This month marks five years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The shutdowns have long since ended, but the impacts on society are still being understood. Beyond the deaths and long-term illness, the pandemic disrupted how we work, learn and even eat.
Owner Kim Tribley says Coffee Planet in downtown Ballston Spa is busy for a mid-winter Saturday.
She’s just happy to see customers filling the café’s interior. It had only been little more than a year between her purchase of the business in late 2018 and COVID restrictions taking hold.
“So, I was terrified. And you can see there’s two boys that are actually here today, they’re my managers. I had a conversation with them and I just said ‘you guys don’t have to work anymore, I’m happy to pay you guys if you’re afraid to work or whatever.’ They looked me dead in the face and said ‘if you’re here, we’re here,’” said Tribley.
Tribley says she did everything she could do to keep her store running including taking herself off the payroll.
“It took just a little bit after we reopened until the staff was comfortable to let people back in. We kind of did it our way, slowly reintroducing people back in and we were immediately busy. Because I—I’m an Irish girl, I wasn’t going to let anything knock me down. So if they wanted to work, I was ready for it. And I didn’t care what I had to do to make it happen. So, people had to order at that little, tiny ice cream window and pick up at the front door. And it was just crazy, it was absolutely insane,” said Tremblay.
Tribley says the past few months are the first time business has felt normal—but she credits the strong return to form to the local business community rallying together.
“On that note with all the businesses in Ballston Spa, we all kind of supported each other. My husband goes ‘are we going to eat out every night?’ And I’m like, ‘yes, because I don’t want to cook and I want to support the businesses.’ So, I would go to the Brickyard, or I would go to Mi Casa, or I would go to Front Street Deli, or I would go to—you know and it was the same thing here, all the owners were coming here and getting breakfast for their kids or bagels for their staff. So, very tightly knit community we have,” said Tribley.
Excellent Adventures Comics is a few doors down on Milton Avenue. Owner John Belskis has been in the comic and collectables business for nearly four decades. He says he’d never seen anything impact his business like the pandemic.
“Well, when we were locked down and closed, we really had to do curbside with people. I was able to do one-on-one appointment-only for a number of months. It was challenging, it was difficult because receiving merchandise, the whole distribution chain for comic books had changed. You know, we made it through but it was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve had to go through in all the years of doing this,” said Belskis.
It wasn’t all bad, however. Collectibles like Pokémon cards, in addition to comic books, experienced skyrocketing value as people took their interests indoors.
“People were sitting at home with a lot of free money, they were buying a lot of stuff online and spending money they probably shouldn’t have,” said Belskis.
Belskis says the market is largely back to pre-pandemic predictability.
Excellent Adventures Comics had to fully close for one week, and it took about a month before customers even realized they could make appointments to come in.
Belskis says he could have run fine online, but says face-to-face interactions with customers is what’s kept him in the business for so many years.
“I just like people. I like to talk to people, I like seeing my customers. My shop is—one of my better friends and customers calls it the barber shop. He comes and hangs out and there’s a lot of guys that come to see me just to kind of hang out. And sometimes there’s a purchase involved but not always. So, it’s just fun,” said Belskis.
Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce President Todd Shimkus says restrictions hit the region hard. Local businesses rely on busy summers to float them through the rest of the year.
“You think about that summer of 2020, our five top destinations, the racetrack, SPAC [Saratoga Performing Arts Center], the casino, the City Center, they were all closed. I mean literally, you could not go to any one of those venues. We saw hotel occupancy taxes from January 1st through the end of August plummet in Saratoga County by 75 percent. So, when we entered the fall, and the City Center is still closed, the track never opened, SPAC never opened, the casino was but only a limited number of people could get in there, that’s when we felt like the bottom had fallen out,” said Shimkus.
Shimkus and his staff then did what they could and organized “Save our Locals” as an effort to spur support for the network of businesses throughout the county by incentivizing local patronage.
Shimkus says by most metrics the effort has paid off.
“Our sales tax revenue is at historic highs. Our revenue per available room, which is our basis for understanding how our hospitality sector is doing, is at record highs. So, not only have we surpassed pre-pandemic, we’ve gone even higher,” said Shimkus.
The support organized by the Chamber was vital to a number of businesses throughout the county.
“The growth at the beginning was really, really slow, and then once everybody came back out and everybody was going out we had a huge growth spurt,” said Jason Friedman.
Jason Friedman owns Fat Paulie’s Deli on the west side of Saratoga Springs.
“We opened in December. Right before, of 2019, and then in March everything was shut down. So, we didn’t even—we had no following, we hadn’t even built the business up or anything. People locally, Saratoga was very good about supporting local restaurants and stuff which helped us. But, one thing we had going against us was people didn’t really know us yet, so people were really going to their tried-and true, supporting their restaurants and their delis and whatever that they were used to going to,” said Friedman.
Friedman says despite being a new spot on the local sandwich scene, his deli persevered.
“We just did what we thought was our mentality which was keeping things simple here, using quality ingredients, not taking shortcuts and putting out a quality product. And then we also pivoted, we were able to get, I’m not sure if you’re able to remember but nobody had toilet paper, you couldn’t get toilet paper in the supermarkets, so we were able to get some toilet paper and pivoted into some of that stuff. There was some local grants and stuff that we took advantage of that were really helpful,” said Friedman.
Aside from banding together, local businesses were also buoyed by unprecedented relief from the state and federal governments.
By July 2022 nearly $775 million in federal "pass-through" funds had been dispersed by the state to local governments. According to the state comptroller's office, more than $1.1 billion in state funding has been spent to help local businesses.
Another effort to help locals weather the pandemic was founded just to the north of Saratoga County in Queensbury.
Max Oswald is the director of sales and operations at Northway Brewing Company.
“Realistically, COVID was very good for us. Not in the emotional, physical, but business-wise people drank a lot,” said Oswald.
Oswald founded Brewnited, a collective of six local breweries selling a beer labeled “Negative Input.” Proceeds and collected donations went to those in need throughout the region. Saratoga County’s unemployment numbers jumped from 3,000 in March to 15,000 by the end of that month, according to the Chamber.
“I’m a bar guy, I like to go out and have beers. And I have a fairly traditional Sunday routine – I’m off Sundays, I go out in the afternoon. And it was right after the shutdown and I’m like routinely going ‘oh, I think I’m going to go down to the bar for a couple,’ and I literally stood in my living room and go, ‘no you’re not, man, everything’s closed.’ And it was like rapid-fire. Most of the people I know work in the beer industry or in bars or restaurants – servers, cooks, managers, whatever. And I was like, ‘this is crazy,’” said Oswald.
Oswald said the reaction to their collective effort was immediate and overwhelming.
“It was an organic thing, it just grew organically, word of mouth. We’d go to the beverage centers, they’d be like, ‘people love this,’ so we ended up putting containers on the counters and people would drop in change and coins,” said Oswald.
Brewnited sent out around 500 checks to workers across the county affected by the pandemic.
Oswald says he knew he was doing the right thing when letters began flooding in thanking him for the funds he was able to disperse.
“So, you can see tears in my eyes. So many. We’re not talking big checks, we didn’t have a limit, we didn’t have any—just tell us what you need. We couldn’t always fulfill; we gave people what we could. Stories of food for the kids, and clothes, and item specific stuff. Handwritten notes, texts, emails, it was incredibly rewarding, more than I ever could have asked or hoped for. And probably because that wasn’t the point. We weren’t looking for that,” said Oswald.
Shimkus says that’s the kind of community support network that has come to define the county’s post-pandemic success.
“Overall, the private businesses that are here, the ones that survived, and most did, the number here was very small to my shock and amazement. And you know what, I think that’s a tribute to the residents that we have—they came out and supported their local businesses. They did exactly what we asked them to do in spades and we’re so thankful that they did. That’s what really saved us locally, it was locals, it was being stronger together. And I think that’s honestly the lesson, that when we are challenged at the national, international level, as long as we work together we can achieve some incredibly positive outcomes, but we have to work together,” said Shimkus.
Saratoga County’s sales tax collection hit a low in May 2020, just under $6.5 million. By 2024, that figure reached $13.37 million for May.
