A post-fire effort to help eateries

Altadena Dining Club aims to keep ailing restaurants afloat after deadly Eaton blaze.

- BY MELISSA GOMEZ

JASON ARMOND Los Angeles Times

BROOKE Lohman-Janz, right, greets Melissa Michelson at an Altadena Dining Club meeting Oct. 21. Lohman-Janz started the club to help eateries stay afloat.

Before the fire, Lucy's Place would come alive in the morning.

Gardeners and day laborers would come by for a morning pastry or breakfast burrito and coffee served up by owner Juan Orozco, who arrived at 5 a.m. to prepare. If he had to step out, his regulars would take over and serve coffee to customers, he said.

Orozco and his wife have run the modest cafe since 1997, serving items such as huevos rancheros, tacos, burgers and fajitas on oblong plates with a side of grapefruit. Customers who rented apartments nearby would swing by for a meal. But after the Eaton fire, Orozco's humble cafe has become a shell of itself. He said it’s lucky if anyone comes by before 8 a.m.

"I want to close," he said Oct. 21. "There's no business."

That was before the Altadena Dining Club arrived.

Made up of local residents wanting to save eateries that survived the fire, the dining club is the brainchild of Brooke Lohman-Janz, a displaced renter determined to preserve the fabric of Altadena. That's why, that night, she and other club members walked into Lucy’s Place and took over its patio. About a dozen people, including some first-timers and dining club regulars, spent that evening chatting about their lives, rebuilding, and of course, the night of the Eaton fire.

Orozco, who estimates he’s lost three-fourths of his business and is now thousands of dollars in debt, said that business had been slow that particular day. Only two potential customers had phoned in orders, and they never picked them up. But then members of the dining club began to trickle in, and the restaurant slowly came alive.