{"id":90457,"date":"2020-05-21T00:41:37","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T05:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=90457"},"modified":"2020-05-21T00:41:37","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T05:41:37","slug":"lakeview-garden-center-remains-optimistic-about-summer-business-despite-stay-at-home-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/lakeview-garden-center-remains-optimistic-about-summer-business-despite-stay-at-home-order\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeview garden center remains optimistic about summer business despite stay-at-home order"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kari McMahon<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

When the U.S. economy experienced the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009, Susan Brandstetter and her husband, Russell, felt the impact. The owner of a 25,000-square-foot garden center walked away from a commercial lease on their property. They were left with a garden center but with no one to run it.<\/p>\n

The couple decided to take ownership of the garden center and reopened it in 2011 as Fertile Ltd. Under their ownership, the center in Chicago\u2019s Lakeview neighborhood offers landscaping services and sells products ranging from flowers, shrubs, trees and garden tools to ornaments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not know what a petunia was,\u201d said Brandstetter, who used to remodel and manage her family\u2019s property rentals. \u201cI just kind of decided I was going to wing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nine years later, the couple is potentially facing another recession, deeper than the previous one. The U.S. economy has declined significantly as states implemented stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the country. The orders have changed how businesses of all sizes operate.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The federal government has set aside funds to help businesses as part of the coronavirus relief package, which includes $670 billion for forgivable loans to small businesses.<\/p>\n

On March 20, Illinois implemented a stay-at-home order. Garden centers could operate under the order if they provided delivery or curbside pickup, according to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. Garden centers were allowed to reopen May 1 to customers as long as they adhere to social distancing guidelines.<\/p>\n

\"Fertile
Fertile Ltd garden center\u2019s open-air space. (Susan Brandstetter\/Fertile Ltd.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fertile\u2019s receives 55% of its business from landscaping, 35% from retail and 10% from trade. Under the state order, landscaping services were deemed essential and so Fertile did not close. The center is located outside, so customers were able to pick products while social distancing, Brandstetter said. Although many customers didn\u2019t realize Fertile was still open.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen everything opened on the first [of May], there were so many people who came out to shop,\u201d Brandstetter said.<\/p>\n

Walter Knoll, a 66-year-old from Roscoe Village, visits Fertile every spring to see what products it has and feels it\u2019s more personal than a big box store such as Home Depot, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s never any pressure to buy, it’s a nice place to just walk by and see some beautiful plants and greenery,\u201d Knoll said.<\/p>\n

The clientele of the garden center is reflective of the neighborhood. Brandstetter, who is a member of Northwestern University\u2019s Women\u2019s Board, said the typical demographic of customers is families with young children, but amid the pandemic Fertile is seeing more people in their 20s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m hearing a lot of garden centers reporting a large number of new customers, people that have never gardened before, a lot of young customers,\u201d said Danny Summers, managing director at The Garden Center Group, a garden center advisory company.<\/p>\n

There has been an unexpected demand for vegetable plants, which took Brandstetter by surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to call four nurseries today to try to get vegetables because the guy who I always buy vegetables from every year has sold his out,\u201d Brandstetter said.<\/p>\n

When Brandstetter finally reached someone, she was told the price for a minimum order of vegetable plants would normally be $1,500, but in the current climate it would be $3,000.<\/p>\n

Securing vegetable plants in the first weeks of the pandemic was a challenge because suppliers didn\u2019t anticipate the demand, but supply is now catching up, Summers said.<\/p>\n

Many people in Chicago don\u2019t have a lot of space and come to Fertile looking to do container gardening, Brandstetter said. Annuals, plants that flower and die in one season, are one of Fertile\u2019s most popular products because they\u2019re perfect for container gardening, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally people would start picking things up in early April and this year they didn’t, they put everything off till probably the third week or fourth week of April when there was some information about garden centers being open,\u201d said Dick Ooykaas, owner of Green Glen Nursery Inc., a landscaping and garden center wholesale supplier located in Elwood, Illinois.<\/p>\n

For garden centers that couldn\u2019t operate during March and April, wholesale suppliers had to dispose of their spring annuals because they only last for one season, Brandstetter said.<\/p>\n

Fertile typically operates with 10 members of staff but currently has seven, Brandstetter said. Fertile has seen significant demand for landscaping services but as it gets busier, she expects people may have to wait a few weeks because of demand and minimal staff, she said.<\/p>\n

The garden center faces another challenge in managing customer numbers. Pre-crisis, Brandstetter said she would expect high traffic on weekends for retail and high traffic on weekdays for landscaping. So far, this pattern has remained consistent amid the pandemic, she said.<\/p>\n

Garden centers must try to spread out customers, who would typically visit on a weekend or during a major holiday, more evenly across the week by encouraging them to come at other times to help manage social distancing, Summers said.<\/p>\n

Despite the challenges many small businesses are facing amid the pandemic, Fertile is in a financially stable position. The couple didn\u2019t need to apply for a small business loan and could rely on their equity line of credit if faced with any funding challenges, Brandstetter said.<\/p>\n

In the first four years of running Fertile, Brandstetter saw growth in sales but in recent years sales have remained steady. Last year, Fertile had sales of about $1 million, Brandstetter said. She expects sales to remain the same this year but emphasizes it\u2019s hard to tell when it\u2019s so early in the season, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the pandemic has created a desire for people to get outside,\u201d Brandstetter said. \u201cSo, I think if anything we’re one of the really fortunate businesses that people are going to really embrace while they have to stay at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many garden centers across the U.S. share similar optimism, Summers said. This is in contrast to the general feeling among small businesses. The National Federation of Small Businesses\u2019 optimism index has fallen 13.6 points over the course of March and April.<\/p>\n

\"Small
Graph of the Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Small Businesses (National Federation of Small Businesses)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI think we are optimistic,\u201d Summers said. \u201cI think it’s introducing a lot of people to stay home and be more interested in plants and gardening and their landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fertile Ltd garden center in the Lakeview neighborhood. (Susan Brandstetter\/Fertile Ltd.)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kari McMahon Medill Reports When the U.S. economy experienced the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009, Susan Brandstetter and her husband, Russell, felt the impact. The owner of a 25,000-square-foot garden center walked away from a commercial lease on their property. They were left with a garden center but with no one to run […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":681,"featured_media":90458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,5029,5008],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-covid-19","category-spring-2020"],"yoast_head":"\nLakeview garden center remains optimistic about summer business despite stay-at-home order - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/lakeview-garden-center-remains-optimistic-about-summer-business-despite-stay-at-home-order\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lakeview garden center remains optimistic about summer business despite stay-at-home order - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Kari McMahon Medill Reports When the U.S. economy experienced the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009, Susan Brandstetter and her husband, Russell, felt the impact. 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