How small businesses are bracing for a COVID winter — or not
How small businesses are bracing for a COVID winter — or not
Some cities and states are entering new lockdowns and new stay-at-home orders as COVID-19 spread at a rate of roughly more than a 100,000 new cases each day over the past week.
In Chicago and statewide in Washington, Oregon and New Mexico, small businesses are bracing for them.
Back in the spring, weekslong shutdowns dealt an initial blow. When things shut down then, the Stampede Cocktail Club in Seattle, Washington, got a Paycheck Protection Program loan, held a GoFundMe fundraiser to help support employees, scaled back days and hours, and sold gift cards, merchandise and to-go drinks.
“I always joke around that we’ve pivoted so much that our hips hurt,” said Cera Grindstaff, general manager of Stampede Cocktail Club. She said business revenue is down 75%.
“I think it’s a different ballgame,” she said of the coming lockdown. “We didn’t know what we were going into this first time. So it was kind of like, ‘Oh a pandemic,’ but now it’s like, ‘This is a pandemic.'”
And more than half a year later, many people have been struggling for months, said Matthew Slaughter, an economist at Dartmouth College.
“Unfortunately, more customers and clients are more stressed financially because of the absence of the federal government support that have rolled off,” he said.
That worries Wendelin Scott, who owns YogaSource in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When things shut down the first time, she had two locations.
“It was pretty stressful — the psychological and emotional stress that everybody was under,” she said. “And then the intense learning curve to get everybody online.”
Then, in June, she shut down one of her studios. Now, most of her classes are online, but she’s just breaking even. She hopes her remaining brick-and-mortar studio will survive the winter.
In Chicago, Candice Cowles owns hair salon ComeCeCeMe where she makes custom wigs and weaves for her clients. She hopes she’s prepared.
Before the pandemic, clients would bring her hair bundles and she’d style them in shop. Now, Cowles buys the hair, styles it, sends it to customers and then virtually walks them through how to do it themselves. “We don’t even have to touch each other, see each other, anything,” she said. “So now, actually, the profits are higher.”
Cowles is optimistic, but her business depends on clients with disposable income — and how they weather the COVID-19 winter.
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
