We’re now four months into the pandemic here on the Treasure Coast. This week, the number of cases and hospitalizations we’re seeing is mind-blowing, and the complete picture of our economic fallout is yet to be seen.
BM: You know, we’re still seeing customers coming in, but a lot less.
This is Bill Moore.
BM: Hello!
He’s the owner of Kilwin’s Chocolates and Ice Cream in downtown Stuart and he’s president of the downtown Stuart Business Association.
BM: You’re talking about something that no one living today, no one in modern history has ever dealt with, right? Worldwide. And the challenges of it are just kind of daunting.
We ask him to describe his journey through the past 4 months.
BM: It’s been a lot for everyone downtown. I mean, we were fortunate when things got shut down mid-March, we were able to keep our doors open. We became take-out only. And our sales went down over 50% but we were able to keep the staff on – those who wanted to work – and we were able to pay our bills.
We ask about safety measures.
BM: Now we wore masks right out of the box and we have all along because my goal was to not only keep the staff safe but also keep the customers safe and try to stay open.
Once Florida began to re-open in May, Moore says his business bounced back quickly.
BM: For us it came back quickly. For a lot of my retail neighbors – not so quickly. Ice cream was kind of like that feel-good food I think, and June was pretty solid too until….
…case numbers began to soar, and bars were ordered to close. Moore says his business slowed again immediately. At the same time, a giant crack was discovered in the Roosevelt Bridge, which provides critical access to downtown Stuart businesses.
BM: And that did not help things either. And posed some serious challenges. Not only for customers but also for staff getting to work.
He describes a COVID-inspired slogan he recently saw which urges people to shop in Stores with Doors, as opposed to online shopping.
BM: That’s exactly right – you want to support the community you live in because you want it to look as normal as possible when we come out on the other side of this.
For a different perspective, we head north to Florida Eye Institute, a private practice of six eye care specialists with offices in Vero Beach and Sebastian. They mostly had to shut down for nearly a month early in the pandemic.
TB: My specialty retina was deemed essential as I treat a lot of patients with macular degeneration. I have been working with my staff throughout the entire crisis.
This is Dr. Thomas Baudo, one of the 6 physicians.
TB: You know people were pretty scared in the beginning, but we continued to see patients. We sort of felt it was a duty to our patients that really needed to continue to get their treatments to prevent to keep them from going blind.
Baudo’s patients are also the most vulnerable to COVID-19.
TB: Most of my patients have macular degeneration or diabetes. A lot of them are 65 and older and I have many patients who are 80+.
With COVID cases rising, the stakes have never been higher.
TB: Now it’s really ramping up. You know, people are even more scared. You can really sense it in the patients. Sometimes you take a crisis, and it helps makes you rethink how you do things. We’ve really streamlined all of our procedures really starting in March, that really our effort is to get patients out within 30 minutes. At times, you know, at doctors’ offices you can really be there for a while so we’ve really made an effort to get people in and out of there as fast as humanly possible. It’s actually I think it is something we will continue doing after this crisis hopefully one day is over. Fortunately, we had those growing pains in the beginning that we have things as good as you can possibly hope.
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