Business update from Mom’s Place

How many weeks has it been? It’s so easy now to lose track of time in our new normal. Before, the everyday stresses involved juggling the schedule, who can work, how can we get the hours covered, and boy, we need to hire. Now it’s more of, what hours would be best to try to be open, should we even be open? It’s hard to run the grill and fryer if the phone’s not ringing, so you want to find the best times to be there.

No one else’s life is normal, so what once was a busy time of day, isn’t what it used to be.

It scares me of how fast this was all able to happen. With less than 24 hours notice, we had to shut down our normal operations.

This is our time of year to look forward to business picking up, and seeing the people coming back for the summer. We usually love this part of the year. The only communication to us about having to close was the same news conference everyone else watched, though we did feel it was coming. There was so much uncertainty of what was really going to happen, and for how long. You can’t make a good plan when you don’t know how long you will have to deal with this change, but for them to roll out a big unemployment plan, you knew 10 days would not be the end of it.

We have not had any letters yet from the health department on any changes we will need to make in how we operate, so we will really have to scramble when the final news conference comes out that we can open, and what changes they will require at that time.

With everything that has happened, it would be so easy to lose hope. But I have always said, we have the best customers, and they have been there again to prove it. If it weren’t for all of the kind words and support they have given us, we would just be in a corner sulking. From people making sure they stop to order, to people leaving very gracious tips, to just the kind words and phone calls that have sent me to tears hearing how much they appreciate us being here. One person stopped just to leave us a tip to help us along, another came from an hour away and bought more than $100 of food, just to help us out. And others have taken out orders to bring to older friends they know who are homebound.

We truly appreciate the patience people have, too, as we try to do our job, in a much less efficient way, and sometimes running out of food.

We are truly blessed to be in such a great community. From our end of the story, we have not been in the stores seeing fights over toilet paper. We have been in our small little world, witnessing how good people can be in trying times.