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Essential Syracuse Area Businesses Work to Serve the Public During Coronavirus Pandemic, Readjust

Epicuse

The essential businesses in Central New York who have remained open during the COVID-19 pandemic are doing so as a good gesture to provide services to residents.  WAER News is checking in with them to see how they're coping with everything from temporary layoffs to downsizing what they usually offer. 

SKY Armory is closed but, their Epicuse market and café is open.

“For us, it was really maintaining business as usual.  We consider ourselves an essential business, so here’s our opportunity to be able to do that with our internal team.  We still have chefs working in the kitchen.” 

That's Owner Nicole Samolis who says the market at 334 South Salina Street isn’t crowded on a given day.

“It’s pretty easy to do the social distancing… people come in throughout the course of the day.  We do have food handler gloves; when people come in they can certainly put them on and we have sanitizer for people to use and then we’re constantly doing our sanitizing and cleaning which you do in the food industry anyway but, making sure all those surfaces are good and clean.”

She’s hopeful that assistance for Paycheck Protection Program will help them call back some of her employees sooner. 

“We have 200 events to do this year on the SKY Armory side but, there’s still that we’re needing to be able to do and having our teams be able to stay focused on that during a little bit of a quiet time gives us a little bit of of an advantage too.”

Samolis adds that they're already looking at rescheduling postponed events but, it's a very much a wait and see approach.  Up next, we'll discuss how businesses on the SU Hill have been affected, especially without thousands of college students around.      

John Smith has been waking up WAER listeners for a long time as our Local Co-Host of Morning Edition with timely news and information, working alongside student Sportscasters from the Newhouse School.