Following the Bohemian and Beat traditions of the West Village, my dad started Caffe Vivaldi as a coffeehouse in the early eighties. It became a bar and restaurant by the millennium and a live music establishment in its final iteration.
That was the Vivaldi I took over four years ago when my dad had a stroke that left him with cognitive deficits and resulted in an early retirement.
Overnight, I became responsible for a staff and a roster of hundreds of musicians from across the world.
Since COVID-19 shook up daily American life, I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact on local businesses. It’s made me question: how could a small business like Caffe Vivaldi remain viable beyond 2020? In many ways, running Caffe Vivaldi was a dress rehearsal for COVID’s reset of both global and local business priorities. I wanted to share reflections and thought-exercises with you from my experience as a small-business owner, and on how COVID truly offers hyperlocal businesses an advantage over big-box retailers.
Before pandemic readiness and emergency planning were even on my radar, running Caffe Vivaldi was a study in change management. As a newcomer and outsider to business, I was willing to take risks that had not been taken before. Slowly, running a business also became a vehicle in understanding how community produces culture. But every day that I unlocked and locked the doors of Caffe Vivaldi with my mostly-immigrant staff, I questioned the viability of what we were doing, and the culture we were creating. There were clear existential threats to Vivaldi as its cultural and artistic project became my own.
Running a business also became a vehicle in understanding how community produces culture.
Four years ago, Caffe Vivaldi did not change as fast as the landscape around it. Local real estate practices had become increasingly predatory and unfavorable to the landscape of independent, community-oriented businesses that made the West Village so singular and beloved in New York. Restaurants in the new West Village are increasingly run by hospitality management groups, with investors and robust marketing outfits that saw prices balloon in tandem with costs, leading to an ever-vaporizing profit margin. Today, small business owners are experiencing a suspension of these long, aggressive trends in commercial real estate and business ownership.
The shakedown from COVID has been a reckoning moment for how untenable a maximalist restaurant culture has become in a metropolis like New York. And that’s good news for independent businesses with the savvy and willingness to model bolder solutions. COVID has bent many restrictions on hospitality and drinking establishments that have been in place since Prohibition ended 87 years ago. Pre-COVID, regulation of how bars served alcohol and whether patrons could sit outside were ruthless.
The COVID era has also become an accelerant for the hyper localization of community-to-business relationships and supply chains. These disruptions have much to offer small businesses on how and where they can pivot their operations. But where does a small business start? How can it best serve and best function for its communities?
Expand your definition of community, especially if you’re a hyperlocal business like a bar or barbershop. Build a stronger neighborhood network. Tap into existing networks, like those that are part of community organizations already. Share your story on social media about what you’re going through and how you are pivoting to keep your business afloat and continue to serve people.
What needs can I fill in the community right now?
Ask: what needs can I fill in the community right now? Everyone’s priorities have changed post-COVID. Flexible business models that pivot successfully and understand new opportunities will survive beyond the pandemic. A massage parlor can start teaching 1:1 classes with small groups (or individuals). They can teach individuals how to give themselves spinal/shoulder massages, or how to check their posture at home, more important now than ever as many of us are spending time on our feet or behind a desk. Performing artists can produce personalized concerts for fans, their communities, or for special events, with a tipping feature via cash app/ registration.
The idea is to set up your business for success beyond COVID-19 and treat your community as stakeholders in the success of your business.
As a community-oriented alternative to big tech and big-box stores, mom and pop stationery stores, everything-stores, and hardware stores can work together to develop an online platform that will help sell their products to their local communities and beyond. Neighborhood businesses like tailors, shoe repairmen, carpenters, etc. can teach virtual lessons on how you can replicate their services at home.
The idea is to set up your business for success beyond COVID-19 and treat your community as stakeholders in the success of your business.
In some cases, the only viable choice has been to close your doors for good. But your experiences are valuable — and can be translated in many, many new contexts. Think of yourselves as a new crop of entrepreneurs. What will you build? How can your experience inform a new direction? How can you transfer what you’ve built over into a new product or service? If I’ve learned anything, it’s that community is what keeps you going, even if you do choose to close one door.
By its very nature, COVID-19 has introduced instability, loss, and questions of viability for the small business community. Yet COVID-19 has also activated incredible opportunity that truly wasn’t imaginable before. With a focus on digital growth and a deeper, richer localization of interest, we’ve entered a renaissance. Entrepreneurs who can do both will win.
