Small Business Week Has Been Postponed
Small Business Week Has Been Postponed. That’s Why Celebrating Now Is More Important Than Ever
The pandemic has reinforced the unique value and vulnerability of small businesses. We don’t need an official event to call out their hopeful stories.
Caution plus creativity. For small businesses during the pandemic, that’s a pretty good survival formula.
Andrew Dana is co-owner and founder of Call Your Mother Deli and Timber Pizza, in Washington, D.C., and a smaller offshoot of Timber and a bar in Arlington, Virginia. The businesses have an aggregate revenue of $8 million. Brick-and-mortar sales (Dana also does farmers markets and catering) are down just 10 percent. The company’s 144 employees all remain on payroll.
Small Business Week Has Been Postponed
The businesses are faring better than most in part because they are acclaimed and popular. But they’ve also benefited from Dana’s cautious approach to budgeting. The company has always banked two or three payrolls in case of emergency.
The creativity piece is the 17 public-broadcasting-style incentives that in a few weeks brought in more than $75,000 from donors. Many involve post-social-distancing activities. For $15,000, you get a pizza and open-bar party for 75; $4,000 buys an empanada-making class for 18. There is also a yearlong “cut the line” pass at Call Your Mother for $2,000. “We’re notorious for having a line that stretches down the block on weekends,” Dana says. “So that one is pretty popular.”
Every May, to coincide with National Small Business Week, Inc. honors the small, chiefly local companies that contribute jobs to our communities, vitality to our downtowns, and flavor to our lives. Companies that would rather be listed as Readers’ Choice winners in city publications than be splashed across the covers of national ones. Companies like Call Your Mother Deli.
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