Gateway Chamber Pride

The Gateway Regional Chamber of Commerce is working on multiple fronts to assist in combating the COVID-19 outbreak. Every day as the situation develops, the Chamber is called on to assist with our members' unique challenges. We tell our members that it is our job to form relationships and our relationship capital is certainly being tested in these times. We are doing much more than just lobbying our political contacts.

The Chamber has facilitated 6,000 Personal Protective Equipment donations to our member hospitals. We have built a list with over sixty potential Vendors for our member hospitals to purchase additional supplies. New Jersey hospitals are in critical need of the supplies and with equipment donations drying up, we are financial donations.

We are also spearheading an effort to help our local restaurants market gift cards so they can earn some cash flow while they are closed. We have partnered with Rally for Restaurants to do this. The Chamber is organizing volunteers to register as many restaurants as possible as well as encouraging everyone to buy the gift cards.

Many of our members have been forced to lay off staff, especially in the hospitality business. These members are reaching out to us to help their employees find new jobs. The hotel industry has been hit especially hard and we are seeing numbers such as 70-80% of personnel being laid off. We are connecting other members to this available labor pool so they can augment their capacity. Warehouses, food distributors, and other manufacturing companies need an immense amount of extra labor to keep up with the demand in this crisis.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is expecting a 30 to 40 percent increase in container imports beginning in late April. The Gateway Chamber has been busy reaching out to our Transportation, Logistics, and Distribution companies to find who has excess capacity capable of handling the storage and distribution of these cargos.

While all this is going on, we have not stopped our networking event efforts. The Chamber is hosting virtual networking events that spotlight experts in our membership and allow our members to continually meet new potential clients or partners. This has been a great opportunity to test new ways to better serve connecting our members virtually and we have already made great connections for our members.