Coronavirus: Businesses think outside the box to survive pandemic
Restaurant owners have turned to delivering meat, fast-tracking a five-year plan in just days, while singers have turned to online music lessons to survive.
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Small businesses are thinking outside the box or coming up with new ventures to survive the coronavirus pandemic.
Belrose resident Mitchell Davis, 42, said his business was forced to close its bistros which were located in clubs across Sydney.
Instead, he and business parter Gavin Grey decided to fast tracked a five-year business plan, launching a new venture which provides and delivers meat products to families.
“Before the coronavirus our business was wholesale meat companies selling to high-end restaurants and we had four bistros. They’re all closed indefinitely and while we’re quite fortunate the clubs have waived rent at this stage, we will have staff and supplier obligations,” Mr Davis said.
“We made the decision to make these boxes out of our meat business. We can go and deliver them. It was a five-year plan that turned into a five-day plan, basically. We got onto our website designer and started taking orders through email and then we activated the online system.”
He said the new business ‘Great Meats’ is keeping staff employed.
“We’re dropping off about 25 boxes a day at the moment. If I can get it up to 50 I can keep my whole team on.
“We’re doing a lot around the northern beaches but yesterday I drove up to Blue Mountains for a delivery and today I have one at Wahroonga. Anything we can to do keep the boys and ourselves employed.
“We have a lot of staff on student visas and there’s absolutely no government support for these people so anything we can do to keep them employed is the aim of the game at the moment.”
He said the business offers two box options for families. The first is the ‘family isolation meat box’ which comes with 2k bacon, 2k beef sausages, 1k mince, four Scotch fillets, four sirloins, a lamb shoulder and four burger packs which costs $175 plus delivery.
There’s also the ‘families essential pack’ which has 2ks of mince, 2k of sausages, four steaks and 1k of bacon for $105 plus delivery.
Meanwhile, Nadia McCarthy, a Mt Ku-ring-gai resident, would usually give singing lessons from a studio in Seaforth but has started doing it from the comfort of her home.
“A lot of musicians are also private teachers and what’s happening for us is we’re doing lessons online using Skype or Facetime or Zoom for the first time,” Ms McCarthy said.
“I’m lucky that my main source of income is singing teaching and I haven’t had issues with students dropping out due to online lessons.
“I teach students technique and get them ready for performances and exams. It’s not ideal and we’re about to go into term two but I think a lot of education will have to go online now.”
Ms McCarthy, 25, said she’s also a member of a choir called ‘Soul Food’ and had gigs lined up for April which had been postponed until further notice.
“We were working towards it since February, every Thursday for a few hours but now rehearsals have been cancelled and the theatre is closed.
“We were also going to sing at a wedding and had to cancel that too. It’s really hit the performing arts industry.
“I’m still meeting with choir members online for a sense of community. It’s not social distancing, it’s physical distancing and that’s why people join choirs — for that social aspect too.”