We Make Good Lemonade Together - Pandemic Pivots
- Scott Linwell
- Oct 27
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 14
Covid was a crazy time for all of us. This past year we sold our businesses we had at the time, and I’ve been thinking back about them recently. Back to what we were doing just before and during the pandemic. Leading up to that time those businesses were flourishing and we were having so much fun running them. Planning parties, holiday events, concession stands, and large annual food and music festivals.
Then, out of nowhere, all of that changed. It was such a chaotic period where we were bounced way outside of our normal lives, but we found ways to keep our businesses afloat while having fun ourselves and with our staff and co-workers. We shifted what our places did, from bar to diner to grocer to outdoor event space. If there is one thing Joey and I are pretty good at it's making lemonade. Give us lemons and we'll make the best lemonade we can, probably with some local honey, foraged sumac, and a hint of homegrown hibiscus.
During covid we personally spent our days goofing around with marketing, coming up with various online characters for print, post and video ads and skits in the green-screen room we set up at home - the selfie sisters Aberdeen & Aileen Dover, Wallaby Joe & Al Fresco, Ricki Rayne, Amy Winehord, Nord Davidson, McDowell Millhouse, and Quarantina. We hosted a concert in our front yard. If we were going to be locked in we were going to make the best of it. We make good lemonade together.
A FEW OF THE CHARACTERS FROM OUR PROMOTIONS DURING COVID
We didn’t have the inside space at
Camp North End yet and were just seasonal there so that just didn’t operate for a number of months, but at the Store in NoDa we needed to figure out what to do, if anything, to keep ourselves busy and sane and our employees employed. Our first pivot lasted two days, The Sugar Shack Diner. We quickly realized that wouldn’t work (for a lot of reasons) and shifted again.
Our retail beer & wine license gave wholesale access to food supply distributors and warehouses. We had a business with lots of refrigeration - including a large commercial fridge at our house that we used to store food we prepped for our Sunday Funday Free Lunches. We were located in the middle of a very walkable urban neighborhood. We decided to become a grocery store. The NoDa Company Store + Grocer.
Just over a week after the lockdowns began Joey built an online ordering platform for contactless pick up. He built it over 24-hours in an all night cram session to be ready to open just 48 hours after we decided to do it. But hey, it was COVID, time was what we all had plenty of.
For the pandemic in general Joey and I were lucky in the fact that we already spent all of our days and nights together, and we are quite happy with that, so for us the lockdown and time inside wasn’t as bad as I’m sure it was for many. Our businesses were severely curtailed with the quarantine, so those quick pivots kept those afloat and our employees working and paid.
The first weekend of March was our anniversary of opening the NoDa Company Store, and every year we threw a huge three day party. Lots of giveaways from our beer and wine vendors, an all-day free raffle on Saturday where we gave away tickets and had and hourly drawing every hour for 12 hours. We had bands and all sorts of “stuff” to celebrate, culminating with one of our free Sunday Funday Cookouts (the one that kicked them off for the year running March to October). That year we had perfect weather - the weekend was packed. What we saw as the “first” big weekend of the year was gangbusters, it was looking like it would be a banner year. We were so excited.
In 2020 the first weekend in March fell on the 6th, 7th, and 8th. Though the World Health Organization (WHO) had been tracking a novel virus for many months, on the 11th of March the WHO made the official declaration, there was a pandemic that had begun to circle the globe. It had reached proportions that would shake how we lived then and still does now. The next day, the 12th, quarantines and lockdowns began in the U.S.
Like everyone, we didn’t know what to do. Personally or with our businesses. We weren’t even one week past one of our best weekends ever and entering into a critical annual period that kept us running. Like everyone for their own reasons, it was alarming to say the least. Then add in that we didn’t exactly understand, at the time, what any of this meant but we were also susceptible to getting severely sick, and possibly dying. We hadn’t heard of anyone we knew with the virus, but that was short-lived. And we had just spent a weekend mingling and celebrating with a couple thousan folks.
It wasn’t long at all before we saw people we knew posting how sick they were, how terrible they felt, how long it lasted, how long the lingering affects would last as well. It wasn’t long before we knew of a handful of folks that passed.
As the days marched on and we all began to settle into new realities and routines. We ran a grocery store. Something neither of us had done before, but we learn on the fly pretty easily. We rearranged our store, took out seating and moved tables to the walls to organize cases and boxes of food. Same with our refrigeration. Folks didn't come in to shop, they ordered online and grabbed their goods from the front porch and front fence.
For Joey and I we started early, around 5:30 or 6, running around town picking up supplies for the store: dry goods, canned goods, eggs, cheese, fresh fruits & vegetables from distributions centers. Frozen meats and some vegetables from local farms (we had contacts from our days when we ran the NoDa Farmers Market). We even had specialty items delivered to us like local cheeses, mushrooms, and pre-made meals.
We would drop everything off to our manager at the store between 9 and 10 so they could inventory and organize, orders would be ready for pick up daily from 11 - 6. After our runs Joey and I would head home, relax, and work on social media to promote the store (and keep from being bored).
We'd interact with our cutomers, friends, and neighbors on online and on social media. We'd have cooking contests - three contestants would pick up a mystery bag from the store mid afternoon, then head home, come up with and cook a meal. They'd share their dishes on our page for fellow fans and followers to vote.
We would try and find new things to add to our shelves, rotating everything other than the staples, so the neighbors would hopefully not get too bored with cooking and being at home. We also had some local farmers who would bring in seasonal goods, so that was constantly changing.
We would do a routine each morning to introduce new items. I don't remember when, but at some point we invented "Quarantina". We'd set out a display of new items on our back deck table, Joey (Quarantina) would be out of sight then rise up as I narrated off camera, in a really stupid accent, and would narrate as Quarantina hand modeled each new item, Price is Right style.
Quarantina was followed by "NoDa News Nite 4", a green screen newscast we did that also promoted new items we had for sale, specials we were running, as well as neighborhood news and activities.
As the pandemic ran its' course and the lockdowns and restrictions loosened up, we made our plans to open back up. Like most businesses at the time, we'd applied for, and received, Emergency Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL). The funds were provided to pay and keep employees working, but also to make necessary adjustments to our business to comply with distancing and other mandantes. We decided if we were going to make changes we wanted them to be something we'd want even after the pandemic, nothing temporary.
Since we were building non-moveable seating we added a lot of bench seating, but also hanging swings, immoble tables, and new canopies and lighting, and lots of landscaping. Our patios never looked so good. A couple of our employees were really good artists so we had them paint murals.
We assumed some folks coming in would resist mask requirements and other rules, so we thought we'd have fun with it. We introduced our new mascot, Olive the Otter, and had everyone dress as park rangers while they worked for the first couple weeks back. It worked and reopening after so many months was wonderful.
We didn't immediately open our inside space for patrons, but our patios were three times as large, so we had plenty of space for folks to spread out, social distance, and enjoy being out for a bit. We added a lot of inside retail space, bumping up our apparel and other goods to supplement our sales.
Gradually things began to open up more and more and we adjusted with these changes. Moving away from the grocery aspect of our business and back to our former format. We had a much more beautiful patio, thanks to the SBA and EIDL, and building it out kept our folks working.
So much has happened since then, and it's hard to believe this was all close to half a decade ago. Even as time has passed and the pandemic has become a not-so-recent memory, our business and many like it were never the same again. Some lasting effects were fine - we had a new, beautiful, lush outdoor space. We had fun coming up with new ways to engage our customers, but also entertain them. We learned how to run a grocery store. We had a new chapter in the story of us.
In the end Covid also pushed Joey and I into a place much different than where we were before. We'd pushed through and kept these businesses alive and friends / employees working, but the toll on us was our energy for them. They were products of our hearts. When we opened them we were so into it and I think it showed. The events were so much fun to plan, throw and attend, and our personal stamp was very present. Post-Covid we were looking for something different. We'd purchased our place in the mountains and had another project to focus our hearts and energy on. We were ready to let new folks take these places over and inject new life. So here we are, looking back fondly, happy to remember making the best of what we had. We make good lemonade together.
Comments