Three sesame bagels with cream cheese — one with tomato and one with jalapeño — and a plain bagel with butter did not seem like most exciting order that Call Your Mother has ever fielded.

The Sunday order to the buzzy bagelry’s Georgetown location was getting filled like any other, Call Your Mother co-owner Andrew Dana says. “And then all of the sudden the motorcade starts to pull up and staff is like, ‘What the heck is going on?’ And then it became pretty evident what was happening.”

President Joe Biden was waving from the car as his son Hunter and members of the Secret Service got out of the car to pick up the bagels. Suddenly, that order was way more thrilling — Call Your Mother became the first D.C. food establishment the new president visited in office.

The impact was immediate. By Monday, sales were “up 100% in Georgetown,” per Dana. “Something like this is just incredible for local business.”

The expectation is that the new administration will continue to frequent local restaurants and other businesses. Biden “was supportive of our incredible industry when he was vice president,” says Kathy Hollinger, the CEO of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. “So to be able to come in and connect with the city in that way, our restaurants are so excited and it’s such a much, much-needed boost right now.”

Restaurants in D.C. have faced decreased sales during the pandemic, leading to layoffs, closures, and reorienting towards takeout and delivery.

“I was elated by what happened over the weekend,” says Hollinger. “We miss that so much. We missed so much of that in general over the last year with COVID, right? People in general being able to gather. But we missed it for the last four years.” 

While Democratic presidents generally tend to engage more with local D.C. than Republican ones, the Trump administration provided an extreme example. President Donald Trump only visited one D.C. eatery while living at the White House: the BLT Prime located in the Trump International Hotel. Other members of his administration did dine out in the District, but it didn’t necessarily provide the same boost in business.

“There’s a very big difference between the president and members of the administration,” says Hollinger.

And it was somewhat likely that a sighting of a Trump official could lead to protests or controversy.  Some restaurants began preparing for how they’d handle demonstrators confronting their patrons.

Having a president in office as locally unpopular as Trump meant that associating with his administration could be bad for the bottom line. Ask Casey Patten, the founder of Taylor Gourmet. After Patten shook hands with Trump during a business roundtable at the White House in January 2017, there were calls to boycott the sandwich shop. When Taylor Gourmet closed down in September 2018, the impact of Patten’s visit with Trump was among the reasons cited, along with the company’s too-fast expansion.

“That day those pictures came out [of Patten with Trump] and then the call to boycott came, we just dropped in sales,” one person close to the company told DCist at the time. “There were instances, you’d walk up to the [Taylor Gourmet] units and people would just start yelling at you. It’s tough to win those sales back.”

Taylor Gourmet had a very different brush with presidential politics during the Obama administration, when Patten also visited the White House. A 2012 Obama trip to the sandwich shop for lunch corresponded with a bump in Taylor Gourmet’s sales and media profile, and he returned a year later with Biden during the government shutdown, highlighting the business’ discount for furloughed federal employees.

“Any time you have a well-known political figure visit your restaurant, it just puts you more on the international stage,” says Eva Torres, the D.C. director of Le Diplomate, a French restaurant on 14th Street NW that has seen its fair share of high-profile diners. “The president really drives how this city is viewed by people that are in other countries or other parts of the States.” She adds that a president who scopes out local establishments and stores “makes our city look so much more vibrant.”

Le Diplomate was among the dozens of local establishments where Obama and then-First Lady Michelle Obama dined, and it also garnered headlines during the Trump years when then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt asked his security detail to use sirens and flashing lights to clear 14th Street to get to the bistro with haste (they declined).

So is it easier for D.C. restaurants with a presidential administration that has wide support among residents? “At the end of the day, what we do is provide hospitality,” says Torres. “We really try to make sure the environment is safe and fun for all our guests, no matter popular or unpopular they are.”

While Le Diplomate hasn’t heard from the Biden team yet about a visit from him or the first lady about a visit, Torres is feeling confident they’ll eventually be in touch. And before the election, she says, Stephen Starr, the owner of the restaurant group, was in touch with Vice President Kamala Harris, who told him she had been ordering takeout from the bistro. Since November, Harris, who currently lives in West End, has publicly frequented a number of D.C. establishments for to-go food.

Washingtonian reported that some establishments are trying to work their “back channels” to get a visit from Biden, Harris, or another administration official.

But Call Your Mother’s Dana says that Biden’s stop was not the result of an effort like that — it came as a surprise. (If he had known, Dana says, he would have been there at the time, instead of leaving about 30 minutes before the motorcade rolled up.) While Jeff Zients, the current coordinator of the federal COVID-19 task force, was a partner and investor in the bagel business, Dana told the Washington Post that Zients divested his stake when he joined the administration.

The White House pool report says that “POTUS directed the motorcade to stop so Hunter Biden could make a food run … As might be expected a sizable crowd of several dozen congregated at the intersection near” the Georgetown spot, which is no stranger to local politics.

In addition to any revenue boost, a cameo from the president adds to the allure for guests and provides a morale boost for staff. “It just reminds you of the cool city that you live in,” Torres says. “We’re in the city where the most powerful person, you know, potentially in the world is living and coming to your establishment. It reminds you of the magnitude of that and I find it very exciting.”

This story has been updated to provide the accurate surname for Eva Torres.