AUSTIN, Texas — Four Shop Austin Iconic stores – Wild About Music, Yummi Joy, Toy Joy and Austin Rocks – will soon return to normal hours as Downtown Austin Alliance Foundation reports one of its first pre-pandemic foot traffic numbers.
"The foot traffic is up tremendously," said Downtown Austin Alliance Foundation Executive Director Molly Alexander. "This last weekend alone, we were up to pre-pandemic numbers of a year ago ... January ... February.
Alexander has been working alongside business owners like Teghan Hahn to get downtown rocking and rolling again.
"Besides the Austin T-shirts, the ukulele is very popular," said Hahn.
Hahn co-owns gift shop Wild About Music and three other iconic Downtown Austin stores: Yummi Joy, Austin Rocks and Toy Joy.
As weekend foot traffic cranks up, they'll soon be expanding their hours.
"We've been operating about like 50% staff," said Hahn. "So we are intending to hire back to our full staff and run full hours on all of our stores by June so that we can really get those summer hours in and do a good summer."
Small Business Week kicks off Sunday, so make sure to shop local. It runs from May 2 to May 8.
PEOPLE ARE ALSO READING: