Local businesses brace for economic domino effect of coronavirus spread
On a sunny, warm morning on Columbia’s Main Street, Drip owner Sean McCrossin mans the counter of his coffee shop. Behind him, a large chalkboard shows the drinks menu, and a couple of employees buzz about, preparing espresso drinks and toasting bagels.
For now, it’s business as usual for places like Drip that are the backbone of the community and local economy. But businesses are also beginning to have serious conversations about how the novel coronavirus could impact them, weighing risks and gathering resources they can to weather the outbreak.
There have been no cases of the coronavirus reported in the capital city. But with the tally rising daily across the U.S. and in South Carolina — including in neighboring Kershaw County — McCrossin and other small business owners worry about the uncertainty.
“I’ve been thinking about, How do I feed my employees, you know?” he said. “How do I make sure that we all stay healthy? How do we make sure that we keep our customers healthy? How do we make sure that we’re giving them the optics that we’re staying healthy?”
“Inevitably, the way things are looking ... we’re going to get sick. That happens. But what happens when we do, and how do we proceed forward?” he said. “I’m still waiting to see how those things pan out.”
Planning ahead for the uncertain future is particularly stressful for small businesses, which stand to lose already-slim profits margins and stability in the face of a weeks- or months-long coronavirus crisis. Even if the Midlands or South Carolina aren’t deeply impacted by the virus, a slowdown in the global economy would certainly trickle down, said Orgul Ozturk, an associate professor of economics at the University of South Carolina.
“Everything is interconnected. It’s like dominoes,” Ozturk said. “I don’t think we have a fragile system but it is still going to leave (economic) casualties behind.”
Nationally, people who earn their livings working in restaurants, stores and other service-industry jobs are unlikely to have paid sick leave, much less a company health insurance plan or the ability to work from home. These conditions are raising broad concerns about potentially detrimental economic impacts on huge swaths of the population as coronavirus spreads — concerns that hit home locally.
In Camden, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus in South Carolina, many leaders are making cautious plans and trying to control what they can — mainly, hygiene.
At the city’s only Piggly-Wiggly grocery, store operator Gerald Munn said Friday he has been in constant contact with the corporate suite of the privately owned franchise chain. They are monitoring the situation on “like an hour-by-hour basis,” he said.
The Camden store employs 60 to 70 workers, many of whom are part-time with no paid sick leave, he said. As of Friday, none of his employees had shown symptoms of the coronavirus, Munn said.
To prevent infection, Piggly-Wiggly placed hand sanitizer dispensers around the store and encouraged employees to frequently clean their hands, Munn said. But it’s difficult to know if that and other efforts being taken around the community will be enough to stop the virus from spreading in Camden, a small city where there are at least eight known coronavirus patients as of Friday, according to SCDHEC. Some customers have started showing up to shop at Piggly-Wiggly with gloves on, Munn said.
The store completes up to 8,000 transactions per week, and Munn said he has noticed customers rushing to stock up on cleaning supplies in recent days.
“Of course, they’re buying all the things that they’re needing and it’s getting harder to get them in,” he said, noting that it has becoming more challenging to keep up with the demand for products such as disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer and soap. He said on Friday that he tripled the size of the store’s usual order for those products because they were flying off the shelves.
“I just take it day by day and making sure our employees are taking measures,” he said. “You gotta be a little more extra careful.”
At Columbia’s popular Kiki’s Chicken & Waffles restaurants, employees have been advised to be extra vigilant and extra clean, owner Kiki Cyrus said. Frequent hand-washing is coupled with wiping down tables and seating more often, and watching out for any customers who display symptoms, such as coughing.
Cyrus employs about 100 people at her two restaurants, and she can’t afford to pay employees for hours they haven’t worked.
She said she will have to find creative ways to save money if business slows, either because customers don’t come or because her employees need to take time off to care for children or for themselves.
“If sales do drop, we’re gonna have to cut hours and send people home early and just try to maintain with the loss of sales, if that does happen,” Cyrus said. “And that’s not good for them because they depend on those tips and they depend on those hours ... It’s a difficult situation.”
She said she hopes people will still go out to eat and support local businesses, especially those that depend on sales at festivals or sporting events. In recent days, cities across the country have canceled events en masse to avoid further spread of the coronavirus. In Columbia alone, the Soda City Market, the first two rounds of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament and the St. Patrick’s Day festival have been called off. Courts and city halls have asked people to stay away. It’s a situation unlike any Cyrus has seen in her 33 years, she said — something you read in books or watch in movies but never foresee coming true.
“As a business owner, you never really would plan for something like this. But after this is over with, you definitely would start to think more about it and have that in your plans. What if it does happen again?” she said.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREWhat you should know about the coronavirus
The coronavirus is spreading in the United States. Officials are urging people to take precautions to avoid getting sick, and to avoid spreading the disease if they do contract it.
Click the drop-down icon on this card for more on the virus and what you should do to keep yourself and those around you healthy.
What is coronavirus?
Coronavirus is an infection of the respiratory system similar to the flu. Coronaviruses are a class of viruses that regularly cause illnesses among adults and children, but this outbreak has spawned a new disease called COVID-19, a particularly harsh respiratory condition that can lead to death.
Health officials believe COVID-19 spread from animals to humans somewhere in China. It spreads among humans by physical person-to-person contact, including via coughs. That’s why health officials urge sick individuals to avoid contact with other people.
For more information, visit the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What are the symptoms?
Symptoms are similar to the flu and include fever, coughing and shortness of breath.
How can I stop the spread of the coronavirus?
Wash your hands regularly with soap and water, and cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze.
If you develop symptoms similar to the coronavirus, you should seek medical attention. Stay home from work or school and avoid contact with others. It can take up to 14 days after coming into contact with the virus to develop symptoms.
COVID-19 is a new condition and there’s much about the disease we still don’t understand. For now, taking precautions is the best way to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
For McCrossin, the owner of three small businesses staffed by about two dozen hourly workers, there’s no corporate financial backing to keep his businesses afloat. His businesses can’t even afford the cost of providing health insurance to employees, though he wishes he could. Many of the staff, he said, are young enough to still rely on their parents’ insurance plans.
McCrossin has also been considering options for how he could adjust business if needed because of the virus’ impact on the community — maybe shortening the hours the shops are open, or cutting back on menu items or supplies to save money, he said. He’s rethinking his plans to hire a couple of new employees at the moment.
“At Drip, we have a little bit of money in the bank that we can buy a little bit of time, but not knowing how long this is going to last is sort of back to the underlying stress,” he said. “I can’t stress enough that I’m definitely concerned about my employees and how they can make sure that they can pay their rent and just be able to pay themselves.”
He’s not fully sure how he’d go about paying employees for extended time off, though he expects he’d be able to offer them partial pay, at best.
“I don’t want to get myself into a situation where I’m making promises I can’t keep,” McCrossin said. “Not to belabor the point, but we don’t know where the bottom line of this is.”
People on the margins of the U.S. labor market — unskilled laborers and gig workers — are positioned to be hardest hit if the coronavirus pandemic takes a turn for the worst, Ozturk, the economics professor, said. That’s especially true if those workers are single mothers, minorities and elderly poor.
“It’s going to be a huge burden on that population,” she said.
Vulnerable workers often don’t have rainy day savings to tap into if they’re out of work, and they often lack access to affordable childcare or extra money for food should schools be closed. Plus, many low-income workers tend to live in crowded conditions that are conducive to spreading infection, Ozturk said. The elderly poor are in a double-bind when it comes to the coronavirus, an illness that has proven to be more deadly for older adults.
Government assistance, expanded health care access and generous safety net programs would help, Ozturk said — especially if a recession is on the way, as he expects.
“A new normal is coming,” she said. “This is going to be handled very differently in the U.S. than it has been handled anywhere else and it is going to be very illuminating in seeing how things work or not work,” she said.
Help could arrive in the form of an aid package, like what Congress is considering this week. Developments in the coming days and weeks will determine what kind of help local businesses will need, said Carl Blackstone, president and CEO of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce.
“Depending on the severity of this, we may have to look for some assistance from the government,” he said.
The Columbia chamber, which represents the interests of local businesses, has been consulting with medical professionals, other chambers of commerce, national trade groups and guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control, Blackstone said. Still, it’s nearly impossible to predict how the coronavirus will debilitate the economy, or for how long.
“The problem here is this is uncharted territory and so we’re all trying to figure this out, with the help of medical experts,” Blackstone said. “Obviously, we don’t want the worst case scenario to hit but we do need to be prepared.”
This story was originally published March 13, 2020 at 12:13 PM.
