Kelsey’s Story

Kelsey Willison, Blue Bird Cakery
Fairibault, MN

I have a small bakery business in Southern MN. We make from scratch baked goods, fresh coffee, and serve as a meeting place.

Since the onset of COVID 19 we have we about 46% less foot traffic and as of late, strange outages. We do typically about $6,500/ week and over the last 4 weeks this has been dramatically slowed. We are seeing multiple challenges:

1) Our ability to make payroll. We asked people to take 1 paycheck in the month of March vs. 2 and we are now going to have trouble coming up with that too. We need about $3,500 per payroll.

2) Ability to remain in stock of normal cost of goods items. Our local Walmart is out of butter and whole milk and eggs. The loss of cash flow is making it difficult to meet the minimum for our larger suppliers at 500 minimum size orders. 

3) Ability to remain open to the public. My main full time employee has gotten sick this week and we are having to close early. I also fear getting sick. We are scared to close 100% even though it’s a consideration for social distancing and reducing the transmission. With little income, a 100% closure would make us unable to make rent or payroll in April. 

Overall this is a loss about $12,000 - $15,000 over the last month and we are worried about the continued impact on our ability to survive this to stay open.