The Untold Stories of Covid-19 in New York City Businesses

                                                  

By Ama­ree Love
Nov 5. 2022
Indi­go Baby Blog

NEW YORK– Although the pan­dem­ic has affect­ed busi­ness­es world­wide, caus­ing a major decline, one busi­ness in Brook­lyn remains intact through the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of the COVID-19 shutdowns. 

Twist­ed Rootz juice bar is at 7905 Flat­lands Ave., Brook­lyn. It’s owned by Ker­lie Napoleon and her hus­band, Rony Sain­tard. Their three daugh­ters, Kay­la, Jade, and Khloe Sain­tard, help at the juice bar. 

While most juice bars, restau­rants, and oth­er juice com­pa­nies are report­ing a decrease in sales — about 62% — about 21% report things are rough­ly the same. Some juice bars are being forced to shut down by gov­ern­ment demand in their local region, accord­ing to the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion and Char­lie Wet­t­laufer, a Good­Na­ture author who dis­cussed this issue on juice bar restau­rants dur­ing the pandemic. 

About 17% of juice com­pa­nies that com­plet­ed a sur­vey report an increase in sales dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. One of these estab­lish­ments is a the juice bar-restau­rant in the inner-city neigh­bor­hood of Canarsie. 

“Our fam­i­ly was one of the first juice bars in Canar­sie to open up,” said Kar­lie Napoleon in a phone interview. 

“Restau­rants around us were scared to stay open due to the pan­dem­ic get­ting bad so it was a con­scious deci­sion to stay open when COVID first start­ed,” she said.

As a fam­i­ly, they decid­ed to keep the busi­ness run­ning, and to keep peo­ple com­ing, they had to think out­side the box with what their cus­tomers could order, accord­ing to Napoleon. They were the only stand­ing juice bar left and cus­tomers kept com­ing back for more. 

“Gin­ger and turmer­ic immu­ni­ty boost­er shots were pop­u­lar once COVID came about, well­ness shots have antiox­i­dants and Vit­a­min C that are great for build­ing the immune sys­tem,” she said.

Peo­ple are look­ing to increase their intake of immu­ni­ty-strength­en­ing nutri­ents, which is why it is proven through sta­tis­tics that juice bars that have these ingre­di­ents have been able to make sales.

“We start­ed sell­ing home­made reme­dies we were doing with­in our own home. We sold home­made teas, stick­ing to our roots,” Napoleon said. 

Oth­er healthy menu options were fresh-pressed juice smooth­ies with ingre­di­ents includ­ing beets, spinach, gin­ger, pineap­ple, and kale as well as sal­ads cus­tomiz­able with dif­fer­ent toppings. 

Pani­ni wraps and grilled chick­en were pop­u­lar as well. 

Napoleon said for a month and a half it was great but it start­ed get­ting hard­er, she left the store due to anx­i­eties and pres­sures, espe­cial­ly from her fam­i­ly who were con­cerned about their safety. 

“If you did not have a sign explain­ing that cus­tomers need­ed a mask before com­ing in as well as a vac­ci­na­tion card, lat­er on, there would be a $5,000 fine by the Health Depart­ment,” Napoleon said.

There were many restric­tions and as an own­er, it was hard to man­age every­thing at once. 

“We had to run a busi­ness, which is hard with­in itself, then check vac­ci­nat­ed ID cards, log every­one that came into the shop in a note­book, take care of cus­tomers as well as staff, it was just too much to han­dle and still is,” Napoleon said.

Accord­ing to Servsafe.com, Serf­save restau­rant own­ers must wash to clean their fruit and veg­eta­bles. Once the prod­uct is clean, it should be han­dled with gloves so it isn’t contaminated.

If any staff mem­ber is show­ing COVID symp­toms — or has been in con­tact with any­one with symp­toms — he or she should be kept away from the busi­ness entirely. 

The FDA nor­mal­ly rec­om­mends a thor­ough clean­ing every four hours. If it is nor­mal­ly done where a super-deep clean­ing of facil­i­ties is every week or every month, it is advised to do it every day if possible.

“Tak­ing all these safe­ty pro­ce­dures and peo­ple in the news were dying every day it felt like we were fight­ing an invis­i­ble virus and I became afraid to go out.  As an estab­lish­ment, you are always required to clean every­thing with bleach water but it seemed like were triple-dos­ing every­thing. Even­tu­al­ly, I allowed my work­ers to stay home and the only ones allowed to work in the shop were fam­i­ly to keep the busi­ness run­ning,” Napoleon said.

Man­ag­ing the restau­rant also was some­what of a chore. 

“It wasn’t fun any­more, the masks made it hard to hear along with the bar­ri­ers sur­round­ing the desk,” Napoleon said.

Juice bars are adapt­ing by offer­ing pick-up and deliv­ery and find­ing oth­er ways to keep their busi­ness going. Uber Eats is waiv­ing its deliv­ery fees for restau­rants. Some juice bars are offer­ing dri­ve-through orders.

Juice bars have begun shift­ing to become more like organ­ic mar­kets, offer­ing organ­ic pro­duce, snacks, and oth­er essen­tial items to their cus­tomers, which can fill a need when the local gro­cery stores are out of stock or don’t offer high-qual­i­ty health and well­ness prod­ucts, Wet­t­laufer said.