(gentle music) - Thinking back to the beginning of March, and hearing about this coronavirus.

In my business, I never, ever thought it would be a pandemic.

I mean, it's those things you hear about in the history book.

I've been in business for, well, had an actual brick and mortar building going on 19 years.

I made the decision to close for two weeks, and then within that week of being closed that's when the governor said, oh you have to close for two weeks.

So that meant three weeks of closing.

I was cool with two weeks, but of my own choosing, but then when I heard about his two weeks, I was like whoa, wait a minute.

So that meant how are the stylists gonna get paid?

And thank goodness, thank God that the way that my business is set up, they were able to apply for unemployment.

(gentle music) I had to dip into my own savings.

We still had to pay bills 'cause no one knew when things were gonna open so you still had to pay for stuff.

I never knew plexiglass was so expensive.

Well, pandemic made it more expensive.

It was hard getting that thermometer and getting aprons and masks.

What I did to keep sane was I kept going to work.

What I did was I kept in contact with the clients.

So I had to buy products, had to still pay bills.

I had to, oh they were actually coming by.

They do drive by, run outside.

Boom, give 'em their products as well.

So that kept us afloat and then people were hearing about it and I was doing consultation with people from Maryland, Alabama, Ohio.

I was sending products all over.

People had a lot of grace for each other, a lot, because everybody was going through the same thing.

So and this pandemic showed, no color, no status.

It hit everyone the same.

I feel like people come in to keep me company, 'cause they're sitting in my chair.

They're coming in to keep us company while we make them feel good.

I learned that black and brown businesses weren't doing business like we should have been doing it.

'Cause a lot of people didn't get unemployment and they couldn't 'cause people aren't claiming their taxes and not claiming their tips.

Nobody knows they're working, but they're working.

We were grateful.

We've never been so happy to see somebody and they were never so happy to see us.

(chimes) - Initially people were just trying to figure out the COVID thing and then we're talking about social distancing.

I definitely did not imagine in January, 2020 when I launched my website that mental health was going to be on front street.

The American psychological association put out there.

They usually do our annual stress in America and they did one recently and it just showed that they've seen unprecedented rates of stress and anxiety in the United States and a lot of it connected to COVID, but also to a lot of the election stress, racial injustice and racial violence.

For me and for other mental health professionals were like how do we get a handle on this?

How do we help people not feel like they have to just be in isolation?

How could they be creative in how they connect with other people.

Innopsych is a company that's charged with changing the face of therapy.

When I launched in January, 2020 we were looking at some of our data.

Just the request started to double and triple.

In March we had about 51 requests for a therapist and then April is dropped.

From July the numbers have stayed in the triple digits.

People are just a request for a therapist and then what you see happening now is the therapists are full.

I think the hard part though, for me, it's like I have really appreciated being able to jump into the space.

'Cause this is what I want.

This is actually why I created the company and the flip side is it's at such a cost, it's that people have had to actually suffer, but I hang on to that Maya Angelou quote , "in the struggle, lies to joy."

And it's something that I think our community and our culture, we, despite whatever hardship we find ways to come together and laugh and just celebrate our blackness and celebrate us and community.

(gentle music) - We are really more than a wine store and we've been around since 2010.

So we are coming into our second decade.

Coming into our second decade though it's when COVID hit and we really, not even pivoted, but really had to re-imagine our current business and we were afraid that we were gonna have to be closed due to a state mandate like restaurants or other retail, but because grocery stores in Massachusetts that sell alcohol the same license that myself and other, wine and spirits shops have they couldn't, the state couldn't close part of that licensed property and keep another one open like a grocery store.

So in that sense, we lucked out.

Tried allowing customers into the store, socially distanced, masked, even gloved and it was really hard and a lot of the people didn't want to have their masks on.

We came up with a decision to actually close our doors to the public and even sales reps that sell us wine at the end of last March.

So we, Urban Grape has actually been close to the public for a year.

We ended up doing things like revamping our website to give people an opportunity to get the Urban Grape experience from the safety of their phone, their tablet.

PPP funding allowed us to increase our staff, not only on the floor, but increase our delivery drivers from one to three.

We ended up doing things like building a wine counter that protected my staff and protected our customers.

It was outside so that we could still give them our service and sell them products, but keeping everyone safe during during COVID-19.

There's a part of my belief that alcohol is kind of recession proof, because people drink in great times, good times and bad times and it's always part of a lot of people's cultures and so we have a little bit of that kind of safety net in there.

I'm not really sure how much of our business is going to change back to how it was pre pandemic, because what we've seen happen, it's working.

(light music) - March 10th is our birthday.

We'll be seven years old as a business.

I didn't think we were gonna be able to get through this, but we did.

This was a really scary time last year.

We were trying to create a emergency plans for our employees as the entire city shut down and then the state and then the country.

You know I think we thought, oh, it's just going to be a month.

Everything will be back to normal, but we quickly learned that that was not the case.

I think for the first few months it was very anxiety producing as we all tried to adjust specifically for a fresh food generation.

It was difficult and it's still really difficult.

The first thing is everyone's safety.

I mean the minute someone coughs you have to stop and go through questionnaires and send the person home.

We've been very fortunate.

No one on our team has gotten sick, but it's taken a lot of open communication, but also on a on a business level, you're just sort of like floating, not knowing if your business is gonna be there in two, three months.

I think that we've recently let go of that anxiety and have been very thankful that so many people have shown support and want us to continue to be here.

The payment protection program, which was a very quick response and sort of cool at the time, but it was, the rules were constantly changing.

Our bankers did not know what was going on and we were successful that we received funding in the first round.

The first time they put it out, but that's not the case for most businesses.

We pivoted our food business to provide emergency food services immediately and that was really scary at the time, because everybody was afraid to go out.

We've also have made the transition to home deliveries and so our catering service that used to go downtown and to community groups is now home deliveries and it's a much more exciting menu.

We're not doing wraps anymore.

Our team doesn't miss it.

So, we sort of ventured off the beaten track.

In a lot of ways we are very thankful that we were are able to pivot.

I think one of the silver linings of everything that went on was forcing us to take a step back and examine our business and decide do we really want to be doing this.

What could we do different?

How could we better serve people?

And that has led to a lot of creativity.

(light music)