The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every local business 鈥� the ones owned and operated by your friends and neighbours. There are thousands of stories about the impact of the pandemic on business; here is one.
A commentary by a partner in聽Cook Culture in downtown Victoria.
Our business, like most every retail business, has been hit hard by the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We started Cook Culture in 2010, in the then new Atrium Building downtown. Our concept is simple: Teach locals how to cook more nutritious food at home and supply the high quality gear that鈥檚 needed to be successful in the kitchen.
Within a few years we opened in downtown Vancouver and North Vancouver with the same goal. We grew to 28 staff in three locations.
The staff in our Lonsdale and Victoria locations did not want to be in public and chose to be laid off. This has closed our Victoria and North Vancouver locations and those locations have zero revenue coming in.
We鈥檙e extremely fortunate that we鈥檝e spent years developing our online capabilities and as more people are at home cooking, our online business has been keeping us occupied.
However, we鈥檙e just rearranging the deckchairs, as they say. All of our landlords have given us concessions, some more generous than others, so for the meantime we are able to manage our expenses and keep the business operational. A reckoning is coming. No matter how fair our landlords are to us, we can鈥檛 reasonably expect them to not ask rent for six months, or a year.
They鈥檙e running a business too, but there is no way that our business will be the same anytime soon, which means we will not have the revenue we need to pay our rent.
Our cooking classes, which drive a large amount of our business in all locations, will suffer for months, or years. It鈥檚 impossible to keep a two-metre distance at a cooking class so classes are cancelled indefinitely.
We find ourselves in a strange limbo, where our business is a fraction of what it was, but are kept busy in the day, helping people cook at home.
We鈥檙e mailing out pots and pans, knives, bread making equipment and the like, but I have no idea what tomorrow will bring.
Even in the good times, the margin for us to stay afloat was razor-thin due to the highly competitive nature of modern retail. This means that as life begins to 鈥渘ormalize鈥� it鈥檚 impossible to see how we can maintain our previous fixed costs and stay afloat as I鈥檓 sure that as we are to rehire staff, and start up shuttered stores, our revenue and expenses will be way out of whack.
In all of this, there is a bright light.
Over the past few weeks I鈥檝e been wearing all the hats that I鈥檇 delegated over the past 10 years. I鈥檝e been relearning some processes and fumbling around trying to figure out jobs that I hadn鈥檛 done for years.
This is good for any business owner and has me more connected to the mechanics of my business than I鈥檝e been for a long time.
One of my main day-to-day jobs is online customer service where I answer phone calls and emails for people placing online orders. This opportunity has been a silver lining to this pandemic.
I鈥檝e had more positive, supportive conversations with customers than I鈥檝e had since before the internet.
Remember that? Customers shopped in their local stores, and I saw our 鈥渞egulars鈥� all the time. I knew many of our customers by first name and also many of their relatives that lived locally.
Small retail businesses are part of the fabric of communities and all the retailers I know operate their businesses for the love of being in their communities. Trust me, they don鈥檛 do it to get rich!
The response that I鈥檝e had from customers has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive. We鈥檙e working hard to offer as much price value as we can and I鈥檓 finding locals are meeting us in the middle, with messages such as: 鈥淚鈥檇 been thinking about this pot for a while and now is the right time to buy it from you.鈥�
Buying local is the only way for local businesses to survive. Period. Governments and landlords will do what they can. However, as we all come out of this, I believe it鈥檚 important to identify the businesses that you care about and make an ongoing effort to patronize them.
If they鈥檙e not offering the item, price or selection you want, then tell them. Don鈥檛 ghost them and start buying from Amazon or you鈥檒l find that sooner than later Amazon (and the like) is all you鈥檒l have left.
We鈥檒l make it through this, but some, including us, might not operate the same type of business that they did pre COVID-19.
Maybe this is an opportunity for businesses to transition and offer more compelling products and/or services, but when it comes down to it, the only way for our local communities to be fully vibrant is for our restaurants and retail shops to be open.
This is how our local shopping dollars will determine the future of our local communities.
