they have spoken with the owners of Los Garcias and that, following discussions with the motel service provider, they will give six more parking spaces to the restaurant.

Customers have rallied to support the Garcias, and so have other business owners. Jennifer Grass owns a business just down the road. She’s a regular at Los Garcias and told me she started walking here instead of driving just to keep more parking spaces open for other customers.

“There’s barely parking, and we don’t want to park illegally so we walk now,” said Grass.

But even with the support of customers like Jennifer, Bernadette Garcia said her restaurant most likely won’t last through the beginning of next year without an even bigger change to the parking situation.

It’s something she and her husband are grappling with every day, wondering what they’ll do if they lose the restaurant they’ve worked so hard on all these years.

“It’s very sad. It’s very, very sad for the entire family,” said Garcia.