FOUR TIMELY TIPS FROM A COMPANY’S PERFECT COVID-19 PIVOT
This article originally appeared in IEEE-USA InSight. It is reprinted here with permission from IEEE-USA. Copyright 2019 IEEE.
There are around 31.7 million small businesses in the United States. How many do you engage with on a weekly basis. How many have left a lasting impression on your life?
My personal short list includes NoDa Company Store. Tucked into the NoDa neighborhood in Charlotte, this bar is one of the many around the United States that was deeply affected when the COVID-19 pandemic began. It became a small grocer almost overnight supplying fresh produce to the community. But it is not just this creative thinking and resilience I admire. Owners Scott Lindsley and Joey Hewell continued to market their novel approach to customer service and fueled social initiatives that personify the values of their company. Here, in Scott’s own words, is how they have rolled with the punches and created their own hero, Quarantina, to fight back against the stay-at-home humdrums.
- Keep a finger on the pulse of your customers
It all started when a regular customer casually mused on Facebook that we should become the neighborhood grocer. The bell rang. Reworking our store would allow us to fill a void in our neighborhood while replacing a major part of what would otherwise be lost sales. Paying attention to this simple statement allowed us to change our purpose to fit the changing needs of our customers. The next hour or two was filled with non-stop conversation about what we could get from our normal suppliers, what connections we still had from once running the NoDa Farmers Market, and what access we had to food supply warehouses.
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