How Three San Diego Businesses are Handling COVID-19
To highlight the resilience of local businesses, we spoke with three San Diego business owners to learn how they handled COVID-19. Earlier this summer, Kelly Gemelli, Managing Partner of our San Diego office, and Susanna R. Matingou, Of Counsel in the firm’s San Diego office, had the pleasure of sitting down with Bob Walin, the owner of a couple restaurants, Peter Smith, who has a bike shop, and Elizabeth Wampler, who runs a non-profit.
Bob Walin
Bob Walin operates The Shout! House and the Garage Kitchen and Bar in San Diego’s downtown Gaslamp Quarter. He shared that their operations have been closed throughout the entire COVID-19 pandemic. While he admits it has been an extremely tough year, they were able to take advantage of the closure to do some necessary remodeling. Now, they can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. They successfully opened the Garage Kitchen and Bar in May and the Shout! House is on track to reopen July 29th.
COVID-19 Precautions
To be mindful of people’s potential hesitance to return to indoor dining, they’ve built a series of booths outside in the street which will hold an extra 70-80 people. They’ll be simplifying the menu to keep the kitchen staff lean, but are anticipating an increase in prices to cover these additional costs.
Staffing Issues
It has been difficult to maintain relationships with employees because ownership didn’t know what to tell them. Employees wanted to know when the sites were going to reopen, but certain dates couldn’t be provided until recently. Therefore, while most long-term employees are interested in returning, others have left. This means that both establishments will have a new General Manager, a new assistant GM, and a new chef.
Looking Forward to the Future
Bob’s team hosted a few live music shows featuring dueling pianos in March, April and May outdoors at the Quartyard in Downtown San Diego. All the shows sold out in a week, showing that people are hungry for live music and ready to return to live events.
Peter Smith
Peter Smith is the owner of Stay Classy Bikes, a bike rental, bike sales, and bike maintenance business on Broadway and 25th Street in Golden Hill. They rent high-end road bikes and city bikes.
Peter previously ran the business out of his nearby home for twelve years and opened his storefront in September 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, they never shut down due to COVID; they were considered an essential because people needed to get their bikes worked on to get to work.
Hit Hard
Although they never shut down, the first two weeks of the pandemic were extremely slow. A big part of their business—40%—is bike rentals to international travelers as well as rentals to doctors and other professionals who come into town for conferences. Overnight, 100% of their international travelers and business conference business disappeared. The shop was hit with so many refund requests that Peter was panicking, thinking he was going to lose his business.
Thankfully, people were very patient when he told them he would need two weeks to a month to refund their money. Some people even offered to take a credit instead and use it when they were able to come back to San Diego, for which Peter was very grateful.
Back with a Bang
After that very slow two-week period, Peter’s shop started to get busy again—so much so that it was overwhelming. People were tired of being locked down inside, and more people were doing outdoor activities because indoor activities were shut down and/or people were nervous about being indoors. This—alongside a shortage of shipping containers, delivery personnel, and materials—led to a big bike shortage that remains today.
At the height of the pandemic, the shop was booked out for a month with bike maintenance requests. Today, Peter’s business has tripled compared to one year ago—and he hasn’t gotten any of his international traveler or conference business back!
Elizabeth Wampler
Elizabeth Wampler is the Co-Founder of the Wampler Foundation. This non-profit is all about optimism around disability, including taking the sadness and curiosity out of disability, helping people feel comfortable with disability, and connecting people.
From In-Person to Virtual
In 2020 and 2021, the Wampler Foundation wasn’t able to have Camp Wamp in person. Instead, they’re hosting virtual camps; last year’s turned out beautiful and Elizabeth admits it went better than expected. How do they do it? Each camper gets a big box in the mail with all of their supplies and materials, including crafts and items related to nature—whatever they need to do the camp activities. Then they all do the activities together, virtually. Their regular, in-person camp usually consists of 24 campers per week for six weeks. Last year, they had 24 virtual campers, and this year they will have about 100.
Taking Advantage of New Opportunities
This summer, five young men associated with the Foundation are doing a two-month tour to 18 cities around the United States. Each person will be paired up with a child with a disability in each city. The goal is to give each kid a one-day experience of a lifetime. Some activities include meeting their favorite professional baseball teams, being the grand marshals at a Wyoming rodeo, and maybe even riding in a blimp.
Ultimately, all three business owners we talked to felt they learned something essential about their businesses and company cultures during the pandemic, and believe they are stronger for it. They look forward to the future with optimism and are ready to see where the pivots made during COVID-19 will lead them.
