Story by:
Camille Syed
The coronavirus pandemic has hurt local small businesses in our own back yard.
Due to this pandemic, Gov. Brian Kemp restricted restaurants in Georgia from having any form of dine-in service in March and some of April, which greatly impacted local businesses.
Businesses in Metter, Sylvania and Glennville are faced a decrease in sales of about 50 percent since the COVID-19 outbreak. However, a few businesses are making the best out of what they can.
4and20 Bakers, a black-owned bakery serving Sylvania, owned by T.Chad Montgomery and his business partner Amanda McDonald, have been following updates on the Coronavirus closely from the beginning.
“When they started keeping kids home from school and Georgia Southern went to all online classes…that’s when we immediately shut down our dining room and started looking for other strategies,” Montgomery said.
4and20 is not the only business who saw this coming, Papa Buck’s BBQ, located in Metter, closed before Kemp issued the restrictions with hopes to keep their employees and the community safe.
“We closed down a week before they closed dining rooms,” said Jason Smith, general manager of Papa Buck’s. “we only made it through one week of being closed before decided to at least try curbside pickup and to-go.”
Curbside pickup, to-go and delivery have been a very popular way for restaurants to serve their community before the pandemic. Unfortunately, local businesses have no other choice due to the outbreak.
Charles and Deborah Tillman are the owners of Watermelon Creek Vineyard, where they started their fine-dining restaurant two years ago. Due to the virus, they have closed their kitchen and have even started doing curbside pickup and shipping all over America for wine lovers .
“Shipping has increased pretty good over the past 30 days,” said Tillman. “We’ve learned that advertising nationwide wine sales actually creates some sales. People buy wine from Maine and New Jersey and everywhere else and we never pushed nationwide advertising until this.”
While restaurants that stayed open, like Papa Buck’s and 4and20, faced obstacles like closed dining rooms, they also ran into food-sourcing issues because of the pandemic.
Papa Buck’s BBQ usually got four trucks a week, and now they are having to work with two trucks coming only one day a week.
“Food sourcing has become a real challenge,” Smith said. “Getting the food, we need to cook in order to serve our customers is hard.”
With unemployment and laid-off employees being a nationwide result from the virus, these businesses are all facing the same issue. Unfortunately, Smith and Tillman have laid off four employees since dining rooms closed. Smith’s staff used to get 30 hours a week and now they’re averaging 15 hours. Montgomery and McDonald even started fundraising for their employees.
“We had a lot of people laid off, “ said Montgomery. “My partner who runs the restaurant…she actually started a GoFundMe page just for money to help employees because we’ve basically been working without being compensated just to keep the restaurant open.”
Even though these businesses faced many challenges due to the outbreak, they were all able to shine a light on all the positive takeaways from this experience. From community support, to flexibility, to government funds, they are all grateful to still be in business.
Papa Buck’s has been taking this time to continue building a drive-thru window and they have started doing community deliveries which is something they haven’t done before in Twin City and Swainsboro.
“At least we’re open, at least I’m working, at least most of my guys and girls are working so that’s what we’re happy about,” said Smith. “This could be a great time to be negative about things, but we are looking at this as a time to relaunch and rebrand and come back better than ever.”
At 4and20, Montgomery said flexibility is one thing that has always helped them, especially in a time like this. They have turned some items on their menu to casseroles, so all the customer has to do is warm them up and enjoy. They have even incorporated the same idea with a build your own pizza.
“We just shifted focus to say okay people are home and nobody wants to cook so having the casseroles to put in are great… I have kids at home, so they have the kit and it bakes in five minutes. I’m happy, their happy.”
Stimulus checks from the government have been not only an upside for these businesses, but also a way for their employees to have money in their pockets during this difficult time. These business owners are keeping their heads up despite the challenges.
“We are just enjoying the freedom I guess you can say,” said Tillman. “The employees are happy they’ve got their money.”
Comments