KYW Newsradio's Community Comeback series checks in on Philadelphia neighborhoods and livelihoods to find out how small businesses made it through the pandemic and how they are surviving, and even thriving, today.
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Gwen McCauley gauges the foot traffic in Manayunk with an untraditional metric: garbage.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, she said maintenance crews would pick up trash along the nearby trails once a week. Now, they do it daily.
“We think we’ve had seven times the amount of usage,” said McCauley, executive director of the Manayunk Development Corporation. “People who were working from home, wanting to be outdoors, and they’re coming up here.”
And in turn, McCauley said, trail-users become Main Street shoppers.
Related
Winnie Clowry’s tables at her self-named bistro are full 18 months into the pandemic.
“I’m very pleased with my entire block on Main Street,” she said, confident that she and neighboring businesses will survive whatever chaos the delta variant throws at them.
In fact, Clowry said COVID-19 has forced her to become more efficient business-wise.
“It probably made me stop running 100 miles an hour to get it done,” she said.
For David Lee, he actually went full speed ahead and opened Pizza Jawn during the pandemic. It’s been a hit, he said, thanks to his modern marketing approach.
“We have a pretty good Instagram [and] social media presence,” he said, noting it’s not enough these days to just put out a great product. You have to be a good communicator and tell the story of what it is you’re selling.
Related
“We put up pictures of what we’re doing and we let people into the back end and say, ‘Hey, I’m going up to my local butcher that’s in Germantown. I’m getting the meat, I’m slicing in-house. This is my produce guy.”
Jaime Kaplan decided to pivot altogether after a revelation: “Coffee and plants go together very well.”
“We reinvented the business using the space to create a cafe and a bistro now,” said the co-owner of the decorative metal iron shop Artesano Cafe and Bistro.
There’s also a gallery that doubles as an event space, so Kaplan hired their own chef — from next door — to run the cafe while their venue was closed.
Now, the space is allowed to reopen.
“We are totally booked for this year and we are booked for next year,” he enthused. “But we are very conscious that this situation can change and we are very open to change and adapt.”
McCauley believes Manayunk is in a resurgence. Despite ongoing surges and variants, she estimates demand will increase as more people move into the area — not exactly what you’d expect from a pandemic recession economy.
“The 19127 and 19128 area has the second-highest number of residential permits being pulled. There is an explosion of new properties being built up there,” she said.