Giving small businesses the tools they need to thrive
By WP BrandStudio
Covid-19 has tested them in unimaginable ways. But they’ve embraced new ideas and technologies that are helping them hang on—and even flourish.
Most mornings, Casey Wisch wakes up before the sun and braces for another busy day of running her small business.
As owner of Long Stone Farm, a grass-based, pesticide-free poultry and livestock operation in Lovettsville, Va., her days are full and unpredictable. She tends to the needs of the cows, pigs, ducks and chickens that graze on more than 100 acres of grass, while also keeping an eye on her young children, whose outdoor activities include rounding up chickens and exploring every inch of the farm.
“You never really know what’s going to happen,” said Wisch, who is the farm’s only full-time employee. “Sometimes you wake up saying: ‘Alright, I really hope everybody just behaves today and does what they’re supposed to do.’” But that unpredictability is the joy and challenge of farm life, she said.
Though Wisch has long been accustomed to a healthy amount of chaos, nothing could have prepared her for the upheaval caused by the pandemic. Virtually overnight, she had to rethink everything from how her farm prioritizes its revenue streams to how it keeps its customers safe.
“Covid-19 has had an absolutely huge impact on our business,” she said.
She is certainly not alone. Over 40% of U.S. small businesses closed temporarily at some point during the pandemic, and employees of those entities are the most vulnerable to covid-related layoffs and furloughs.
For many of these companies, the ability to survive has boiled down to creativity, determination, support from their communities and access to adaptive tools, like PayPal QR Codes, which have helped small businesses address the unforeseen challenges posed by a global health crisis.
With all those things on her side, Wisch is finding ways to keep pushing forward, one day, one customer and one new idea at a time.
A moment of unprecedented upheaval
Entrepreneurs are accustomed to challenges, but those presented by covid-19—from state-mandated closures to ever-changing health and safety regulations—have been unique. And it’s been difficult to adapt; recent estimates show that more than 100,000 small businesses in the United States have shut down as a direct result of the pandemic.
Wisch does not take it for granted that Long Stone Farm is still standing. She recalls moments that felt “risky” and “scary,” particularly last spring when covid-19 was first surging in the U.S. She and her husband (who helps on the farm but has a full-time job elsewhere) had to make costly production decisions for the fall, with no sense of what would actually be happening in the world at the time. Would the pandemic change the items her customers needed to buy from her store? Would they continue buying at all?
“We’ve seen this dramatic shift in our business,” Wisch said. Prior to covid-19, a huge portion of the farm’s business came from restaurants, who bought a lot of meat products, particularly pork. But that demand has nearly vanished. “Our restaurant sales have been way, way down,” she said.
In the wake of this change, Wisch and her husband recognized an opportunity to reprioritize revenue streams, shifting their focus to Long Stone’s “meat shares” program, which allows customers to reserve their preferred cuts of pork and beef before coming into the store to pick them up.
The Wisch family’s self-serve farm stand, situated next to their home, has also been bustling. Locals from the community, as well as shoppers making the hour-long drive from Washington D.C., have flocked to the small open-air store, relishing the chance to buy high-quality pastured meat and eggs, local cheeses and honey in a bucolic setting.
The pandemic has changed not only where customers shop and what they want to purchase, but also the physical contact they’re willing to accept when in a store. Wisch has gone to great lengths to make sure her customers can maintain social distancing at every step of the shopping process.
“We needed to explore payment options that were [touch-free],” she said, acknowledging that covid-19 can spread on high-touch surfaces like credit card terminals. As a solution, she turned to PayPal QR Codes, which lets customers complete their payments via smartphone—eliminating the need to handle cash or credit cards. In fact, PayPal is waiving seller transaction fee for QR code payment until 2021 (doesn’t apply to PayPal Here QR Code transactions – other fees may apply).
Moreover, this new mode of payment has not required Wisch to make any kind of costly investment in her existing set-up, which was critically important to her given the current economic climate.
“We’re in a rural area and we don’t have access to Wi-Fi,” she said. “Folks have been able to use their own digital devices to securely pay us for products at our farm store.”
Thriving in the face of uncertainty
While covid-19 continues to surge, and much of the U.S. economy is at a relative standstill, there are signs that bit by bit, business by business, change is just around the corner. Longstanding risks to global supply chains have been exposed and are rapidly being addressed, for instance. Every month, there is growth in the number of Americans who say they believe the economy is improving and unemployment applications are down. And business owners like Wisch have found ways to turn on a dime, using technology in ways they never have before. Nearly 85% of small businesses now use digital platforms to reach customers and 75% conduct sales using tech platforms such as PayPal QR Codes.
Customer preferences have changed as well, with 60% saying covid-19 has altered their relationship with technology and nearly 70% reporting the pandemic has elevated their expectations of companies’ digital capabilities. Those shifts in consumer behavior are likely to stick long after the pandemic has ended; customers who have grown accustomed to the ease and convenience provided by new technologies, like those from PayPal, are unlikely to want to give them up.
Wisch is certainly planning for a different future for Long Stone Farm—and its customers—than she was just seven months ago. Pre-pandemic, she’d been looking into expanding the farm’s agrotourism events and potentially opening up a second store, but those projects are now in flux. Nevertheless, Wisch is firmly rooted in her ability to adapt and embrace new technologies in order to move forward through the pandemic and beyond. The busy entrepreneur and mom, who just welcomed her third child, is thinking of new plans, including a possible expansion of the farm’s meat share program.
But growth isn’t her primary goal, she said. Adapting to meet her customers’ needs and prioritizing her passion for sustainable farming is most important of all.
“I really love knowing that I get to be the person producing food that is served to families in the community. I know that the proteins parents are feeding their kids are raised in a way they should feel proud of,” Wisch said. And her commitment to that mission, as well as the customers who have rallied around her, has never been stronger.
“The pandemic has given people that extra push to come out to the farm,” she said. “I think they have been excited to be purchasing food in a safe environment, and [they’re] excited that they are supporting us.”
