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Local restaurant feels the impact of no Drake Relays

Restaurants near the Drake neighborhood are usually swamped with people here for the relays.

DES MOINES, Iowa — This week would be the week that thousands of athletes and fans would be swarming the blue oval for the Drake Relays.

Since that's not happening this spring, restaurants are going to hurt.

The Drake Relays are the biggest weekend of the year for many restaurants around Des Moines. 

Especially the ones right outside of campus like Papa Kenos Pizzeria.

No relays means no big wave of business for the pizzeria, at a time they were most expecting it.

"It was our biggest weekend of the year, so it was a lot of fun," Papa Kenos owner Alec Davis said. 

This time around, Papa Keno's won't have the Drake Relays crowd to boost business.

"It wasn't even one big rush it's just the fact that you'd see people coming and going all day for three days. You'd realize that some heat just got over because all the sudden a bunch of people would walk in at 3:30 which is not normally a rush," Davis said. 

Since the pizzeria has only been open for 18 months, last year was the first time Papa Keno's was able to capitalize on the swath of business from the relays crowd.

"A lot of people didn't know we existed yet because the year before we weren't there. Unfortunately we missed out on a second chance to bring them back in again," Davis said. 

Like all restaurants right now, it's going to hurt the bottom line.

"We look at it and say, it is what it is. We cant control that. We're not gonna have that big weekend arguably at all this year. And things at Drake, whether it's the relays or just everything on campus is a big part of our business and that's going to be down from what it was for a while presumably," Davis said. 

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Like everything else, as some point we will return back to normal and that's the hope Davis is holding on to.

"We know it will be there in the future. The relays is an institution. I don't worry about it not coming back in the future and we'll still be here as well," Davis said. 

Davis said Papa Keno's will continue to operate their normal business hours throughout the pandemic.

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