NEWPORT – Virtually every city and town across the globe is facing its share of challenges in having to indefinitely shut down its respective economies in order to stop the ongoing spread of COVID-19.
For the municipality known as the “City by the Sea,” its livelihood – and the livelihoods of all of the hospitality employees – depends on a few million people every spring and summer walking the streets, drinking at local bars and dining at restaurants to help stay sustainable for a full calendar year.
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With the coronavirus pandemic delaying the start of Newport’s busy season, Newport Craft Brewing & Distilling Co. CEO Brendan O’Donnell summed up the current – and possible future – impact on the city’s hospitality industry in one word.
“Devastating,” O’Donnell said Wednesday to Providence Business News. “We rely on people for summer weddings, cruise ships, events, [International] Tennis Hall of Fame Week, [Newport] Folk Fest. With the St. Patrick’s Day Parade getting canceled, that’s usually the kickoff to get everything rejuvenated, we kind of started off on a tough foot to the season with COVID.
“If we don’t recover until mid-summer, that’s going to hurt a lot of people.”
The people O’Donnell refers to are the servers, bartenders and other hospitality workers who make minimum wage and tips in order to pay the bills and feed themselves. O’Donnell said even with tips, hospitality employees weren’t making as much as he thought they should.
“There’s a lot of people who are going to be really impacted and that are going to have to maybe change careers,” he said.
After talking with people in the industry, O’Donnell said the brewery needed to do something to help. So, Newport Craft using its sales from beer and spirits to help lift the spirits of local hospitality workers greatly impacted by the pandemic.
The brewery announced Monday that will be donating a portion of sales from every case of beer and spirits sold to the Rhode Island Hospitality Employee Relief Fund. The fund, Newport Craft said, will provide assistance to food service, lodging and tourism employees who have been laid off due to the coronavirus pandemic and are facing financial hardships as a result.
O’Donnell said Newport Craft chose to help the relief fund is because the brewery wanted to give back to the people who help push their products at local bars and establishments.
“We want to give back to them and say ‘hey, we’re all in this together, thank you for being there and we got you on this,’” O’Donnell said, “and we’ll do what we can.”
This isn’t the first effort that Newport Craft has made in trying to offer assistance during the pandemic. O’Donnell said the brewery made approximately 3,500 bottles of hand sanitizer that were donated to nursing homes, police departments, and various charities and nonprofits. O’Donnell said Newport Craft was “make-shifting” the sanitizer and had to source supplies for it through eBay because they were sold out elsewhere.
O’Donnell said multiple local companies helped contribute to the sanitizer cause and wanted to continue donating to whatever causes Newport Craft was doing to help others during the pandemic.
“We may donate X monetary value but hopefully by us opening the doors for this fund, bringing more awareness to it, someone else will step in and say ‘yes, we all need to do this together,’” he said. “And, hopefully, it will bring in more donations that will help all of these workers that are displaced.”
O’Donnell said establishments are facing financial challenges, too. Even if restaurants and bars do receive assistance from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, it only serves as a “band aid,” O’Donnell said, and situations become even more difficult if some restaurants and bars don’t receive that assistance.
Plus, O’Donnell is worried about some aspects of life when normalcy slowly returns.
“Even if we open in early May, it’s not going to be at full capacity,” he said. “It’s going to be hard for people to get over going back into these kinds of places, I think, initially.”
But O’Donnell does see a bright light with the industry in the form of it coming together to help one another. He sees local restaurants offer meals for displaced hospitality workers, seeing this “family banding together and rising up,” he said.
“We want to have some positivity and strength in ourselves, even though this is a really difficult situation,” O’Donnell said. “You’re going to see how people change their business models and change and adjust how it’s going to impact them and what’s going to happen moving forward.”
Newport Craft is also accepting monetary donations for the fund via Venmo at @NewportCraft, and 100% of the proceeds will go toward the fund. The brewery will give regular updates on its Instagram and Facebook platforms – which O’Donnell said currently has about 35,000 followers combined – and the promotion runs through May 22.
O’Donnell said he hopes Newport Craft can raise around $5,000 for the fund and the May 22 date – the Friday before Memorial Day weekend – is a big target date, O’Donnell said, because people will be stocking up on liquor for various gatherings that weekend.
“That would be a great run-up to kind of push for the donations,” O’Donnell said.
Providence Business News is spotlighting nonprofits, companies and workers stepping up to challenges presented by the spread of the new coronavirus.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
