BLACKSBURG, Va. – It is spring break for Virginia Tech students, and most have gone home or on vacation, leaving Blacksburg far less busy. Locals are enjoying the reduced traffic, crowds and better parking, but students are a significant part of the workforce.
Local businesses say the break brings both slower business and staffing challenges.
“Spring break specifically, I know, is gonna be a pretty slow time of year,” said Lily Torrico, manager of 310 Rosemont.
“It’s definitely an asset when you find somebody that’s got full availability or, you know, they’re a little bit older, so maybe they’re not going on spring break,” said Brian Palmer, owner of Hokie House.
The population of Blacksburg is nearly 50,000 when Virginia Tech students are in town. But during breaks, the population shrinks to less than 15,000.
“With any job, regardless of being in a college town or not, you’re going to have to expect that some of your people are going to take time off,” Palmer said. “With those breaks like spring break, Thanksgiving break, everyone’s taking off.”
“I have very limited staff during breaks because most of my employees are students,” Torrico said. “But I also am just not able to schedule the employees that I do have available as much because we’re not getting as many customers in.”
One local business owner told me it is “possibly the hardest thing about running his business.” However, there are advantages to employing college students in a college town.
“I make it a priority to hire college students just because our target customer is a lot of college students,” Torrico said. “But it also does make it easy to have seasonal employees during the summer and have a reliable staff that’s going to come back in the fall.”
“It is a little bit of a hurdle,” Palmer said. “But on that same aspect, it gives you a chance to maybe shut down for a couple days to paint or redo the dart wall like we just did. Or just, in general, give some of your staff that have maybe been picking up some of that slack a chance to take a little bit of a break.”
Losing the majority of the population multiple times a year is a unique challenge for local businesses. To thrive, they say they need to be prepared to adjust.
Virginia Tech students will return to class Monday, the 16th, and have no other significant breaks until the spring 2026 semester ends May 15.