Surviving the pandemic has been the major challenge for Okotoks’ small businesses for the past six months.
And for the most part, our town can be proud of the initiative and persistence shown by those who are facing this crisis, and by the wisdom and compassion shown by politicians and civil servants in all three levels of government who are helping them do it.
The other day I had a chat with Laszlo Radi who owns the Heartland Café in Old Towne Okotoks. His story is a prime example of how to use the tools you are given.
“We started noticing that business was dropping off late in February,” Laszlo said. “By March 10, we were thinking about closing down anyway because we were only seeing 10 to 15 people coming in during periods when we used to see 100.”
After the government ordered everything shut down, the cafe redesigned its menu to do business strictly by take-out and delivery.
“That’s how we survived until we were allowed to reopen at 50 percent of capacity,” he said.
A long-time entrepreneur who arrived in Okotoks in 2015 and, with his wife Victoria, purchased the Heartland Cafe two years ago, Laszlo has spent most of his working life creating jobs for other people.
For him, the hardest part was having to cut his staff.
“I had to lay off everybody except two chefs,” he said.
Fortunately, those who were laid off had access to a federal government program that guaranteed their income at $500 a week no matter what their regular EI benefits were.
Laszlo gives the federal and provincial governments a lot of credit for helping him through the hard time.
“We got lots of help,” he said. “I have friends in Europe where they didn’t get as much assistance. We got the $40,000 loan from the Federal government and $5,000 from the provincial government.
“We also got the mortgage deferment that we will have to pay that back. It wasn’t really a saving, but we didn’t have to make the cash payments when there was no money coming in.”
Okotoks restaurants reopened in mid-June, before restaurants in Calgary.
“Right away, people from Calgary started coming out here,” Laszlo said. “That first week we were full, full, full, and 90 percent of the people were from Calgary. It was crazy. We’ve also noticed our average purchase per customer has increased about 20 per cent.”
“We’re doing OK,” he added, “and it’s because all our customers have continued to support us during these hard months. We can’t thank them enough.”
Laszlo’s biggest concern going forward is that everybody continues to respect the rules that the province and town have established to reopen safely.
“It’s important that we maintain social distancing,” he said. “I think masks should be mandatory, not just to protect the person wearing the mask but also because you don’t want somebody else to be infected because of you.”
That’s another example of the Okotoks spirit.
