However as Burgess thinks about the best way to maintain the enterprise afloat within the coming months: “We maintain considering of Recreation of Thrones — winter is coming,” he mentioned. “We’re looking at winter, and we’re scared.”
“I am 48 years previous, I’m an proprietor of this enterprise, and I’m now accepting unemployment,” Hammertree mentioned. “I am unable to do supply or takeout for concert events … We now have zero income and nonetheless must pay hire, taxes, utilities.”
The kind of assist that enterprise homeowners can count on could rely partly on the end result of the election: Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden have introduced differing visions for the best way to restore the financial system and assist companies get well.
How Trump and Biden plan to assist
Through the first presidential debate, Trump and Biden laid out starkly totally different plans for serving to companies survive.
“Folks know what to do — they will social distance, they will wash their fingers, they will put on a masks, they will do no matter they need — however they have to open these states up,” Trump mentioned. “Folks need their colleges open. They do not need to be shut down. They do not need their states to be shut down. They need their eating places.”
Biden, against this, emphasised a need to get the pandemic underneath management, and to offer funding to assist companies reopen safely.
“We needs to be offering all the protecting gear attainable,” Biden mentioned. “We needs to be offering the cash the Home has handed so as to have the ability to exit and get folks the assistance they should maintain their companies open … The way in which to open companies is give them the wherewithal to have the ability to open.”
He added: “You may’t repair the financial system till you repair the Covid disaster.”
What companies have to survive
Many enterprise homeowners face huge declines in income due to coronavirus-related closures and adjustments this yr.
Income from Hammertree’s venue has fallen about 95% this yr, he mentioned — an anticipated decline of round $4 million. To handle, Hammertree and his enterprise accomplice furloughed their 76 workers and dipped into financial savings.
Nonetheless, he mentioned Trump’s plan to return to regular operations would not make sense throughout an ongoing pandemic.
“I personally am not in favor of opening proper now and I imagine that for those who talked to 80% of different venues, they might say the identical factor,” Hammertree mentioned. “One among my rooms has a 1,500-person capability. How do you place folks in there and maintain them six toes aside and maintain them masked, and maintain them from shouting and sweating? … It isn’t protected proper now.”
“On a regular basis we make it, individuals are nonetheless coming by means of these doorways, however it will be higher if folks did not must be scared,” Tomiye, 54, mentioned.
Deborah Reed, proprietor of Cloud & Leaf Bookstore in Manzanita, Oregon, has restricted the variety of clients allowed within the retailer, put in a plexiglass defend on the checkout stand and positioned hand sanitizer all through the shop. However she nonetheless worries about being uncovered to the virus and what that would imply for her husband, who has stage 4 most cancers.
“We’re simply terrified that he will get this virus,” Reed, 56, mentioned. “It will be useful to get this virus underneath management, that is an important factor … I’m additionally very happy to shut my bookstore for a month or two if it meant we might get this factor underneath management.”
And as Oregon’s wet season approaches, Reed is not positive many shoppers can be keen to attend in line exterior to adjust to social distancing measures.
Enterprise homeowners urged whichever candidate wins to push for extra monetary help to shore up probably gross sales losses over the winter. Extra stimulus might additionally assist cowl the prices of investing in private protecting tools, organising out of doors eating and different operational adjustments.
Burgess mentioned that whereas gross sales at his sit-down eating places are down 50%, he is needed to spend round $10,000 every month on tents, heaters, disposable serving merchandise and different pandemic-related prices.
“All this dashing to ship youngsters to highschool and open up companies, it is all for cash,” Tomiye mentioned. “We should always by no means put cash over folks. But when I am not open, I’ll lose this place and the owner will nonetheless need their cash … As small companies, we’re so ignored.”
