Local Businesses Affected by Covid-19?

March 13, 2020, 9:00 am 16.8k Views 53 Comments

By an edhat reader

Santa Barbara has become home to many larger, corporate entities, but I’m curious as to how the small local businesses are faring so far? This includes locally owned restaurants, retail shops, bars, etc. I’ve heard of a few businesses expanding their business models to include delivery now (such as El Rancho Market in Solvang) and wonder how other local businesses can creatively adapt to the current downturn.

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Written by Seabird

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53 Comments

  1. Wherever possible, people should go online and buy gift certificates to use later at local stores. If your store doesn’t offer this yet, maybe you should start OR put a big sign in your window with a number to call to do this. Good luck.

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  2. I work in travel and tourism, mostly supporting corporate groups that come to our area. Most of my programs have canceled; and sadly, this is our busy season. I won’t be going out and spending money on anything not essential. 🙁

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  4. Telling people to go to restaurants is an irresponsible suggestion. We are supposed to be reducing contact with people to mitigate community spread. We should be sheltering in place as much as possible and NOT going to restaurants, out shopping, unless it’s for food, and basically avoiding each other wherever and whenever possible. Regarding shopping, I just came from the market in about 20% of the people in the market were there just to accompany the actual shopper. These people shouldn’t be at the market if we want to reduce community spread of the virus. They should be waiting in the car or at home.

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  9. Whole Foods, owned by the richest guy in America, Jeff Bezos, won’t cover all employees sick leave.
    “In a letter sent to employees earlier this week, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey explained that one of the options available to workers was for them to “donate” their “paid time off” days to a pool that other workers could draw from.”

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  12. No, the story of a Chinese food delivery driver spreading the virus has not been debunked — the only thing debunked is that he’s patient zero. To quote your AP article: “On Feb. 29, Adnkronos released a story that a Pakistani man, who delivers Chinese food, did not quarantine himself in Italy after having a positive coronavirus test. The article makes no reference to the man being patient zero.” — the claim that he was patient zero was a conspiratorial add-on — *that* has been debunked.

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  16. Hoping school won’t be extended into summer. It wasn’t during the thomas fire as we were under a state of emergency, as we are now. They did send kids home at our school with 2 weeks worth of homework.

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  17. With the ever-evolving COVID-19 situation, the City of Goleta has made the difficult decision to close all of our libraries (Goleta, Buellton, Solvang, Los Olivos and Santa Ynez) beginning tomorrow, Saturday, March 14. We are monitoring the situation and will re-open the libraries when Santa Barbara County Public Health Department officials indicate it is appropriate to do so.
    We encourage you to take advantage of everything that can be accessed remotely with your Goleta Valley Library or Santa Ynez ValleyLibrary card.

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  18. Had India been the primary manufacturing hub instead and they got hit by an epidemic, you’d be saying too much production was outsourced to India. I think the better observation is when production isn’t geographically diversified, these “all eggs in one basket” scenarios can arise.

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  25. Delivery services sound like a great idea. But I wouldn’t patronize them unless I knew they were taking necessary precautions and exercising best practices to avoid becoming vectors themselves. Perhaps include that info/disclosure in their advertising, web site, etc.

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  26. Homeschooling beats killing grannie with germs ya done got down at the schoolhouse. Seriously I could care less if the cancellation of massive schools goes all the way to June. There are alternatives. Even very young kids could learn some remote and other computer based learning. Yes I know this is sub optimal. But consider the alternative! Would you want to put your kid through a Wuhan scenario?

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  27. I am eager to keep going to restaurants, but afraid that that might be a bad idea. Not sure how to figure that out; I haven’t seen any government directive regarding restaurants in this area. I won’t go to close, crowded spots. But the more open spacious places? Maybe. And maybe I’ll bring my own fork.

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  28. Start thinking about ways to motivate rent relief for your business as well and pool strength with any other businesses renting under the same roof. This is not an attack, it’s instead good business practice. Many real estate owners are REITs and/or private equity. They are afforded many tax incentives and soon tax relief to help in these situations. Be proactive. They have an incentive that you stay in business. Motivate them with a clear plan.

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  29. Most of my clients come to me from out of the area and now they are cancelling/rescheduling because they are unwilling to fly or drive long distances. Easy enough to postpone their appointments until this plague passes over us, but I still have to pay the rent meanwhile.

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  33. Guys please be careful with food deliveries. Don’t get a false sense of security. A chinese take out delivery driver spread this virus in a town in Italy – he had been told to self quarantine but he didn’t – b/c he had to work. Just be careful no matter what you do – even food delivery. Ask them to leave it on the porch and spray down the outside before you handle it.

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  34. Most of Santa Barbara is not owned by REIT’s or PE funds but local owners or small groups of investors. They have mortgages to pay too and lenders do not care what is going on in the world, they just want their money. It’s easy to label landlords as greedy rich people that can afford forgo rent from tenants, some may be, many are not.

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  35. The amped up hysteria has just about destroyed your travel industry, That is a darn shame. I hope this settles out soon. Talk about guilt by association – you people in the travel industry got far more than your fair share. I am truly sorry about this.

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  40. I was at Grocery Outlet yesterday picking up coconut milk for a recipe because TJs was wiped out. There was a woman with an open bag of chips in the front of her shopping cart that she was munching on throughout the store. Touch the cart handle, grab a chip, and put it in your mouth. Touch the dairy case door handle, grab a chip, and put it in your mouth. I wanted to give her a Darwin Award on the spot.

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  41. What Italy is experiencing today, will be the scenario in the US in the future – essentially a complete lockdown as we quarantine ourselves, in perhaps as soon as a few weeks, perhaps longer. I am a nurse + am not being overly-alarming. We’re being called upon to live with greater austerity + forethought, starting today. Life-as-we-knew it will not return for a long time, if ever. It’s time to take stock of what one really values. For me, it’s having “enough”: basic comforts (food, water, shelter), lots of healthy hobbies (bird-watching skills are being sharpened daily ;-}, + helpful social relationships. We need to create new ways of being “community” together, being supportive of one another when we don’t have the ability to be physically close. I’m up to this challenge!

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  43. FWIW, my $.02: we are ALL going to get infected with this virus eventually – I don’t think you can stop the spread of a virus that people can transmit before they even show symptoms. And maybe it’s not such a disaster in the end – fatality rates are negligible except for the aged and ill. Perhaps it is Nature’s way of ‘cleaning house’. There are way too many humans on the planet, so thinning the population of those too weak and old to fight off the virus may, in the end, be beneficial to humanity at large. Time will tell. Meanwhile, panic buying and useless masks are just silly. Flame on 🙂

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  44. Vaccine development speed will break the Guiness Book of Records. They are fast tracking and skipping many of the preliminaries – pharmacokinetics, safety trials – and going straight to efficacy. Genetic sequencing now available permits targeting of specific viral genes that contribute to virulence. This will actually blow over once we figure out biochemical ways to trip up the whole pathogenesis pathway of this bug. In the meantime, we need to practice social isolation, Extreme Hygiene and keep our spirits up. 9:43 many good points, thank you, but things are not quite so grim.

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  45. Yeah, “it only kills old or weak people” sounds good until you think about how many old and weak people you know and love. Or are. And the awful part is that some may die only because we don’t have enough hospital beds and ventilators—people who could be saved.

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  46. We need to reduce contact so our hospitals are not overwhelmed and doctors don’t have to decide in the ER if they are going to treat some or not. No one wants to make this decision. It could be a death sentence. If we reduce contact we reduce the rate of infection so we have the time, supplies and resources needed to treat everyone. One way to reduce contact is to stop shopping in pairs or more. I went to a grocery store last night in about 20% of people had a second third or fourth person with them shopping. As someone who has a pre-existing condition it’s terrifying to see a grocery store like Albertsons or Ralph’s or Vons or Costco allowing all of these extra people into the store when we have long lines and people are not practicing any social distancing. That one extra person in line could easily infect everyone around them. those people then infect others. Right now they’re saying one infected person infect three more people on average. People really need to think about what they’re doing and by my experience yesterday people just don’t get it yet. I had to ask everyone around me to back up and give me space yesterday. I did everything that I could to make sure that those around me kept their distance when the store managers should be requiring that everyone distance themselves in line and preventing groups of people and to the store to shop. Only one person needs to shop not multiple adults.

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  48. Projected ? And who’s projection are you basing this on ?That’s a good one. I’m guessing your one of those that drove all over town in search of toilet paper ? I shouldn’t have ended the previous sentence with a question mark.
    My point ? My point is, our local economy is going to take a huge hit because of mass Hysteria because of such said “Projections” Many local small retailers that are already struggling with high rents won’t be able to sustain such a hit. All this over something that won’t even kill the average annual death rate from the “Flu”
    By the way, what happened to the “FLU” ? Has it magically disappeared and is now referred to as the common cold in order to inflate the “Coronavirus Death” toll to justify creating a worldwide mass Hysteria and global economic chaos ?

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  50. FWIW, I have not bought any TP or hand sanitizer (I did replenish my supply of hand soap). Wrong about that, wrong about everything. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/487489-worst-case-coronavirus-models-show-massive-us-toll “One model from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested that between 160 million and 210 million Americans could contract the disease over as long as a year. Based on mortality data and current hospital capacity, the number of deaths under the CDC’s scenarios ranged from 200,000 to as many as 1.7 million. ”

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