Businesses Happy To See COVID-19 in Rearview Mirror

The day after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic three years ago, COVID-19 abruptly introduced itself in the form of traffic jams on the East End.

On the afternoon of March 12, 2020, communities that had been enjoying a winter’s nap were inundated by New Yorkers fleeing the city for their weekend homes here — with most folks heading straight to the nearest grocery store, where they stripped shelves of everything from chicken breasts to cleaning supplies. And toilet paper, lots of toilet paper.

The boom turned out to be temporary. Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered nonessential businesses to close their doors the following week, with the impact being felt particularly hard by restaurants, gyms, hair salons and other businesses that were forced to close their doors for lengthy stretches.

“We are still digging out of a hole, that’s for sure,” said Bruce Cotter, owner of the Hampton Gym Corporation, which operates gyms in Sag Harbor and Southampton, and was shut down for about half a year during the height of the pandemic. “Looking back, I thought at the time it might be insurmountable.”

Like many business owners, Cotter said that since the pandemic, it has been harder for his company to find employees, from entry-level receptionists to trainers.

“It’s always been a challenge in the fitness business,” he said of keeping good trainers on staff. “They want to be their own boss.” With many well-off East End residents having their own home gyms, the pandemic proved to be an opportune time for trainers to branch off on their own, he said.

Once they were allowed to reopen, gyms faced other new costs, Cotter said, from a requirement to install upgraded ventilation systems equipped with ultraviolet light filters, to the need to buy more effective, and expensive, cleaning supplies.

“The worst part about it is, you buy business interruption insurance — and then you find out there’s carve-out language for pandemics,” he said. “You put your head down, stay the course and hope to survive.”

Eric Lemonides, the co-owner of Almond restaurant in Bridgehampton, said he and his partner, Jason Weiner, were like many other business owners. “We thought it would last a couple of weeks,” he said of the lockdown that came with the rapid spread of the virus. At the time, they also owned a restaurant in Brooklyn that they never reopened and they had just opened one in Palm Beach that is still in business.

When restaurants were allowed to partially reopen, it was on a takeout basis only, something the now skeleton staff at Almond had little experience with.

“We had to learn to do our jobs differently during COVID,” Lemonides said. “It took a minute, because we were trying to figure out how to do takeout without having a staff in the kitchen, because nobody wanted to be around each other.”

The answer, he said, was to offer specific dinners on different nights. It might be tacos on Tuesday and ramen on Thursday, with one cook working in the basement prep kitchen, the other on the main floor, to keep them away from one another.

Lemonides said he had tried to put COVID in the past and recently ceremoniously tossed out Plexiglas and wooden dividers used to separate diners.

The sentiment is shared by Mark Smith, the CEO of Honest Man Restaurant Group, which runs Nick & Toni’s, Rowdy Hall, Town Line Barbecue, and other restaurants in East Hampton. He said the topic of COVID-19 is one that has been beaten to death, and that “people have gone back to their lives” and his business has largely returned to normal, except for continuing staff shortages.

One thing’s for sure, he said: “There was no playbook” for surviving a pandemic.

“In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t imagine that on March 20, the governor of the state I live in would say, ‘As of tomorrow, you won’t be able to operate your business as you have operated your business for the past 20 to 30 years,’” he said.

A business that ordinarily relied on maybe 5 percent takeout was forced to shift to all takeout. Later, when dining rooms were reopened, but seating was severely restricted, it just added to the stress, he said.

“Do you know what it’s like to walk into a restaurant with Plexiglas screens, and maybe four tables, where there were once dozens?” he asked. It even turned off those diners who were willing to venture out. “Part of going out is the feeling of conviviality you get in a restaurant,” he said. “That was gone. People just stayed home.”

Smith said the federal Payroll Protection Program, which offered a financial lifeline in the form of forgivable loans to many businesses, was a lifesaver. “Without PPP, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said.

In Hampton Bays, Simone Scotto, the owner of Scotto’s Pork Store, said he didn’t apply for much in the way of government aid, because he didn’t want to have to pay it back. “I learned at a young age that nothing is free,” he said.

Like many businesses, Scotto’s, which has a restaurant attached, was closed for a period and had to lay off employees. Since then, it’s been hard to find replacements.

“Without my family, I wouldn’t be in business,” he said.

While the pandemic was generally bad for business, it offered a boon for those in real estate.

“Customers wanted to get out of the city and come to the country,” said Judi Desiderio, the CEO and president of Town and Country Real Estate. Those areas within a two-hour drive of New York City “just exploded,” she said.

Initially, most business was in rentals because people thought the pandemic would be short-lived, she said, but when it became clear that COVID-19 had hunkered down, people did the same and began to buy houses.

The buying frenzy made its way clear across the country but was particularly strong in resort areas, Desiderio said, and it lasted a solid 18 months.

“In June, the music stopped, and there weren’t enough chairs for everyone,” Desiderio said of a sudden and protracted slump in sales. “People literally sat on their hands. The fourth quarter of the year was the slowest I’ve seen in years.”

Business has begun to return, she said, and she is noticing more agents, who had grown accustomed to working from home, spending time in the office, where they can brainstorm “with a nucleus of agents who are happy to help.”

“The dynamic is changing,” she said. “If you got used to taking orders instead of making orders, it’s going to be difficult to transition.”

Josiah Schiavoni, the manager of Schiavoni’s Market in Sag Harbor, said his family’s business actually did well through the health crisis.

He remembered the early days of the pandemic when clerks sprayed bleach solution on the counter between customers and tape marked off 6-foot spaces to keep customers apart.

“The shelves were empty,” he said. People were buying everything and anything. “In the end, it was helpful because of all the business we got,” he said, but staffing shortages soon cropped up. “We’ve got a good set of people who have been here since before COVID and after COVID, though keeping cashiers is still a battle,” he said. “But I fill in, and my brother fills in.”

Herrick Hardware in Southampton saw a similar early boom.

“Everyone wanted peroxide, Lysol, bleach, spray bottles,” said Stefan Grigoras, the store’s manager. “Later, with so many people staying at home, they wanted baking products, home and garden items. Plexiglas was in high demand.”

Grigoras said it was frustrating because supply chain issues made it impossible to meet his customers’ demands. “There are some items that are still impossible to get,” he said, pointing out that he has been promised a delivery of Dyson vacuum cleaners since last April and is still waiting for them.

Cindy Capalbo, the owner of C’s Home and Office Management in Noyac, said she believed people are “kind of over COVID.” She said that customers are no longer insisting on disinfectant cleaning, and some businesses that had the company clean their offices several times a week “have cut back dramatically.”

She said when COVID first arrived, she lost a lot of business. “Everything shut down and everyone was afraid,” she said.

She said her commercial accounts rebounded first, as businesses reopened and wanted to make sure their premises were kept as clean as possible. Residential business fell off in a big way, she said, because many people didn’t want anyone in their homes. “We also had people who came out in May and wanted to get in a real quick opening cleaning,” she said.

Throughout the pandemic, Capalbo said she was careful to not put her workers at risk and would not clean where there was an outbreak of the virus. “We did lose one job because we wouldn’t go in after an exposure,” she said. “I didn’t want to submit my staff to that.”

Lemonides, the Almond owner, said he sensed a general relief in the air.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “I think we are all just happy to be back to normal.”