With the restrictions put in place due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, the service industry as a whole across the country has been struggling to make up lost financial revenue. Austin has not been exempt from this including the area of town known as West Campus.

West Campus is a unique area of Austin. Thousands of students who attend the University of Texas at Austin reside in the 78705 ZIP code. Businesses in the area depend on college students as their main source of revenue, especially the local bars that they frequent. However, those students are not there like they used to be.

This past March as the country debated the best response to the current pandemic, students who lived in West Campus left for spring break and never returned in full force as the University shifted to a virtual ending of the spring semester. The service industry in both West Campus and Austin as a whole took a second blow following the cancellation of the annual South by Southwest festival which was set to take place mid-March.

The Hole in the Wall is a West Campus bar at 2538 Guadalupe St. It resides directly across the street from the University and is popular with college students. The bar was even featured on The Tonight Show when comedian and host Jimmy Fallon visited the 40 acres.

Places like the Hole in the Wall rely on the revenue brought in by college students during the spring and fall semesters in addition to the business brought in by events in the city like the South by Southwest festival which draws thousands to Austin.

“Everything down here is seasonal,”  said Andy Kahn, a bartender at the Mockingbird Saloon and the former manager of the Hole in the Wall.

During the summer we rely a lot on special events, festival traffic, summer conventions,” said Khan. “They’re pretty key to keeping anything afloat down here.”

During March of 2019 the Hole in the Wall had just under 89 thousand total receipts for beer, liquor and wine compared to only 25 thousand during March of 2020. That is nearly a 70% decrease in revenue during the month of March.

Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Public Information Officer Chris Porter said, “In addition to spring break the other busy times are going to be, you know, the back to school period when all the students are coming back to UT here in Austin every September and, you know, sometimes in January.” This statement was made in regards to the seasonality of the occurrence of violations that fall under the operations of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

Porter mentioned that the spring break time is particularly busy due to it coinciding with the South by Southwest festival being in the city. It has been five months since spring break and bars are still shut down in Texas with no indication as to when they will be reopened by Governor Abbott.

Headed into the fall semester for 2020, many college students will still not be returning to in-person classes or moving back to West Campus. This, alongside any statewide restrictions still in place per the Governor’s discretion, will impact how establishments in West Campus operate for the remainder of 2020 without the student boost that comes with the start of the next school year.

The data used in this article was collected from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Mixed Beverage Gross Receipts data set. This story focused on data from the West Campus bar Hole in the Wall, however, data for other West Campus establishments can be found here.