They are now offering meal kits, so you get a meal for two to four people in one easy go, they started shipping via USPS, and they are doing local deliveries. They make their own in-house butter, cheese and cream cheese so their kits do fairly well.
They are also increasing what other items they are selling, such as adding bread to their lineup. Which is absolutely fantastic.
But it's still hard for them, with the reduction in people coming in and sitting around they don't get people buying a bunch of coffee or having breakfast and then lunch while chatting. They have had to furlough some of their staff, and I really hope they make it through, because another favorite restaurant of mine is going under, they simply can't afford to keep going, even with a loan that would help pay salaries, there are other contracts and payables due that simply can't be covered with enough loans... loans against what collateral?
When it all blows over, the small/medium businesses can re-open and re-hire all of the people back again, and they can all stop taking unemployment. Life continues on as usual.
Why should the average person have to suffer so that these big banks can keep charging interest on their loans every month? Why can't we just legally mandate that they have to put the loans on pause and suck it up like the rest of us?
My partner made the same mistake talking about a local small-scale brewery. Talking to the brewer, servicing the equipment loan was one of their biggest monthly expenses and their bank called them to tell them to defer payments for several months. Meanwhile, the landlord (actually a local government agency...) has sat paralyzed unsure what to do.
Also, those commercial real estate holders aren't necessarily rolling around in cash either. So while yes, they should have reserves, that doesn't mean they can necessarily go months or years without a paying tenant in place.
For that matter - the bank I mentioned above that did right by the brewer is a local bank. Not every bank is BofA, Wells Fargo, or Chase. Lots of banks in rural America look an awful lot like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life.
Can you cite such a time when businesses, especially small, could survive in a competitive market without taking on debt and redirecting profits to the business? Because this hasn't been true ever. Small businesses need every edge they can get to survive, and that means not having gold-laden chests lying around waiting the the 100-yearly plague to come.
I have tons of friends with small business that own 2-3 personal property, all the luxuries and yet officially the business is in shambles (right now). The attitude is “who cares”, they take the money out and spend it on themselves and just fire everyone. They pass on the risk. That money came from greener days and now employees have to file for unemployment. I guess people see this as normal, but it isn’t and it shouldn’t. Tax-payers are now subsiding those unemployment checks while the profit taking already benefited the owners.
Small businesses have always lived relatively hand-to-mouth existences, and the "profits" are usually enough to cover the owner's equivalent of a salary.
This may be what we read about publicly traded firms, but small businesses are in a completely different category. For example, many of them, if they do not take loans to improve their offering, will lose customers to the competition.
Even during the recession of 2008, demand didn't go to zero. It is insane to expect anyone, business, individual, or otherwise, to be able to go completely without income for any prolonged period of time.