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Alba Estenoz encountered a litany of road blocks when opening her dessert and tapas restaurant Devil’s Diet in 2020, but thanks to pivoting she became a success story of a business that launched during COVID.
Estenoz, a dessert chef known in the New Haven community, previously worked for over 15 years at Zinc. Her real dream was to start her own establishment from scratch. After a fortuitous ankle break that put her out of work in the summer of 2018, she decided to quit Zinc and draft a business plan.
Enter COVID.
“We got our business plan approved in 2019, we signed our lease, we broke ground at our location, and then boom the pandemic hit. It put a huge damper on opening up business in a timely fashion. Our initial goal was June 2020, but we couldn’t open until October 2020. We did not qualify for a PPE loan because we were not open by February 2020, we definitely could’ve used it,” Candace O’Leary, general manager, said.
She noted they had to “think quickly” about how to switch things up in their plans to accommodate the “new normal.”
Ample outdoor seating space helped.
“We have a great patio to sit at, and that makes people comfortable,” O’Leary said. “We’ve slowly been getting more and more notoriety, (and) boost posts on the Internet. The warmer weather and COVID shots are making people less afraid to come out.”
Devil’s Diet runs promotions including one on Thursdays for students who can get a free coffee with any dessert purchase.
O’Leary also said that SnackPass, an app founded at Yale University that competes with Uber-eats and Grub Hub, has been a “huge help.”
It’s important to Alba that her customers know she identifies as a “women-led restaurant” that sources all of its ingredients locally, and that her footprint is rooted in New Haven with local businesses like G Bakery.
The restaurant is located at 1245 Chapel St., New Haven, in the Novella building.
Contact Joanna Smiley at jsmiley@newhavenbiz.com.
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The Hartford Business Journal 2025 Charity Event Guide is the annual resource publication highlighting the top charity events in 2025.
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