For James Beck, the owner of a Houston specialty grocery store, the hardest part of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the ever-changing regulations.
“We went from total lockdown to starting to reopen to ‘maybe you should wear a mask’ to now ‘you should definitely wear a mask’, and every time new restrictions are added, business has come to a standstill,” said Beck, the founder of iBurn, a hot sauce shop. “It’s hard for people to process all of these changes over and over and over again with no real consistency or direction in how to move forward.”
Most recently, Governor Greg Abbott shut down bars for a second time on June 26 after the state experienced a spike in coronavirus cases.
As of this writing, 490,817 cases have been reported statewide along with 8,490 fatalities, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services website.
“Because we have a bar next door to us, we get a lot of crossover business,” Beck told Texas Business Daily. “While the bar was open for a week or two, we noticed an increase in foot traffic coming through our door as people were regaining their freedom to be out and about, but then the bar shut down again.”
In order to stay afloat during the second lockdown, Beck launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to pay the rent.
“We were looking for confirmation,” he said. "It was going to be confirmation that there was no coming back from this pandemic and that we just needed to start looking at ways to shut this thing down; or confirmation that our customers wanted us to stay around, [and] loved our business and didn't want to see it go away.”
In only a week, customers have contributed 65 percent of the requested $10,000 after Beck promoted the GoFundMe page on social media and in an email blast.
“We saw a pretty substantial increase in business last week,” Beck said in an interview. “There’s been such a huge outpouring of kindness and generosity from our customers, families and friends. It’s been awesome to see that our little spicy store has had enough of a positive influence on people's lives to where they want to see us stick around for a while.”
In addition to requiring face masks, iBurn takes extra steps to keep customers safe.
“We require all of our customers to sanitize their hands at the door with sanitizer we provide, which creates a very clean environment,” Beck said. “People can handle the products and not have to worry about passing things on from one person to another. We've also upgraded all of our filtration, which prevents viruses from passing through our air conditioning. We’ve got Lysol spray, Clorox wipes, disinfectants. The store is cleaned and wiped down several times a day.”
iBurn has received some Payroll Protection Program money, but it wasn’t enough, as ABC-13 News in Houston reported.
“We haven't seen something like this happen in modern history and you prepare for things like recessions or a hurricane by putting together some sort of a plan on how to respond and react, but how do you respond or react to a pandemic that's so severe that it literally stops your way of life?” Beck said.