As COVID blazes its path through small businesses, the baking community is coming together to find new and inventive ways to combat the lack of income. As Jessica Seniors, an Op-ed columnist for The New York Times asserts, the loss of bakeries means our neighborhoods would otherwise be moonscapes of Burger Kings and Dunkin’ Donuts.” Strategies to keep the lights on span from creating gift cards to try and build brand loyalty to the Paycheck Protection Plan and government loans.
The baking community and food industry are now challenged with getting products in the hands of customers. “There are thousands who are skipping the in-store experience altogether and shifting to delivery apps,” Lydia Dishman, a blog contributor for LaunchPad, outlines in her post titled “The Delivery App Landscape.” In the wake of COVID, delivery apps are the norm when it comes it how people get their food and groceries. Delivery apps such as Uber Eats, Postmates, and even Peapod, an app that was once used just for pregnant, soon-to-be mothers, have seen spikes in use. The baking community must adapt to this new environment to maintain sales. Lydia Dishman argues that delivery apps are crucial to help save the US economy during COVID and help maintain healthy eating habits. I agree with her claims because the delivery app frontier and delivery as a whole allows small business to overcome the obstacle of getting a product to customers. Selling baked goods during quarantine is already hard enough and alleviating the challenge of only being able to sell to customers willing to come into the store will undoubtedly increase sales.
The Green is also a blog that focuses on small business strategies. In their article “COVID-19 Retail Survival Guide,” written by the clover editorial team, they outline general business advice to help brick and mortar stores. The article states that “It might be helpful to use data from your website traffic, historic sales, and market trend reports to inform your schedule for restocking your inventory.” I agree with The Green because by being able to precisely determine what products customers are looking for, bakeries can lower waste. The inherent perishable aspect of bakeries results in throwing profit out at every closing. While the baking list of a small bakery is often determined off the baker’s intuition and instinct, the hard data from the website would allow the backing community to make less unsold food through each day. Knowledge of what items are popular also allows for potential price increases of such popular items to maximize profit while minimizing the throwing out of day-old pastries.
The Green also suggests businesses to “offer subscriptions of curated boxes.” I completely agree with the article. Subscription boxes create a stable line of monthly income for a business. Subscription boxes also allow bakeries to produce fewer items though in larger quantities. The increased production of such select goods will also lower the shop’s price of ingredients with the larger purchasing quantities of a select few items. The subscription boxes give customers a feeling of brand vigilance. Not in the stealing of personal data setting, but a feeling that the bakery is looking out for their customers to the same extent its customers are helping them. In a world where certainty is rare, the predictable income of subscription boxes will prove to be essential.
Alongside the loyalty created with subscription boxes, gift cards also foster similar brand loyalty. The Green also suggests the brick and mortar stores begin to push gift cards during COVID. I agree with The Green because gift cards inherently force customers to come to your store. The “locked” money in a gift card makes customers only be able to spend said money at your store. The Green supports their claim stating that “72% of gift card shoppers spend more than the value of the gift card when they redeem their purchase.” The additional spending alongside the gift card brings income that the baking community needs during COVID. If the customer were to lose the gift card on not redeem the full price, the shop has already received the income from the gift card and does not need the customer to redeem 100% of the cards worth to receive 100% of the card’s dollar value.
The Green posed that businesses should “identify what products form your supply are considered essential” and focus on selling those. I disagree with The Green because much of bakeries sales come from the shiny objects, flowery cookies, and miscellaneous treats in the display case. If bakeries were to only make pies and goods that were strictly essential, then bakeries would be missing out on large areas of profit.
The Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) focused on aiding small businesses during the pandemic and supplying them with monetary relief. The policy’s relief came in the form of small business loans from the government. Jennifer Senior a New York Times Op-ed contributor, in her article “How a Bakery Survives the Pandemic Apocalypse” suggests that “President Trump’s relief effort to aid small businesses has not been ‘a tremendous success’.” She then extrapolates Du Jour Bakery’s experience with the policy to all bakeries and small businesses across the country. I do not agree with her stance. While the Paycheck Protection Plan was not a panacea, it was far from nothing and was in fact very beneficial to the baking community and mom and pop shops across the nation.
The Paycheck Protection Plan was allotted 659 billion dollars to distribute as grants to small businesses, after a monetary stimulus to the program. The PPP has given 4,607,098 loans to US small companies totaling 513 billion dollars of total loans. The policy’s intention is to cover the company’s’ payrolls while income was virtually frozen during the quarantine. During the infancy of the plan, 38% of businesses received aid from the plan as of April 26th while 75% of the small businesses began applying to the program. Come May 31st 71% of small businesses received aid from the program. Statistically, the baking community was strongly supported with food services being amongst the three sectors that received the most aid, alongside manufacturing and health care. The bill allotted companies a loan up to 250% of their monthly payroll and up to $10 million dollars. The loan has allowed for the baking community to continue baking in times of immense struggle and keep the ovens on.
The baking community must respond to the pandemic with new ways of selling goods and forming communities. The death of bakeries will result in what Jessica Seniors states as the loss of “a vast network of cherished spaces that sociologists refer to as a ‘third place’ – those beloved destinations between home and work where ideas are exchanged, relationships are forged, and communities are strengthened”.