Standing inside her food truck Spice on Curve in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood on Thursday, Nasima Akhter was prepping for the lunchtime rush of Amazon employees.

“I’m excited that Amazon has a new policy where they will be working five days a week. I’m ready,” Akhter said, referencing the company’s highly anticipated return-to-office mandate for corporate and tech employees that kicked in with the new year.

Akhter may have to wait a couple more days — the scene around South Lake Union and Denny Triangle where Amazon’s sprawling headquarters campus is located was hardly bustling. On a grey day, it felt like a holiday hangover was hanging over the area, and most people GeekWire spoke with figured the real return would come on Monday.

We first met Akhter back in 2021, when she and her husband, Sayed Salem, were trying to get by during the pandemic and Amazon’s shifting policies on when workers would be called back to the office. Business picked up a bit during the three-days-per week mandate, first instituted in May 2023, but it was still much slower than pre-pandemic.

Last year, Salem died of colon cancer at age 63, leaving his wife to carry on the business, serving authentic Indian cuisine from a red truck, always parked at the corner of John Street and Terry Avenue North.

“I managed so far,” Akhter said. “I made it.”

Many other food trucks in the neighborhood, as well as restaurants, bars, doggy daycares, hair salons, gyms and more could see a boon from Amazon’s new policy, affecting roughly 50,000 employees in Seattle and another 12,000 in Bellevue, Wash.

When GeekWire last visited over the summer to take the pulse on how in-office work was impacting small businesses around Amazon, people we spoke with said the three-day mandate made a big difference, and some were looking forward to a five-day mandate. The hope was to finally do away with slow Mondays and Fridays — days that many workers seemed to be spending remotely.

On Thursday, around The Spheres between Amazon’s tallest office towers, the busiest part of campus was at the Banana Stand, where employees grabbed free fruit before heading inside. The banana tender said it was busier than Christmas week, but figured Monday would be much better.

A steady stream of Amazon badge-wearing employees, some walking dogs that are also returning to the office, moved between and into various buildings.

Traffic along Seventh Avenue and on cross streets on campus was relatively light. A parking attendant waved in a Tesla while chatting with GeekWire, and then another. He said he preferred the busier days to make his shift go by faster, adding that if it was really jumping the parking garage “lot full” sign would have been out by 9:30 a.m.

At Mainstay Provisions, a cafe/market at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Bell Street, a worker behind the counter said traffic wasn’t bad getting into work on Thursday. He agreed that a post-holiday vibe seemed to be hanging over the neighborhood and downtown, and that things would likely “pop off” on Monday.

Amazon first announced its intention to bring employees back into the office five days per week in September, when CEO Andy Jassy wrote that the company’s culture is “unique,” but to keep it strong “you have to work at it all the time.”

City leaders and small business owners have expressed optimism that Amazon’s move could trigger a wider shift to more days in the office for more companies, jettisoning the remote and hybrid policies that took root during the pandemic.

But Amazon will still have to convince its own corporate employees that RTO is a good idea. The three-day mandate in 2023 sparked an outcry on an internal “Remote Advocacy” Slack channel and some workers even walked out in protest over the issue.

In September, an unscientific survey on Blind, the forum for anonymous/verified workers, found a majority of those who weighed in were dissatisfied with the five-day policy and many were considering looking for another job because of it.

Related: Downtown Seattle leader calls Amazon’s return-to-office mandate ‘influential’ as 5-day policy begins