Rising to the Challenge: Washington Businesses Step Up in the Time of Coronavirus

Rising to the Challenge

When coronavirus changed the shape of the world this spring, these businesses found small ways to help

written by Sheila G. Miller

illustrations by Allison Bye

LIFE CHANGED ON January 19 this year, even if we didn’t initially realize it.

That was the day a 35-year-old man walked into an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County with a fever and cough. He tested positive for COVID-19, the first known case in the United States. With that, Seattle became a ground zero for coronavirus, as the illness spread on a global scale, shutting schools and businesses and rendering communities ghost towns.

But in all times of crisis and uncertainty, it’s important to look for the helpers, as Mister Rogers once said.

In Washington, the helpers came in many forms— doctors and nurses who sacrificed their own health for the wellbeing of their patients, of course, but also small business owners and restaurateurs who found ways to keep delivering needed services, teachers who figured out how to engage students through their computer screens, and everyday people who assisted elderly neighbors and frazzled parents.

We’ve always known that Washington is full of innovators. But in this crisis, their ingenuity has been on full display. We caught up with a few of the state’s best examples.

Woodinville Whiskey

WE LEARNED AN AWFUL LOT about our community’s purchasing practices during the early days of COVID-19. Out of toilet paper? Good luck. Interested in having some Clorox wipes or hand sanitizer on hand? Not likely.

That’s where distilleries big and small, like Woodinville Whiskey, came in.

In late March, the distillery started producing hand sanitizer and donating it to local health facilities and governmental agencies that needed it.

Not small amounts, either. Each 500-gallon batch was made using World Health Organization and Federal Drug Administration guidelines.

Allison Bye

The project was a team effort. Arnie Omlin, a Quincy farmer who grows the grain for Woodinville Whiskey, donated all of the corn that was used to produce the distillery’s hand sanitizer. Other companies donated labels, design and cleaning efforts.

The production and distilling took about a week—then Woodinville sent the product out in 5-gallon drums to medical centers, the state’s department of health, fire departments and senior living facilities. Through the “Sip While You SIP” program, people who bought whiskey at the tasting room or through the website also got a 12-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer for free.

Big Table

LONG BEFORE THE PANDEMIC, Big Table was helping those in the hospitality industry who needed a hand up—using a referral system, it helped people with a utility bill payment, a pair of work-appropriate shoes, maybe drug or alcohol counseling.

“Our calling has been to help folks realize that their neighbors include the people who serve and care for them in restaurants and hotels, instead of seeing them as invisible servants,” said Kevin Finch, Big Table’s executive director.

But when restaurants and hotels shut down, the nonprofit, which serves Seattle, Spokane and San Diego, suddenly had to shift into triage mode.

Our calling has been to help folks realize that their neighbors include the people who serve and care for them in restaurants and hotels, instead of seeing them as invisible servants.

Chris Deitz, Big Table’s Spokane director, said it changed overnight. “Upwards of 90 percent of all of these people were out of work, and because the industry includes more marginalized folks, the most vulnerable population, there are more of those folks who just don’t have a network, they don’t have the resources.”

Deitz, Finch and the rest of Big Table’s staff sprung to action. The primary focus: housing stability and food insecurity.

In 2019, the nonprofit received 310 referrals of people in need. So far in 2020, that number is greater than 880. In just three days in March, the nonprofit received 103 referrals for assistance.

Throughout the pandemic, Big Table has provided grocery gift cards to people who needed food, rent and mortgage payments (checks cut directly to the property management company or bank), and utility payments. It also partnered with a produce company to provide boxes filled with healthy fruits and vegetables to families in need.

Even people who sought government assistance sometimes needed a little help. Finch pointed to a bartender whose unemployment benefits were denied. The reason? The state had argued she could continue to work from her home.

Before the pandemic, Big Table depended on individual donations, but also on businesses in the hospitality industry that donated to the cause. Those businesses suddenly found themselves unable to provide any funding. But, Finch said, people stepped up.

“Literally hundreds of people we had no previous relationship with found us,” Finch said. “Businesses and foundations that were not even on our radar reached out to us and gave money.”

He said people reached out to donate their entire stimulus check, or part of it—“People are saying, ‘I’m doing OK, and I know some people weren’t able to get a check,’” he said. “‘Make sure this money gets to them.’”

Allison Bye

The triage was a big shift for Big Table, which prides itself on its relationships with people—looking someone in the eye over a cup of coffee and drilling down to what the person needs to succeed. That couldn’t happen in a pandemic.

And the crisis isn’t over, Finch warned. “Our concern is that the biggest need is yet to come in this industry. As the government support dwindles and somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of restaurants fail—they can’t come back, or they reopen and realize it doesn’t pencil out,” he said. “We’re looking at the fall being really brutal.”

To that end, Deitz noted the nonprofit is shifting to another form of support—helping people who find their industry decimated get new jobs. That will come in the form of resume writing and other pieces that can help a former server market himself and get another gig.

Savor Seattle

FOR THIRTEEN YEARS, Savor Seattle has taken visitors and locals alike on food and cultural tours through the downtown Seattle area and Pike Place Market. For two hours, Angela Shen or a member of her team would guide people to a half-dozen restaurants and market stalls, sharing stories about the entrepreneurs and restaurateurs who make Seattle a foodie capital.

Overnight, Shen went from running a top-rated attraction with thousands of shining Yelp reviews to having no one to guide and nowhere to show them. Her office was flooded with refund requests.

But Shen wasn’t about to quit. “We realized, well, if we can’t bring people to Pike Place Market, how about we bring the market to people instead? To their doorstep?” Shen said. The weekend of March 22, the company started beta testing market boxes filled with treats from nine market vendors. It sold forty-eight boxes, donating $5 from each sale to the Pike Place Market Safety Net Fund, designed to help residents and employees of the market who are struggling.

By Mother’s Day, Savor Seattle was selling 1,200 boxes a week and shipping them all over the country.

By late June, the company had sold more than 7,000 boxes and donated more than $35,000 to the foundation. In response to the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the nation beginning in June, the company also created a Seattle Solidarity box in support of black-owned businesses—those raised more than $13,000 for the BLM Fund in King County in a month.

The market boxes proved so popular that Savor Seattle for five weeks used Aerlume, a temporarily shuttered restaurant in Pike Place Market, as a staging area for assembling the boxes.

“I think it’s a real testament to small businesses leaning in in a time of crisis to help create and enable solutions that would never have been able to be doable on their own,” Shen said, pointing to the hospitality groups, graphic designers and tech companies that provided assistance on the project. “It really took, and continues to take, small businesses coming together.”

I think it’s a real testament to small businesses leaning in in a time of crisis to help create and enable solutions that would never have been able to be doable on their own. … It really took, and continues to take, small businesses coming together.

And now, though things are opening back up, Shen plans to continue selling the boxes. She knows that her tours, when they are able to restart, won’t look the same. “We’ll continue to be ambassadors of the Seattle food scene,” she said. “But no matter what, forever and ever, we’re going to be living this box life in some capacity. And we have a desire that every box that we curate and launch will have some philanthropic tie.”

Boxes featuring Latinx-owned companies, minority femaleowned companies and those owned by Asian-Americans could be forthcoming.

“There’s so much there, and we’re fortunate that we have a platform, and because we can, then we should,” she said. “There’s money to be made, and we’re trying to survive, but knowing that in fourteen weeks we helped provide $750,000 in direct sales to over fifty small businesses within the Seattle community? I feel good about that. It’s my small part.”