Prosperity in the pandemic — Some industries have seen increases in business because of COVID-19

Since March, many businesses have shut down temporarily or permanently as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A study done by business-review website Yelp found roughly 160,000 businesses, large and small, closed between April and September. The impact felt on communities is substantial. However, there are multiple industries that have had success amid the challenges. As a whole, spirits and wine sales, specific manufacturing, banking and grocery sales and delivery have all prospered during this unprecedented time.

Keller Ford, managing partner of Primo Vino and Cask, poses for a photo. Alcohol sales have increased during the coronavirus pandemic.Submitted

Lifting spirits

Research shows for many, relaxing with a glass of wine or mixing up a "quarantini" is a way to cope with the stress of the coronavirus.

Nielsen reported a 54% increase in national sales of alcohol for the week ending March 21, compared with one year before.

"It's certainly been a banner year for us," said Keller Ford, managing partner for Primo Vino and Cask in Cape Girardeau.

Ford added that alcohol always seems to find its way into people's lives, "in good times and bad."

According to a Morning Consult poll of 2,200 U.S. adults conducted in early April, 16% of all adults said they were drinking more alcohol during the pandemic.

Primo Vino and Cask started seeing evidence of that once stimulus checks landed in bank accounts.

"We honestly thought maybe more people are going to be drinking, but that they will likely trade down dollar wise on what they normally drink, because of the uncertainty of whether they're going to work or not work or have to be on unemployment," Ford said.

For example, they expected customers who traditionally bought a $30 bottle of wine would drop to a $15 or $10 price point, but it was the opposite.

"People traded up in what they drank — the quality or the price point that they are drinking went up immediately," Ford said.

In talking with friends within the industry and wholesalers, Ford said everyone has seen the same trend. Across the country, "alcohol has just — it's just been killing it. People didn't have anywhere to go or anywhere to spend money. When you're vacationing and traveling and going out to eat and going to concerts and ballgames and things of that nature, you're allocating your money to different places, but when all you have to do is go to work or work from home, and not really have the outlet to go spend the money that you normally would, it's like, 'Well, we'll go to the liquor store and stock up.'"

Ford had wondered whether the sudden surge in business would only last a few months, but "month after month after month, we were just up the same amount, and all year. We just we had a record year. It was fantastic."

However, the challenge moving forward is how to maintain the growth into 2021 and beyond. Primo Vino and Cask saw a lot of new faces in the store. Ford said he hopes to keep them coming back.

"If we did a good job from a customer-service standpoint, of being friendly and offering products that they didn't see wherever they used to shop, then hopefully we can retain those people as customers going forward," he said.

As many ring in the new year with a champagne toast and wishes for 2021, Ford is hopeful things will turn around by spring.

"February feels like ages ago ... give me sunshine, give me baseball, give me concerts," he said.

Lori Moyers and her son, Max, purchase paint and supplies April 11 from Sarah Cole at Elias Ace Hardware in Cape Girardeau. Moyers and her son decided to paint a room in their basement while "sheltering at home" during the COVID-19 pandemic.Jay Wolz

Home improvement

Parking lots have been packed at home improvement stores more than ever since the start of the pandemic as people have been spending more time in their homes and expanding at-home activities such as work, school, exercise and outdoor entertainment.

According to Porch — a website that connects homeowners with contractors — the average homeowner spent $17,140 on improvements during the pandemic. More than three-quarters of U.S. homeowners reported doing at least one home-improvement project since March, and 78% said they plan to start a home-improvement project in the next 12 months.

Fred Elias, co-owner of Elias Ace Hardware said that since March, the store has seen a major increase in the lawn and garden, paint and barbecue departments as people stay in and around their homes.

"All of those have flourished, especially since people are home instead of taking vacations — they make it a staycation."

Elias Ace Hardware did not shut down, but executed many safety protocols, even opening the front doors during spring and summer so people wouldn't have to touch the doors.

"We've given out several thousand masks" to people who don't have one upon entry, Elias said.

Co-owner Tammy Elias, Fred's wife, said Fred is the reason the business has succeeded during the COVID crisis. She attributes it to his experience dealing with supply-chain issues coupled with his "desire to share Ace Hardware's model of helping customers successfully complete their projects."

One of the challenges Elias faced was meeting customer demand. Occasionally, suppliers would only be able to send between 70% and 80% of the orders because either imports or factories had been shut down.

"There were 150 different items that did not come in just this week. We just keep working at it trying to get it back in as quick as we can," Fred Elias said.

With many projects taking place at home since March, families are getting children involved in the tasks as well. Elias said he's seen generations coming into the store to tackle a project or repair.

"One customer said, 'I've been coming in here ever since I was a kid,'" he said. "Customers come in with their parents and now they're coming in with their children."

Elias said he's is thankful for the support of local business and doesn't see the home repair and improvement wave taking a downturn any time soon.

Schnucks, 19 S. Kingshighway, is seen June 17 in Cape Girardeau. Grocery deliveries have increase during the pandemic because people have decided to stay at home more and avoid a lot of people.Jeff Long

Grocery delivery

To stay safe at home or limit exposure to others, many have reached for their phones to purchase groceries.

A recent survey by RBC Capital Markets in March found 55% of respondents had purchased groceries online, up from just 36% in 2018.

Paul Simon, spokesman for Schnucks Markets, agreed with the findings more Americans are shopping online for groceries and doing it more often since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

"A lot of people cannot dine out and are eating at home more. A lot of times, kids are home from school and not eating lunch at school, so, yes, there's been an increase in demand for food from the grocery store for sure," Simon said.

Schnucks uses Instacart as its delivery-service provider and, according to Statista, in the first half of March, Instacart's app downloads grew by more than 200% from February to mid-March based on consumers' apprehensions about visiting grocery stores during the coronavirus outbreak.

As an industry, the grocery delivery service has exploded since the start of the pandemic.

Simon said Schnucks observed the time-saving trend even before the virus began, but feels "COVID just kind of gave that a boost."

A survey from online grocery delivery service Good Eggs Inc. found that among consumers shopping online for groceries, 81% plan to continue the practice once the pandemic passes.

As a company, Schnucks never closed its doors, but it wasn't without instituting protocols for protection of both employees and shoppers.

"We have one-way entrances and one-way exits," he said. "We have floor decals asking for 6 feet distancing and plexiglass shields at checkout, and we have increased our cleaning and disinfecting."

Simon said the Schnucks in Cape Girardeau is "a great store in a great community. Our employees are doing their best to make sure that food is on the shelves and they take care of their customers when they come into the store."

"Our people are there to serve. And it's hard work," he said. "I think the silver lining is that we got to see a lot of appreciation during this time that we may not have seen in the past."

Producing PPE

A three-ply disposable mask made by Patriot Medical Devices of Cape Girardeau.Submitted

"We started the company because we saw that the [personal protective equipment] supply chain was broken," said Rick Needham, CEO of Patriot Medical Devices.

"As proud Americans, we wanted to help solve that problem," he said. "You can view it as a national public health problem; and it's a national defense problem if you can't get personal protective equipment — if you can't get antibiotics, if you can't get other drugs/medicines and other medical supplies; and you can't get those in time of pandemics or wars, or economic downturns or other crises, storms and natural disasters."

Needham's son, Tyler, company president and co-founder, is the one who came up with the vision and idea for Patriot, a business producing American-made protective equipment to help people fight the coronavirus.

There are three reasons why Patriot picked Cape Girardeau, according to Needham: Missouri is a pro-business state, so the tax and regulatory climate is favorable for business; Cape Girardeau is a health care center with two major health systems in town; and the presence of Southeast Missouri State University for potential employees and collaboration opportunities.

As a private company, numbers aren't available, however Needham said, "I can tell you we've been producing billions of masks per month. And shipping them all over the country."

Regionally, Patriot recently stepped up to help during COVID by supplying 25,000 masks to Missouri voting locations to keep voters and workers protected during the Nov. 3 elections.

Needham is proud to declare Patriot has impacted several local businesses since establishing in the area.

"We've hired SEMO Box, so they're now making more boxes because we're here," he said. "We've hired Cape Precision, which is a local machine company, and put them to work on helping us keep our machines running. We've hired local electricians and other folks."

Will Patriot remain in Cape Girardeau after the need for masks has subsided?

"Yes, we are not a pandemic company," Needham said. "We are a long-term PPE manufacturing company. Our whole business model and mindset is to supply hospitals and health care providers and government and other people who need PPE long term."

Starting a business during a pandemic has its challenges — of finding equipment, suppliers and materials. Needham added, "All of our materials are American made, so identifying American manufacturers to complete the supply chain was a lot of work and effort."

The company also had to hire and train employees and outfit the factory, all the typical startup manufacturing challenges, except that it was all during a health crisis.

Moving into 2021, Needham said, "We are hopeful that we're bringing manufacturing jobs back to America for the long term. And that bringing manufacturing back to America is a really good idea, because it creates good paying, stable jobs. And, it's much more interesting and rewarding to work in manufacturing than it is to, you know, serve coffee or hamburgers at a fast food restaurant."

Cars line up at drive-through windows while the lobby is closed because of the coronavirus at Wood & Huston Bank in Cape Girardeau.Submitted

Banks boomed during COVID

"Cape is an interesting town from a banking standpoint — it's a small town with a lot of banks and the big bank model doesn't work well here," said Clint Karnes, Community Bank President at Wood & Huston Bank in Cape Girardeau.

Technology played a major role in helping the bank navigate the challenges of the COVID pandemic, in the form of laptops for employees to use while working from home, interactive teller machines (ITM) seeing increase in volume, and finding ways to get documents to people without them having to come into the bank.

"Technology has allowed us to be more nimble than we would have been five years ago, allowing us to take care of any account or customer through non-traditional means, either through email communication or drive through," Karnes said.

As an industry, interest rates plummeted, taking mortgage rates along with them, creating large volumes of customers wanting to refinance.

"Our mortgage business has basically quadrupled — that's a factor of low rates, and of people spending more time at home wanting different living arrangements," Karnes said.

A plastic shield has been installed in the middle of a conference table to help stop the spread of COVID-19 at Wood & Huston Bank in Cape Girardeau.Submitted

The banking sector played a vital role in distributing loans for the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which, according to the SBA, is a loan that helps businesses keep their workforce employed during the coronavirus crisis.

"Usually we close about 50 to 60 loans a month in our market," Karnes said. "And in the month of April, we closed 250 loans, largely because of the PPP ones. And we did all of those without anybody coming inside the branch at any point in time. So that's five times the volume, with no in-bank conversations with people."

Across the banking industry, Karnes said, "Everybody's seeing a lot of the same things; that the PPP infusion alone has been a high watermark for the commercial side of things."

Calling it the "most aggravating yet gratifying process that I've ever been through in 35 years," it was profitable for the bank. "In 2020, we are bigger from a deposit standpoint and loan standpoint than we ever have been."

But, it wasn't without challenges. Karnes said working with the PPP was "sort of like [the government] was building an airplane in the air. The systems kept changing. The rules kept changing. But, the effort I saw go into taking care of our customers by our staff was really gratifying."

Karnes said, "While some people don't think of bankers as being community advocates, they really are. If we don't grow our community, then we don't grow our bank. It's why we spend money and do the things in the community that we do, but at the same time building those relationships. It is important and it's really important in the world pandemic because we are their trusted advisers. We have to put ourselves in their shoes and think about what can we do to help them."

He went on to say, "One of the things that we say in our bank is that 'Love is good business,' and we have really shown that in 2020 in the number of deals that we have done and the number of customers that we've been able to help."