Nampa holds economic panel on COVID-19 pandemic

The City of Nampa held a “Community Conversation on Health, Economy, and Recovery” on Aug. 27, with two panels, one of which was made up of local Nampa business professionals, to answer questions on doing business during the pandemic-driven economic crisis. What follows below are the highlights of the economic panel discussion. The transcript of the panel discussion has been edited for clarity and length.

The economic panel was moderated by Matt Davison, publisher of the Idaho Press. The panelists were Irma Valdivia, owner of the Jalapeños Nampa restaurant; Enrique Rivera, president of the Idaho Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which is headquartered in Nampa; Mitch Minnette, CEO of the Nampa Chamber of Commerce; Travis Leach, president of the Saint Alphonsus Nampa Medical Center; and Brian Gunnell, human resources director of Materne U.S. Operations, based in Nampa.

Moderator: What impact has COVID-19 had on your business individually?

Valdivia: Unfortunately, it has had some negative impact in our business. As with a lot of others, we’ve learned a different way of working and a smarter way to get us through this time. So as we continue to learn better ways and better practices, we just continue to get better and learn how to work with the virus.

Rivera: The impact has been, for us, in helping our small businesses and the Hispanic community to navigate through these times and giving them the resources so they can remain open. It’s been a challenge not just for business owners, but for the employees and the customers, aside from just the hard everyday life of running a business.

Minnette: The Chamber (of Commerce) is not immune to this (situation) either. We’ve had to adjust internally and instead of doing large events, we’ve had to go more virtual and so forth.

Leach: I think there are a lot of myths out there that a hospital must be somehow profiteering off of a pandemic in some way. I can tell you unequivocally, that is absolutely not the case. When the pandemic really became recognized … we had to take drastic steps to prepare for the potential influx of cases. And much of that was mandated by the Center for Disease Control … We stopped doing any elective procedures. We stopped letting people into our hospitals. We had to retool every single aspect of our existence … we’ve experienced a significant financial shortfall as a result. And we continue that financial shortfall to today. We’ve had colleagues — we refer to our staff as colleagues — affected (who) could no longer come to work. So even our capacity to take care of all of you has been diminished as a result of that.

Gunnell: Our product is a healthy, shelf-stable product that families and kids enjoy. And so we’ve actually seen a little bit of a surge in demand for our product, which under a lot of (other) circumstances would be very nice. The challenges that we’ve had are a lot of employees that have had to be out due to the pandemic; and upstream and downstream of us, our suppliers and customers have had challenges … It’s also been very costly for us as we’ve had to adapt how we do business. We’ve had to spend in a lot of different areas to make sure that we could continue to operate.

Moderator: How many of you have a mask policy in your business today? Who has a story to share about that? Irma, you shared a story with me. I’d like you to share that with the group. 

Valdivia: We don’t enjoy wearing the masks, but we understand that they are for our safety and safety of others. I’m a restaurant owner. I feel very passionate about keeping my patrons safe always, prior to COVID and of course, much more now. So being in the restaurant business, I feel a huge responsibility to make sure that we go above and beyond. We continue to get harassed, I believe is the right word to say, for wearing masks. One story that hit me really hard and made me, for the first time, fear for our safety and such. Now I’m sharing it because I want you guys to understand that this is not easy for any one of us. Things like this story that I’m going to share are not making it easier for us to continue to work or for us to open up America, to continue to get back where we need to.

A patron of ours, a customer of ours just asked us to remove our masks so that he could place his order. My server said that he could not so he had to come and grab me.

I said (to our patron), “Sir, I’m sorry. I cannot take off my mask but I’m happy to take your order if you want to write it down, if you don’t want to talk to me” … He was getting a little angry and I said, “you’re welcome to take it to go. I don’t know what else I can do for you, but I’m not taking off my mask.”

He said, “look, lady, I’m strapped. I don’t need a mask. You don’t need to be wearing your mask around me. I’m strapped.”

It took me a minute. I didn’t even get it. I didn’t even realize what he was saying because my concern is to give him a great lunch and a great experience with us. So when I realized what he meant, I just stepped back and I said, “you know, sir, I will be back for your order. Please leave.” He just started laughing and he gave me his order as I was walking away. But you know, those are scary moments and I have a lot of young kids that don’t understand how all of this affects the big picture of the world. That’s just really scary so I just hope to not hear things like that anymore.

Moderator: Mitch, I want to pivot to you real quick. Based on that story, what advice would you give as a chamber director to a business owner who came in with that challenge?

Minnette: Well, that’s a loaded question. (Laughter) It’s not a mandate and we all know that but we’ve been encouraging (wearing masks): do it for a loved one, do it to keep our economy open to it for professional reasons, do it for personal reasons. In this case, it was just not fair to the server. That customer had options where he can go eat or go through drive-thrus or whatever it may be. So that’s a tough and difficult and unfortunate story … What all of us who work at businesses are trying to accomplish is consumer confidence, for consumers to feel confident to go into businesses, to be able to go into these places safely, as well as for the businesses to feel comfortable about serving their customers.

Moderator: Enrique. I want to pivot to you, and this is a very open-ended question. What’s keeping you up at night right now?

Rivera: I’m a banker and at the same time, I’m also serving the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. So I get to see businesses on both sides. On the financial side at the bank, what keeps us up at night is helping our clients navigate through this: being able to work with them over all the business loans and PPP — sharing all the information and resources from the Small Business Administration … It’s to the point where it gets confusing for the typical, every-day client or business owner, (to let them know) what’s right and what’s not, what’s true and what’s not true.

It trickles down to the chamber as well. (Business owners) reach out to us. We try to gather as much information as we can from reliable sources to give it out. What keeps us up at night is: what are they thinking right now? Are they getting the right information ? Are they surviving this in terms of the business but also emotionally? They sacrifice so much to open a business or to keep a business open. And they have employees and families to help. So what’s keeping me up at night is how can I help them.

Moderator: Good answer, thank you. Travis, I have one for you. Do you anticipate COVID-19 having a permanent and lasting impact on your business?

Leach: Even for those of us in the health care system, the losses are incalculable and the impact that it has on the way we do daily operations, especially until we figure out how to eradicate the virus, it has upended everything we do and every way we do it. We no longer have people just walk in our front doors. We are in the business of people and it is heartbreaking to have to limit that and to have to have everybody masked. We don’t see that letting up for quite a while because our first priority is to keep every single person in the hospital safe. We just don’t know enough about this virus so we’re throwing everything we can at it to keep people safe and that will have lasting consequences for healthcare.

Moderator:  Thank you, Travis. Brian, your organization is a little bit larger. You have a lot of people working for you and you’re responsible for getting your product to consumers safely. Can you talk a little bit about the specific steps that you’re taking as a business to keep both your customers and your employees safe at the same time?

Gunnell: Our business is a little bit different than maybe other (Nampa) businesses in that we are in food manufacturing. So there’s a lot of things that we were already doing from the very beginning, like hand-washing, hand sanitation, food safety protocols; but this has really forced us to take a hard look at other things we can do that can enhance physical distancing, how we gather for training and other communications, and on the food safety side.

We’ve even asked ourselves, do we need to get more involved with people upstream of us (in the supply chain) to make sure that their reactions to all of this aren’t impacting the products that we receive and then incorporate into our product? So it’s been a pretty significant change. Honestly, that is something we discuss every day as we think of new things and as we watch the situation evolve, to make sure that we are evolving with it, to make sure that we don’t compromise anything in spite of the difficult circumstances.

Moderator: Irma. I want to get back to you. This has more to do on the financial side of running a small business so feel free to be general. We don’t need specific numbers from you but the financial impact of businesses this year has been largely negative with the exception of home improvement stores, bike shops, and the other handful of businesses that have thrived. How have you weathered the storm and were you able to access any stimulus funding?

Valdivia: Obviously, we make millions. (Laughter.), So, okay, I just had to see everyone smile, even through your masks. Thank you for that.

We were very excited to be able to apply for the PPP loan and that really helped us through that time. However, I think like a lot of other small businesses, we didn’t realize that (the pandemic) was going to continue so long. When we received that loan from the government, which is a grant, not quite a loan, but we were able to get that money. We thought that this (situation) was going to be something we would get through in a month or two. So we were able to keep some people on by giving them a little bit of a raise. We were able to buy some things that we needed to do service outside and really change the way that we were working. However that money’s long gone and COVID is not.

So now we’re just trying to weather the storm, trying to figure out every day where we can cut back without losing the quality and the service that we want to provide to you. It is a really difficult challenge, but every day I learn something new and we’re all learning together at different businesses. I think that we’re going to do just fine. We’re eager to find out about some new things that have come up. So my task next week is not just as a restaurant owner and a mother and a daughter, and all those other things that we all have to worry about every day. I also have to figure out how to navigate through this new financial system that I’m completely unaware of and not familiar with. It’s an everyday challenge.