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Austin's boil water notice impacts several businesses

The boil water notice comes after Central Texas received unprecedented flooding.

AUSTIN — Some Austin businesses are taking a hit after the City of Austin issued a boil water notice Monday morning.

The notice comes after Central Texas received unprecedented flooding. The city's water treatment plants can't keep up cleaning all the silt and debris in our waterways.

In South Austin, Peter Morales decided to keep his restaurant, Las Quesadillas closed until the boil water notice is over.

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Inside, employees came to work but instead of cooking and serving customers, they cleaned.

"It would be very hard to safeguard all our customers so I decided to shut down our restaurant," said Morales.

Morales dumped out all his ice from the fountain machine. That's just one of the many Austin health department rules he's following.

"The drinks would be turned off, our ice machines would be turned off. We would have to go and buy portable hand washing stations like you see at ACL or at any of the festivals," said Morales.

In North Austin at the Monkey Nest Coffee Shop, customers got a cold awakening.

"We've shut down all our hot drinks, hot teas, hot coffees, espresso based drinks, we've also had to cut off some of our blended drinks since we don't have an easy way to rinse out our pitchers. We've gone to all to go packaging for food items," said Alex Schalchlin, operations manager.

Lunchtime usually sees a crowd at Monkey Nest.

On Monday, however, Schalchlin said they are only seeing 20 to 25 percent of their usual business.

Their coffee counterpart, Starbucks, also stopped selling drip coffee at their Austin stores.

Spokesperson, Nate Nesbitt, said they are only selling bottled beverages and packaged items until the boil water notice is over.

Same thing is happening over at Epoch Coffee Shops.

One customer put the the boil water notice in perspective.

"The first thing I thought of is this is what Flint, Michigan has to go through every single day and has been doing so for what, like a year plus now?" said Will Alfonso, an ER nurse.

The boil water notice is in effect until further notice.

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