When winter weather hits how do small businesses handle it?

02/01/23

JACKSON, TENN (WNBJ)-

When winter weather hits, small businesses are faced with difficult questions like how are they going to be open? And if they can even open at all?

“When it comes to think about hours with the weather, of course, we're thinking about order, road conditions, things like that. We also think about what staffing we can have. We're also thinking about people's routines. So our office is downtown, close to city hall, close, our schools close just because such our business are people in their daily routines," said Anthony Kirk the owner of Turntable Coffee Counter.

Kirk choose to close Turntable early, “Yesterday, which was tuesday, we closed at three, today we're closed at noon," he said.

Kirk said he had his employees stay home and chose to work the shop himself, “I live just up the road. I have an all-wheel drive vehicle, so I usually feel pretty safe and snow as long as it's not too much ice. And so I'll be here.”

With fewer customers coming in and fewer hours being open small businesses can have financial worries, "There is that balance of our bills still come, month two whether we're open or not. And so just thinking ahead and trying to balance that… there's also ways to manage that. You know, if we're not open means we're not spending money on labor, we may not be using as many ingredients, as much electricity, things like that," Kirk said.

For small business like Havners frame shop the lack of foot traffic isn’t as much of a concern, “There's no such thing as emergency framing. So I just would tell anybody, I think my work is great, but don't risk your life… I don't have the pressure of creating something on the spot that somebody can leave with, you know, because what I do is it's a process,” said owner Charlie Havner.

For Havner this weather is an opportunity to catch up on orders, “Work on something, kind of get in the zone, put my head down and, you know, really just attack a lot of work that's been building up and so days like this, it's great for those kind of catch ups," he said.

The businesses we talked to today are determined to let nothing stop them from serving their customers.