Never underestimate the power of community.
It was the day before St. Patrick’s Day last year when Los Angeles County issued a health order closing all bars and restaurants, and restricting service to takeout only.
This left Craig Holman, proprietor of the Pickwick Pub in Woodland Hills, with “200 pounds of corned beef and beer galore” on his hands with nobody to sell to on the busiest day of the year when lines were usually out the door, and live Irish music was being played inside.
“It was a big (financial) hit to take,” he said. Pubs, traditionally, don’t do much take out business. They’re a place to sit and talk, meet new friends, and maybe Mr. or Ms. Right, if you get lucky.
They’re not a place to order out corned beef and cabbage. Craig Holman might as well have been tending bar in a morgue last year.
The day after St. Patrick’s Day, he sat in his empty pub filled with 25 years of memories, trying to figure out how to stay in business. He told his daughter, Kim Maiden, maybe it was time to shut their doors. If anything was getting taken out, it was them.
She told him to wait, she had an idea. And, that’s how it all came to be, this crazy, wonderful, Maiden Community movement she started on Facebook Live to ultimately help dozens of small, mom and pop businesses in the Valley, like her dad’s, stay open.
“I tried to be funny and silly in my posts for our pub, asking everyday who’s going to come and support us today, and people did,” she said. “We survived as a take out, supported by people we didn’t know before. They wanted to do their part, they just didn’t know how.”
If it worked for her dad’s place, why couldn’t it work for other small businesses trying to hang on? She began the “Quarantine Shopping Group,” highlighting mom and pop stores that had never been discovered, and she put them on the map – taking videos of the stores and owners to show on Facebook Live and post on her website – maidencommunity.com.
“We started with 300 responses from the community, and within three months it was up to 3,000,” Kim said. “Now, we’re at 4,500 people, and growing. All of them supporting mom and pop stores, either buying their products or just stopping by to give them moral support, let them know people are thinking about them.”
When Kim walked into Joe Stepanian’s store last year offering to help him drum up some business – at no charge – he thought the offer was to good to be true. “I was very, very leery, and, by nature, a guy who has little trust in people,” he laughed.
But, it couldn’t hurt to let her try, so he finally said sure, why not? What did he have to lose? He had just opened The Real Juicery on Sherman Way in Canoga Park with his dad, and could definitely use the business.
“She came in on a Saturday,” Joe said. “On Sunday, 75 percent of the customers I had were from the Maiden Community. It boosted my business like crazy. I can’t describe it. It was like 50, 60 people a day coming in. I had almost made a terrible decision and told her no, I wasn’t interested.”
As the Maiden Community has grown, so has its expenses. It’s had to hire a fulltime employee to handle the website and emails, and Kim couldn’t afford to keep paying the expenses herself. Today, a business gives back 10 per cent of sales to Maiden customers, with most of that passed on to charities the group supports every month.
This month its Jesse’s Jammies, a Valley based, non-profit that provides comfortable pajamas for hospitalized children. This idea she had last year on St. Patrick’s Day was never about herself, she stresses, it was always about community.
Would people step up to help if you showed them how?
Would they take the time to find those unique, out-of-the-way, mom and pop stores, or stay with the big guys?
Would they help take 200 pounds of corned beef off her father’s hands?
Yes, they would, on all counts.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.