As the buzz of customers and the drone of airplane engines filled the air, Leimamo Taylor sat in her restaurant’s office feeling overwhelmed. She’s felt this way since opening her cafe in 2019.
“There were all these things coming at me in my first year, it was kind of like a spiral,” Taylor said. “It’s a lot, going from a restaurant that only held 90 people and now holds a couple hundred people.”
Taylor is the proud owner of the Riverside Airport Cafe, previously known for 30 years as the D&D Airport Cafe. Before becoming a restaurateur, she had never owned a business, let alone worked as a manager. Her only experience in the food service industry was as a waitress for several eateries in Riverside, including the one she now owns.
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Its menu is full of options typically served at any other breakfast spot. Its interior design has its similarities too.
Yet her cafe has grown immensely in the past six years, now averaging around 12,000 customers a month. While she once felt an overwhelming stress to keep her business afloat, she now feels swamped by its massive growth.
Her success could be due to the fact that her eatery is tucked away in a far corner of the Riverside Municipal Airport — mere feet from the tarmac — or it might be because of her feeling that failure wasn’t an option after she sold her home to pursue this venture in the hopes it could provide for her three children.
Either way, that success didn’t come immediately.
In her first year, Taylor was forced to learn every detail about owning a business: sales tax payments, employment tax management, liquor licensing and more. It was costing her thousands.
“Everything was a payment plan,” Taylor said. “[Then] the pandemic hit, and it stopped everything from falling apart.”
The Covid-19 pandemic gave her a chance to restart and focus on advertising her business on social media.
“I was starting to get busy to where I was grabbing more and more employees to come back,” she said.
She also reached out to several other small restaurants in Riverside to strategize on financially surviving the pandemic. These meetings also gave Taylor access to long-time business owners who taught her the fundamentals of running a restaurant.
Since then, she’s thrived as an owner.
“It’s just been this amazing blessing,” she said.
The Riverside Airport Cafe is open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is located at 6951 Flight Rd. in Riverside, at the very end of the Riverside Municipal Airport.
Dispatches from Riverside County is a semi-regular feature where The Riverside Record highlights local businesses that make Riverside County what it is. If you know a business that you think should be featured, email publisher Alicia Ramirez at Alicia.Ramirez@RiversideRecord.org.
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