Nearly a dozen Silver Spring small businesses lost their venue on Friday after the management company for Solaire Social abruptly closed the food hall less than 18 months after opening it.

Hospitality HQ, a New York-based consulting and management company, notified its tenants Wednesday morning that the food hall, which features a variety of cuisines, including several options from African countries, would be closing at the end of the week. The tenants were given until 10 p.m. Friday to clear out.

Tenants said the company didn’t provide them with a reason for the sudden closure. A general manager for the company couldn’t be reached for comment by phone or email on Friday.

This is at least the second food hall in the region operated by Hospitality HQ that has closed this year. Le Fantome Food Hall in Prince George’s County shuttered in the spring.

“My savings, my hard work, my everything is in here,” Kozy Fawehinmi, who owns Laud Shawarma, said Friday. “So getting us an email at 9:23 a.m. [Wednesday] to be out in 48 hours — it’s crazy.”

Fawehinmi was on her way to work Wednesday when she received the email from Hospitality HQ telling her to move out by Friday night.

She tried to go about her day, serving customers as she always does. But by the close of business, it dawned on her that she had less than 24 hours to coordinate her move out. She had to find people to help her clean and move supplies, and figure out what to do with food she had just ordered.

Tasks that normally take weeks or months would have to get done in hours.

At the other end of the food hall, Vegan Junk Food was preparing Friday to relocate for the second time in less than a year. They were last at Le Fantome.

“Uprooting twice in a year is very difficult,” said Kianna Kareem, who owns and operates the business with her husband, Tristan Reid. “It’s costly. It’s devastating. It’s depressing. It’s stressful.”

Several Vegan Junk Food customers volunteered to help Kareem and Reid clear their space out later that night.

But big questions remained unanswered: Where would they store weeks of inventory and bulky cooking equipment? And where would their business be next?

Plus, Kareem said, “bills are due next week.”

The couple had been thinking about opening a food truck, which they hoped might offer more financial security. Since learning they would need to leave Solaire, they posted a GoFundMe page to help them weather a potential period without income, to buy a truck and transition their business.

“When one door closes, there’s always another door that opens,” Kareem said. “So we’re just searching for that door right now.”

Taking it in stride

Not everyone at Solaire was thrown by its closure.

Douglas Grover, a bartender who worked both at the food hall’s opening last year and its final closing shift on Friday, said, “It’s a business at the end of the day. I get it.”

He appreciated what Solaire had brought to the neighborhood, however briefly, and said customers told him it was one of the reasons they decided to move to the area.

“It’s a place where they can come down, get away from it all,” he said. “Some of them work from home, so it’s like their opportunity to get out the house while not going far.”

But bartending at Solaire was Grover’s third job. He also pulls shifts at two restaurants, and he was already planning to reevaluate his work arrangement in the coming months.

He added that he wouldn’t mind working for Hospitality HQ again.

“If an opportunity comes up for me to work for the company again, I’ll do it in a heartbeat,” he said.

‘More than a business’

Solaire was a place to eat, but also a cultural phenomenon.

Platinum Amala, which first opened in Baltimore and has a stall at Lexington Market, opened at Solaire earlier this year with its jollof rice and namesake amala, a starch typically made from ground yams.

“This was out of our control, but not out of our spirit,” the business wrote Thursday on Instagram. “We’re already searching for a new home nearby — bigger, better, and ready to bring even more authentic West African flavor your way!”

Ndidiamaka Agu of Shuga x Ice, who blends African flavors with ice cream, called Solaire’s closure “gut-wrenching” in an Instagram post. But she also expressed her appreciation for her customers and promised that she would somehow sell her ice cream again.

“It took me seven years to bring this dream to life … seven years of working, saving, praying, and believing that an African-inspired ice cream brand could not only exist but thrive,” Agu wrote.

“And for the last year and a half, this little corner of Silver Spring became more than a business — it became a gathering place. A space where cultures met over scoops, where stories turned into flavors, and where joy had a physical address.”