Good morning,
Luca's Mediterranean Cafe in Keene, New Hampshire, just recorded the best March in its 20-year history: $20,000 in weekly sales.
It was a far cry from March 2020, when the restaurant's founder Luca Paris had to shut his doors to in-person dining as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Though his cafe, located less than a mile north of Keene State College, is typically teeming with in-person diners, it switched to takeout-only last March--and remained that way for three months, when it reopened to 60 percent capacity (plus four outdoor tables) in mid-June.
Now that the vaccination rate is starting to pick up and the weather is getting warmer, Paris's eatery is also turning around. But if you ask him, his business's survival has everything to do with the helping hand he received from his neighbors. "Most of us, as a community, jumped in with both feet to say, 'We need to stay positive, strong, unified, and help each other out,'" Paris tells Inc. "It's a true statement of what can happen when a community gets together … We’re not competitors in this.”
During the depths of the crisis, when many small towns took one look at the pandemic and winced, Keene's business community opened wide. What happened next serves as a heartening example of what can happen when a community pitches in and business owners work together.
Read our story to learn how, from crowdfunding campaigns to coordinated sales efforts, one town’s business owners worked together to survive. |
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