Despite the torrential downpours in Columbia in the fall, Drip in Five Points refused to dry up. While other coffee shops decided to close their doors given the boil water advisory, Drip remained as busy as ever.
The coffee shop continually boiled city water to make it safe to brew coffee for customers. In addition, they gave free coffee to first responders of the flood effort.
“We’re trying to do our part for the community,” Michael King, a Drip staff member, said. “The first responders have been great and have been so helpful to so many families and people in need, so we felt like we could do something for them.”
Despite both locations — on Main Street and in Five Points — being closed on Monday, Oct. 5, the local shop still experienced an extreme impact from flood water.
According to King, the closure was “a loss of sales, it impacts the staff — it impacts our customers.”
After deciding on a “game plan” on how to handle the water, the establishment and its workers agreed to open on shortened hours of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., given the curfews of that week.
Luckily, the roads in the surrounding area of Drip were virtually untouched, and the restaurant received an overwhelmingly positive response for remaining open during the flooding.
“Everyone’s been really appreciative and grateful that we’re open and that we’re able to give them a sense of normalcy to their life, from day to day,” King said.
That sense of normalcy is exactly what flood victims and residents of the Columbia area were looking for after a week of unfamiliar waters, and Drip provided that sense of normalcy, one cup of coffee at a time.