 Hi, and welcome to our pilot of The Savvy Entrepreneur, where we discuss entrepreneurship and economics. In today's episode, we'll be meeting Manny, who is the co-manager of La Vida Belcafe here in downtown Longmont, Colorado. We will be discussing the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 virus. Hello, everyone. This is the pilot episode of The Savvy Entrepreneur. I'm your host, Talis, and today we're here with Manny, one of the managers at La Vida Belcafe, a local cafe in downtown Longmont. Manny, how are you doing today? I mean, pretty good. All things considered, you know, the world is the world right now, but overall, optimal and positive spirits. Awesome. Best that can be expected based on the circumstances. Yeah. So for those who are not aware of La Vida Belcafe, do you want to tell us a little bit about the business and tell us how this outbreak has impacted what you guys are doing? Yeah, absolutely. So La Vida Belcafe is a model that's being developed in Longmont, Colorado, of a gathering place, essentially, for creatives, anyone looking to try out new coffee, variations, cocktails that are craft made. We have delicious cuisine. And of course, we emphasize community with a variety of different events. And it's impacted the business in a variety of ways. As a startup, one that had actually just campaigned to gain some capital and take off in a variety of different directions, such as with a new menu, we've had to entirely halt. And that's put us in a very precarious position, to say the least. Yeah, so your fundraise was like a week before this whole outbreak happened, right? Yep, yep. And we had some pretty good interests, I'd say, by a variety of investors, but of course, following the stock market crash and just the uncertainty of how things are gonna play out, that's been put on hold as well, which is understandable. I don't blame anyone for wanting to just play it safe in the time being, but as people who are taking a bet on a business that's for the community, it's very difficult. And I mean that in place of the owners as well, who have given so much to develop this vision. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you think about it from an investor perspective, you can't really blame them because, you know, it's their hard earned money and they're trying to come back to them at some point. Yeah, definitely. But at the same time, a lot of people I think have the perception that there's good communication between the federal government or state government and local businesses. What kind of communication have you guys had with the state or federal governments? Yeah, so little to none, thanks to our general manager, Matt, who has been doing most of the research to figure out just what options are available to employees, what the business needs to do. We've been able to get an idea of what we should be doing during this mandated 30 day shutdown, but overall, no one's contact the business. Todd, the, can I come with the right word? He isn't like owner, but Todd, the owner, he has been able to postpone the mortgage payment for a couple of months, which is helpful. And these are things that had to be sought out though as well, you know, in terms of like postponing taxes, for instance, as well so that we can get back up and rolling and as small business owners, or as small, I'm sorry, I'm stumbling right now, but as developers of a small business like other people, we've had to basically seek out what options there are. Yeah, and those options haven't been clearly defined or offered to anyone. As far as I know, the Simmons back is still having passed the house and not gone to the Senate yet. There are some interesting legislative fixes that they're trying, but it's going to be interesting to see what actually comes out because what the starting point is not going to be what it finished, now I'm stumbling on my words. So when legislation is going into the Senate from the house, there is often massive changes that occur. So while there could be some really cool stuff in this current iteration, chances are with the Republican-held Senate, there's going to be a bunch of things that we would have liked to have in there, but aren't. What kind of things do you think would help your business? Well, there are a few things. I mean, in addition to potentially taking care of Americans themselves for the stimulus package, it'd be great to see an alternative to taking out a loan just because it's going to put businesses back even farther from where they are. And there's mixed feelings about it because billions of dollars have been funneled to Wall Street, but nothing's coming to small businesses which are made up of people who need to pay their rent and just any alternative at the moment would be ideal. Yeah, it's tragic. Statistics, I've read, said 25% of the working population are being dramatically impacted by this. And that's predominantly just the service industry people. If you think about the knock-on effects to that, I would say that's probably at least 75% of the working population is being impacted by this type of disruption in economic activity. Yeah, and this is like one of the most vulnerable populations, and according to a recent statistic that I was reading about, approximately 70% of Americans don't know where their next paycheck's gonna come from. So being forced to shut down for 30 days, there's going to be a reprobable damage, things are going to change as a result, but the clumsy response to all of this is going to make it worse. Unfortunately, that's why we need competent leaders who understand the needs of all people. What is it? I wonder what that's like. I don't even remember. Hey, Jeremy. But yeah, I think that if there was a centralized response, this thing could have been handled more effectively, but... Yeah, look at South Korea, for instance. Yeah. They isolated the elderly population. Business actually resumed as normal, but they took certain precautions and had a curfew from my understanding, and within two weeks it was gone. But because we have such a mixed and convoluted response to what's going on in the United States, and we are always such a divided nation, there hasn't been a concise effort to tackle what's going on, and that's going to hurt the workforce even more, because who knows how long this could last. Yeah, that's a very good point. I grew up in Bakersfield. My mom is in the medical industry out there, and she was saying that Bakersfield wasn't having a ton of instances of coronavirus until San Francisco and New York had a shutdown, and two idiots drove to Bakersfield because they thought, oh, let me just stay out in Bakersfield and live normal out there, but then they end up affecting a bunch of people. And now, based on the demographics there, I can see some massive things happening. Just today was when they shut down the mall. Places in LA had their mall shut down for two weeks. How are you gonna be able to curtail an outbreak if one place is shut down, one place is completely opened 100 miles away from each other? Like, there's gonna be a ton of people traveling between one place and the other. Absolutely. It was a making sense to me. Yeah, it's... So, tell me about your employees and what you guys had to do in order to make sure that your business is doing the right things financially. Yeah. So, tackling the COVID-19 issue, we've taken a few different approaches to tackle it. First of all, because we don't have the funds to pay payroll for all of our employees, we've created a GoFundMe campaign and it's something that is very humbling, having to ask a local community for that assistance because we love our team. They are a family at the Levita Bella and everything that's being done there is from the heart, it's to nourish people in a variety of ways. And when we can't give back and take care of our employees in that same way, it's crushing. But through this campaign, we've raised a little bit so far and that's really heartening. I know that so many people are struggling in this moment but yet the outpouring of love, even if people aren't able to make a financial donation, shows just the spirit of the human race and the spirit of this community. And so that's been heartening. From a business standpoint, we've cut as many expenses as possible. The moment we heard that restaurants had to close for 30 days, we sent back all perishables. Fortunately, that was the day of the delivery that helped cut some of the costs. We went through all, and took inventory and everything that we had. We gave a lot of our perishables to our staff, that which wasn't taken, we gave it to the homeless shelter and we're able to just sort of create a clean slate for when we're able to start back up. Some of our staff members have actually taken on temporary employment, such as King Super's and that's a local supermarket which has been very gracious with people who have been hit by these hard economic times. And for instance, when Lucky's Market had to close down, they in a variety of other stores offered employment without even have to really go through many hoops. So the community supporting Lovita Bella employees in that way is encouraging as well too. And in this time, because it's not feasible to stay open and still offer curbside takeout or delivery, just because that's not really our model. And even businesses like Rosalie's, which primarily could do pizza deliveries, they're closing down. So in this current state, what we're doing is we're conserving resources, we're pulling energy back into the business, we're reorganizing, we're getting all of our own ducks in a row so that the week before, hopefully everything opens back up, we're just gonna launch harder than ever and hopefully have really solid footing to welcome employees back again. You bring up a good point. When you do welcome employees back, what if they are gainfully employed in some other industry and don't necessarily have the ability to come back? Yeah, I mean, and that's a risk, one that we accepted when we had very honest communication with all the employees as well too. We said, hey guys, this is a situation. We don't have enough for enough paid leave, essentially for all employees. Those who want to collect unemployment, you are able to do that. We gave them that option. One person did. Quite a few people said, I have another job or I have a little bit of savings, I'll be okay right now. Some other people even donated to the campaign, which was, you know, like... Yeah, talking at your heartstrings right there. It's a great group of people. But for those who have had to take up temporary employment, I understand it's like investors choosing to hold. If I was an investor, I would as well. It's a very uncertain time, but for those who have had to temporary leave, there's a chance they might not come back. And that sucks, but ultimately, we want what's best for everyone, you know? Absolutely. If that's what they have to do to make things work in their life and support them and love them. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully, you know, our legislators come up with a solution to give some stimulus to these small businesses because honestly, I can't imagine the financial impact and toll that this is going to have on this community. Downtown Longmont Main Street, that's the heart of Longmont. How many restaurants are, I mean, I would say at least 50% of the businesses on Main Street are restaurants. If, and they're all probably experiencing a very similar situation as we develop, maybe even worse situation because they maybe don't have the flexibility or the resources that you guys have. Yeah, that's cool. And what would this town even look like if half of the businesses on Main Street are shuttered? It would be crippling to say the least. You know, Longmont was named as number one boom town in this area, I think it was the entire nine states, but I don't want to put that out there totally. Anyways, number one boom town and there's so much momentum behind great projects, everything from local setting up period kit, making projects to what Longmont Public Media is doing to what will be developed vision. And of course, you have all your ongoing projects we're doing as well too. For us to lose a lot of these businesses, it would be really pairing, I think. The other day I was running through the park and it just kind of brought it all back to me and seeing groups of homeless people who don't have anything actually in this time. They're even more vulnerable than everyone else in the situation. And it strikes the reality of persistent conundrums such as homelessness and people not being able to afford rent, unfortunately are going to get worse without the right action to assist in this and without restaurants which place such a big role in the entertainment community and inspiring people to come out. I think the culture itself would suffer too. Just what everyone is trying to develop here. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, La Vie de Velo is the last concert venue in Longmont and music I think is very important for livelihood and the community morale. So where do you see this going? Oh, I honestly don't know. I don't know. And that's, on my own platforms, I've been speaking a lot about, you know, this is a time when we have to have faith and we have to think intelligently about what action can we take right now and what things are out of our control and those things that are out of our control such as knowing where this is going or how the community is going to be affected. To some extent, we just have to trust that those people in this community will rise above and work together. And no matter what happens, we'll figure out how to support each other and how to come back from this because that is the human spirit in our shell. Like the fact that people have been in lockdown and dancing in Spain, for instance, and seeing songs together and just keeping their spirits high and coming out with comedic gold in beams, for instance. That shows that I think collectively we're getting stronger as well. We're bonding through this tragedy and finding humor and that will be a cornerstone in moving forward and figuring out what to do with this mess. Yeah, that's a good point. Thinking about moving forward, you know, this is a opportunity for anyone who has, you know, unfortunately been displaced because of the virus to spend some time doing something that they're passionate about. Absolutely. Thank you for joining us for this important discussion about this deadly virus. By you staying at home, you're saving lives. So thank you for taking the sacrifice that it takes to just stay at home and do nothing. We will be having a weekly discussion on topics of business and economics. So if you are interested, please like and subscribe and stay tuned for our next episode. Thank you very much.