COVID-19 Impacts San Diego Small Businesses
Many small enterprises in the 4S Ranch and Del Sur area are experiencing difficulties in trying to keep their doors open. They are suffering from what CNN calls “the worst economic recession of our lifetimes,” which is a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In order to stay in business, many local companies are adjusting their business models to accommodate new health guidelines put in place by the state of California and San Diego county. Methods that these businesses are using to adapt to new COVID-19 conditions include shortening their hours, cutting down on the number of employees, purchasing more cleaning supplies, and creating new methods of reaching customers online.
The Hot Spot Pottery Studio on Paseo Del Sur has been one of the many small businesses in the area forced to close due to the pandemic.
“We can no longer host multiple birthday parties, which were our bread and butter,” one employee commented. Even after making adjustments, it was “still not enough to keep our doors open.”
The Hot Spot Pottery still has one location open in Liberty Station where they offer private zoom painting classes, to-go kits, and painting parties together to-go. To limit in-person contact, many other small businesses are developing similar marketing tactics with the use of new websites or app-based ordering services.
Some local businesses that cannot adapt to the limitations of the pandemic are forced to shut down completely. Some of the restaurants and shops in the 4S Ranch area that have closed are Cowboy Chicken, NaPizza, Sushi on the Rock, Furaido Premium Chicken Company, and Souplantation. Though a few small businesses have opened up in their place, like Ika Sushi Grill or Mostra Coffee, the amount of local businesses that have closed down greatly outnumber those that have opened up new locations. According to sandiegoville.com, the running total on November 19th, 2020 was over 100 permanently closed restaurants across San Diego County. On a national level, Yelp reported on August 31, 2020 that 19,590 locations of the most struggling businesses, restaurants, have closed permanently. Yelp also tallies 97,966 businesses that have shut down indefinitely. In total, hundreds of local businesses, and thousands nationally, have been involuntarily shut down because of the economic recession the COVID-19 pandemic has induced.
Overall, implementing proactive measures to keep up with recent developments in the health protocols in San Diego County may not be enough to keep small businesses up and running. COVID-19 has impacted the local economy and caused a decrease in the number of small businesses in the neighborhood.