Here they tell us in their own words
After nearly three months, businesses that have had to scale back their operations to help stop the spread of COVID-19 are beginning the process of reopening their doors to customers. Over the next several weeks, The Boston Globe will be sharing the experiences of small-business owners, in their own words, as they try to get back to work.
| Bessie King, Co-owner |
Villa Mexico Cafe • In business since: 2000
Bessie King and her mother, Julie, have run Villa Mexico Cafe in downtown Boston for 20 years. They have stayed open throughout the shutdown, bolstered by donations of food to front-line workers. But as those donations have died down, the Kings worry about what the future holds, as they are located in a warren of largely empty office towers.
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We have not closed a day. Back when we began hearing that things were shutting down, my mom said, ‘We can’t close; how are our employees going to eat and get money?’ We’re independent, women-owned, and we’re penny-pinchers. It’s my mom’s way of doing business. Pay everybody first, and you figure out what you have. We used our savings just to stay open.
On our website, we asked people to adopt one of our employees, donate to us, or buy a virtual burrito or our salsa (which we ship), and between those four things we were able to survive the month of April. We did take-out and do our own deliveries; we don’t use a third-party service. And I started doing them in my car. A former customer who lives in Baltimore wanted to give a donation, and we said, how about we donate the food? We used to be in front of MGH and we know everybody there, let’s bring it to the doctors. It took off.
That’s why April and May felt bearable — we were doing everything and anything to survive, and people were showing up. I was making more funds out of the donated meals than if I had relied on take-out and delivery. We were able to pay our rent and still pay for our employees. Our rent is a little over $7,000, and it takes us close to $45,000 to operate just in a month. Our PPP came through in May, but it was only $10,000. We’ve raised an additional $5,000 on GoFundMe.
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Beginning in May our neighborhood reopened, and we said, OK, this looks promising. But there were very few people doing donated meals; it’s dead. It’s not catchy anymore. May 5th happened, and we had hoped to have a good day — it’s one of our biggest days — but nothing spectacular happened. This is what we have left: We’re still missing money, we just finished May, we still haven’t paid rent for June, and we still haven’t paid one of our loans.
Slowly, offices are trickling in. But there’s also more competition. You can see that the customers are wary; they wear the masks but they don’t want to come very close. They give us the credit card and immediately grab the sanitizer, and they don’t take the receipt.
We’re at that point now where we haven’t paid the rent for June — we don’t know what to ask for or what to do. We are just waiting to see if people want to buy again. We’re all really hurting right now.
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| Gena Mavuli, Owner |
Create: Art in Community • In business since: February 2020
Mavuli was in business only a few weeks when the shutdown happened. She quickly shifted gears from offering community art classes to creating take-home art kits for kids and hosting classes — and birthday parties — over Zoom.
I don’t qualify for any loans. I’m new, and between the size of my business and my number of employees, if I were to qualify it’d only be for a couple hundred dollars. My landlords were gracious and forgave a month, and I did receive a small-business relief grant from the City of Boston for $2,500, which is helpful. Where the rubber is going to hit the road is when we open up; there’s not going to be any money left. Are people going to be coming out? A lot of us can get to opening, but once we’re open, what does the community have the appetite for?
I did section off my studio space, I’ve measured out seven workstations that are six feet apart. I’ve reduced my class size, but if I fill classes to seven people I’m a happy person. The bathroom is a challenge for a lot of people. I have one bathroom, but classes are only two hours long. We’ll see what happens.
Otherwise, I’m set up to open. I have retail — this time has given me time to add retail — and my classes will be outside as much as possible. I can walk a class over to the park across the street. As much as our stuff is transportable, we’ll be going outside. For me it’s a very last-minute game. For a business like mine that is built around people coming together, I have to laugh. At this point, I’ve been closed longer than I’ve been open.
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| Mark Snider, owner |
| Matt Moore, general manager |
Winnetu Oceanside Resort, Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard • In business since: 2000
The Winnetu, a 41-acre luxury resort with 58 hotel suites and 65 private homes and cottages at South Beach, normally opens for the season in mid-April. This year, Snider is shooting for June 12, and he said reservations have started to pick up in the last few weeks. Winnetu means “beautiful” in Wampanoag.
The first thing we’re trying to do is give people confidence and clarity about what they can expect when they visit. We are updating the website constantly with information about cleaning and other safety measures. There’s no textbook for this. Normally, we employ about 100 people in the summer, but this year we will probably have fewer. We’re being nimble. It’s remarkable how we’re evaluating these things on a day-to-day basis. We’re seeing older guests postponing their reservations, while a lot of new bookings are coming from families with young children who are desperate to get out of the house.
For guests arriving on the ferry without cars, we’ll reduce the number of people in our private shuttles and disinfect them between trips. The check-in process will be expedited, with only one family member allowed, and identifying markers on the floor to put space between guests. Full orientations will be done afterward, over the phone.
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All of our accommodations have private kitchens, and guests can buy groceries in our onsite general store and cook meals at home if they want. The indoor restaurant will be reconfigured to space tables farther apart, or guests can order food to go and sit outside at picnic tables, in the courtyard, or at the poolside grill.
We have two heated outdoor swimming pools. The chaise lounges will be arranged more than six feet away from one another. In the gym, treadmills and ellipticals will also be spaced out, and there will be a bigger emphasis on outdoor yoga and boot-camp workouts on the lawn.
Housekeepers will use electrostatic sprayers to mist disinfectant on every surface, and remove notepads and other things that can’t be easily cleaned. Instead of cleaning and performing turn-down service every day, rooms will be cleaned every other day and private homes cleaned weekly to limit the number of people in and out.
With so many changes this year, it’s like operating a brand-new property, though many traditions remain, including open-air rides in the back of our antique fire truck. Being flexible and nimble — those are the two words we’ve been really living by.
Janelle Nanos can be reached at janelle.nanos@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @janellenanos. Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @ktkjohnston.
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