Small businesses, waiting on help from a divided Congress, are facing the apocalypse. And they are wondering whether anything the government does will be enough to help them through.
Dafna Kory is the founder of INNA jam, a beloved Bay Area small business that makes jams, shrubs, and pickles from produce grown within 150 miles of its Emeryville kitchen. The business is all about sustainability, Kory told me, both environmental and economic. She buys produce from local organic farmers and preserves it, to help people enjoy peak-ripe seasonal foods year-round. And she hasn’t expanded beyond her little kitchen and five-person staff because she hasn’t wanted to take on that kind of risk.
“People don’t even consider the idea that there’s a size, a good size, that’s symbiotic to the workers and the community and the resources we have,” she told me. “Because I haven’t grown, I’ve been able to build that cushion that I have now. The push for growth absorbs any capital that is available. It’s risky.”
Read: How the coronavirus became an American catastrophe
Despite her preparations, Kory is one of hundreds of thousands of small-business owners across the country facing the unsustainable. INNA is still operational: As a food business, it’s exempted from the Bay Area’s strict shelter-in-place order. But sales have plummeted roughly 33 percent in just two weeks and are likely to fall further. One of Kory’s employees is at home on paid leave because “her health is more compromised, so I don’t want to add any risk for her,” Kory told me. The company is preparing to shut down, for some unknowable amount of time.