The first Vegan butcher shop in the country, the Herbivorous Butcher in Northeast Minneapolis, will be temporarily closed due to smoke damage.
Co-owner Aubry Walch noticed something unusual Tuesday evening.
"Around just a little after 9 that our security system had a power failure and I looked on the cameras and noticed smoke," Walch says.
The damage is significant.
"It's looking like it's gonna be a almost a complete rebuild in the kitchen," she adds.
At the moment it looks as though it may take a couple months to rebuild.
"It's tough. in the meantime, because we have so many employees," explains Walch.
They're my family. So how do we care for them now?"
In the interim, they'll return to a more grass roots effort.
"It's how we started. Community built us, so we can all do it together."
Although it's a painful experience, Walch is grateful the damage wasn't worse and no one was hurt.
Walch says the investigator told her something was simmering between the ceiling tiles and the upstairs floor resulting in complete destruction of the kitchen.
"It could have been 10 billion times worse, but this building, it sustained several fires between 1902 when it was built, and the 1970s," Walch explained to WCCO. "And If you go into our front of house, you'll see that we kept the char on the columns to honor the history of the building. And so - here we are again."
Walch said it could a couple months or much longer before they're able to reopen.
According to the Minneapolis fire department, crews found light smoke on the first floor and found that there was a fire in the ceiling between the first and second floor above the kitchen area. The fire burned a small hole to the second floor. They said the sprinkler system was activated and extinguished most of the fire but they still needed to cut a hole in the floor to extinguish the remaining smoldering fire and embers that was between the floors and ceiling.