Jeff Dodd, a worker at Mooyah, a West Knoxville burger restaurant, builds an order for a customer Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015. Two weeks ago a drunk driver plowed into the building causing major damage and Dodd was very grateful that owner Nick DeVore decided to paid his staff through the holidays while the eatery was closed. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

SHARE Nick DeVore, owner of Mooyah, a West Knoxville burger restaurant, reopened Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015 after a drunk driver plowed into the building two weeks ago, causing major damage. DeVore said he couldn't bear to leave his employees without pay during the holidays so he continued to paid them while the eatery was closed. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) Nick DeVore, owner of Mooyah, a West Knoxville burger restaurant, reopened Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015 after a drunk driver plowed into the building two weeks ago, causing major damage. DeVore paid his staff through the holidays while the eatery was closed. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) Nick DeVore, owner of Mooyah, a West Knoxville burger restaurant, reopened Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015 after a drunk driver plowed into the building two weeks ago, causing major damage. DeVore paid his staff through the holidays while the eatery was closed. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

By G. Chambers Williams Iii

Nick DeVore lost 12 days of business during the height of the Christmas shopping season at his MooYah Burgers-Fries-Shakes restaurant on Kingston Pike, all because of a suspected drunken driver who slammed her car through the eatery's front wall on Dec. 18, then drove away before anyone could get her name or license plate number.

It took that long for DeVore to get insurance adjusters, a contractor, and a repair crew out to the store, and get a temporary wall built so he could reopen.

Even though DeVore will take a big financial hit from the incident, none of his 15 employees will. They came back to work Wednesday morning with smiles on their faces after a nearly two-week, unplanned paid vacation that included Christmas Day.

That's because DeVore, the store's owner and operator, decided to keep paying them even while MooYah's was closed.

"It was just the right thing to do," said DeVore, whose family also is in the restaurant business, running local favorite Litton's in Fountain City.

"I took a six weeks' average of each employee's pay preceding the shutdown, and used that to figure what to pay them while we were closed," said DeVore, who took over the MooYah's franchise at 7301 Kingston Pike in July 2014.

The gesture was a lifesaver for the staff, said Jeff Dodd, who has been helping to make the shop's gourmet burgers for the past five months.

"I was very surprised and very appreciative, as well," Dodd said as he assembled burgers Wednesday as the lunch rush began. "It would have been very hard on all of us to have no income during that time, especially at Christmas."

There were a lot of disappointed customers during the shutdown, which came during one of the restaurant's busiest times of the year, DeVore said.

But to make sure those customers would come back after he reopened, DeVore and some of his staff stood outside the closed eatery for a few hours each day leading up to Christmas, handing out MooYah gift cards to anyone who walked up looking to eat there.

"I sure didn't want them to think we had shut down forever," DeVore said.

He estimated that he and the workers handed out as many as 400 gift cards, so he's pretty much assured those people will be back.

But there were plenty of customers on hand for the re-opening, including Willis Eleby of East Nashville, who brought his wife and young daughter to eat Wednesday.

It was Eleby's first time at MooYah's, and he made it a point to seek out the owner to tell him that he thought the food was "great."

"I loved the burger, with the soft bun and the juicy burger patty -- and everything was fresh," he said.

As for the crash that shut the place down, "It sounded like a bomb had gone off," said Dodd, who was working in the back of the store when the car hit at 10:45 p.m., after closing time. "The whole front was full of smoke."

No one was injured, although there were employees about two feet away from where the car came to a stop, DeVore said.

He'd still like to find the hit-and-run driver, who he said was a young, blond woman driving a "silver or light-color Camry or Accord."

"It will have extensive front-end damage," he said.