W hile pounding fufu inside her food truck, Lasgidi Cafe, chef Patience “Patty” Ogunbanjo started to feel lightheaded. It was Juneteenth 2024 and she was serving Nigerian eats to revelers at Eastlake Park in downtown Phoenix. Outside, it was a typical early-summer scorcher, topping 100 degrees. In the truck, it was a furnace. The Lasgidi truck has a swamp cooler. But Ogunbanjo can’t run it when the gas is on, because the breeze of cool air blows out the stove’s flame. On top of that, the truck’s generator had been giving Ogunbanjo and her team prob- lems. While one of them looked at the generator, she and the others worked to serve the nearly 20 people in line. “We were all like, drenched in sweat,” she says. “Without that electric, your exhaust is off, so all that heat is just circu- lating around you.” The generator reluctantly came back online. Ogunbanjo started to feel nauseous. She sat down and sipped some water. Then, she insisted on getting up to help her team. The last time she popped up to help, she blacked out. She fell toward the truck’s range. The chef broke her fall with her hand, getting gashed and burned in the process. After she cooled off and got bandaged up, Lasgidi Cafe packed up for the day. When Ogunbanjo mentioned the episode to her doctor, she got a warning about operating during the hottest part of the year. “You’ve been lucky these last couple of times,” Ogunbanjo says her doctor told her. “You don’t want to push it.” A dining scene on fire It’s hard not to want to be out there cooking. The Valley’s dining scene is arguably the best it’s ever been. Kitchens are stacked with a wealth of local talent. Homegrown chefs are opening restaurants and eyeing expansion. Tourists and locals alike flock to Phoenix restau- rants during the cooler months. But no matter how healthy our food scene appears, the summers increasingly hit it like a brush fire. Everyone feels the heat. And as the weeks slog on, the busi- nesses that can’t adapt are reduced to a memory. Each year, it seems, the unrelenting heat stretches on longer. Phoenix averaged 111 days over 100 degrees from 1991 to 2020, per the National Weather Service. This decade has seen three of the city’s hottest summers on record, mauling us with record-breaking stretches of triple-digit temperatures. In 2023, we endured 133 straight 100-plus-degree days. Then 2024 cracked its knuckles and gave us 143 in a row. Couple that with rising costs and an unease about the economy, and diners start to rethink their evening out. Those same costs wallop restaurants. Even though they buy ingredients wholesale, food prices are 36% higher than they were pre-pandemic, according to the National Restaurant Association. Labor costs have also esca- lated. Minimum wage today is $14.70, up from $10 eight years ago. Restaurants have little financial room for error. Average profit margins are a slender 3 to 5%, making any macro changes perilous. Together, those factors can be fatal. Last summer, the Valley saw all of those issues converge. Ultimately, 63 restaurants closed between May and September 2024, compared to 41 in the same period in 2023, according to past Phoenix New Times coverage. That was a 54% surge in restau- rants collapsing. “2024 was the worst summer on record for restaurants,” says Kimber Lanning, CEO of Local First Arizona. “And 2025 is shaping up to be just as bad, if not slightly worse.” In interviews with New Times, several restaurateurs echoed Lanning, calling last summer the worst in years. They used phrase like “shockingly slow,” “uniquely shitty” and, most often, “brutal.” For Ogunbanjo, the heat was downright dangerous. But the punishing conditions are teaching her and others how to cope. Here’s how she and other Valley restaurant owners are surviving this gnarly summer. ‘Injury-bad’ at Lasgidi Cafe When Ogunbanjo launched her food truck in February 2023, she “breezed through the nice season” and admittedly did not have a plan for a summer that ended up being the second-hottest Phoenix has recorded. That heat gets magnified in a small space with burners lit, a fryer bubbling away and “strenuous” preparation for some dishes. One day, she took a picture of the thermo- stat inside the truck: It was 137 degrees. “It was real bad — like injury-bad,” she says. “I’m pretty sure that is absolutely unsafe.” This summer, Lasgidi Cafe owner and chef Patience “Patty” Ogunbanjo has changed her technique keeping her food truck afloat. (Patience Ogunbanjo) How Phoenix summers went from bad to ‘brutal’ for Valley restaurants. BY SARA CROCKER BOILING POINT >> p 12
