19 Business Survival Tips for COVID-19
I was listening to a podcast the other day and someone said “Innovation is at its best under limitations… The best ideas of tomorrow are going to come from the crisis of today.” It’s true. Small businesses are getting creative and innovative in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic. This article is all about business survival tips for COVID-19.
We have observed and helped numerous clients and local businesses pivot their strategy during COVID-19. This article is not about grocery stores and delivery services or businesses closing. We’re highlighting restaurants, consultants, fitness places, musicians, and brick and mortar shops making adjustments to their business to survive. These are small changes you can make during the crisis to help your business thrive.
Swing’s Coffee
Subscription Service, Gift Cards, Virtual Tip Jar
One of our clients, Swing’s Coffee, a premium coffee roaster in Northern VA & DC has had to temporarily close their retail spaces because of COVID-19. During this time, their coffee subscription shipping service has soared in popularity. They are also offering gift cards that can be purchased online for use later at one of their coffee shops. They’ve even setup a virtual tip jar on GoFundMe that’s raised over $2,500 for their baristas.
Community Preschool
Online Registration
Community Preschool in Northwest Indiana is creating a way to take fall registration and application fees online using Stripe since they won’t be able to have open houses (and hand out applications and collect fees in person) for a while. We are about to launch new website, stay tuned!
Family Allergy Center
Drive Thru Appointments
Family Allergy Center in Centreville, VA has switched to drive thru allergy shots to be able to continue serving people while adhering to social distancing requirements. The process is simple:
- Book an appointment
- Drive up at your appointment time and get checked in while you wait in your car
- When your allergy shot is prepared, you walk just inside the main doors (they are propped open so you don’t have to touch anything), and they give you your shot.
- You pay electronically (no contact) and then you walk out and drive away.
No waiting in a waiting room with others. No touching anything. It’s brilliant.
Los Mariachis
Margaritas With Food Purchase
Some restaurants have gotten creative with their offerings and are including drink packages. Los Mariachis in Wallingford, CT is known for it’s authentic Mexican dishes and is now offering famous margaritas to go with your food order. Check out all of their specials.
Taco Bamba
Cook at Home Meal Kits, Special Offers
Taco Bamba in Fairfax, VA is offering “Prepare Your Oven” meal kits (heat and eat build-a-taco kits), family platters, and carry out beer, wine and cocktails in addition to their normal offerings.
Gateway City Arts Bistro
Curb-side Pick-up and Contact-less Pick-up
Gateway City Arts Bistro in Holyoke, MA is offering curb-side pick-up and contact-less pick-up. They have even have special instructions on how to order and what to do.
Sweet Dee’s Cupcakery and Custom Cakes
Relevant & Seasonal Baked Items
Some bakeries and sweet shops have become really creative with their offerings. Sweet Dee’s Cupcakery and Custom Cakes in Winter Garden, FL has started offering poop emoji cupcakes and toilet paper cakes and they’ve been a huge hit. For Easter they also offered Easter cookie or cupcake kits to take home and decorate on your own.
Blue Plate Catering
Feed the Frontline Initiative
One of best things that I’ve seen some restaurants doing is a “Feed the Frontlines” initiative. On March 29, Blue Plate Catering in Madison, WI started offering the ability for people to buy food at cost to be sent to those on the front lines of the virus response: doctors, nurses and other staff at nearby hospital, police, firefighters and EMS squads. In the first week, they passed 2,000 meals delivered to the front lines. Find people you can help, that’s a business survival tip.
Penguin Pizza
Feed the Frontline Initiative
Penguin Pizza in Boston, MA started doing something similar and even registered www.feedingthefrontline.com to help connect communities to local restaurants and food establishments.
Tools4Trade
Online Store & Ebay Store
Tools4Trade sells their products online and also has an eBay shop where they sell products.
1818 Farms
Sell on Industry Specific Sites/Sections
1818 Farms in Mooresville, AL discovered Amazon’s handmade section and started selling their products there with great success. Finding industry specific sites or sections can make a huge difference in your sales. You could also sell on sites like Amazon.com, Etsy.com, Bonanza.com or another online site.
Applewood Winery
Virtual Wine Tasting with Live Music
Applewood Winery is hiring musicians to play on stage at their winery. During this time, the musician and owners go back and forth between music and wine tasting. It’s like a virtual wine tasting. See a livestream of one of their recent performances where Nicole Deloi of Owls & Lions played.
Blue Arrow Farm
Live Music Performances Online
Blue Arrow Farm has moved their Blues Jam Wednesdays to fully online using Facebook Live from the artists home. Since it’s a recurring event, they are staying engaged with their audience. They pay a musician to perform and give them exposure and as a result, the musician talks about the farm quite a bit during the gig. Chris Raabe of the Chris Raabe Band recently performed.
Sweet Farm
Live Animals in Zoom Meetings
Sweet Farm is a nonprofit animal sanctuary in California that is now offering Goat 2 Meeting service where you can have a live animal make an appearance in your Zoom meetings. The cost ranges from $65-750. They’ve already had over 300 meeting appearance at their $100 price point. That is $30,000 in revenue to help support the animals. Use what you have, that’s a business survival tip.
Grass Roots Fitness
Online Fitness Classes
Barbershops, salons, locksmiths, roofers, beauticians may find it difficult to sell products online. Personal trainers have built their brands to go online. Grass Roots Fitness instructor Joann Meginely started offering classes via Zoom. They are following the trend we’ve been seeing online. If you use Google Trends and type “online fitness” you will see the recent spike in searches.
Companion Animal Behavior
Pet Telebehavior Consulting
Pet Behavior consultant Yody Blass has transformed their in-home pet consulting to telebehavior consulting. Using AcuityScheduling to book appointments, customers can now schedule and pay for their appointment online. There are a lot of online booking appointment tools you can use: Calendly, BookLikeaBoss, Schedule Once and others.
Plumb Doctor Live
Online Plumbing
Plumb Doctor Live in the UK offers live video call with experienced plumbers who will help you fix basic plumbing problems yourself, provide complete and impartial cost for any additional repairs needed and send you a report. A business survival tip is to offer your service over video.
Sweet Green
Free Food Delivery to Lockers in Hospitals
Sweet Green is providing free food delivery to hospitals through their Outpost service. They had over 10,000 hospitals apply for the program, where they place a SweetGreen Outpost locker in hospitals. Healthcare workers can order food through the app and their food gets delivered for free to the Outpost locker by noon. Then employees can come by and pick up the food with their name on it at their convenience.
La Veracruzana Mexican Restaurant
Fresh Vegetable/Fruit Pick-up or Delivery
La Veracruzana in Massachusetts is offering fresh vegetable and fruit boxes for delivery or pick-up. Each week they post a link on Facebook to an online form that contains their latest fresh items and you can reserve yours so it’s ready for pick-up on the day.
Click on the photo above to see a screenshot of the full form.
Batavia Church
Livestream Church Services
Recently I’ve done a lot of consulting with businesses and churches. We helped Batavia First Presbyterian Church in NY improve their livestream. Churches are having their church services online. See 9 Tips for Church Connection during COVID-19 for lots of ideas for churches.
The Lamb Center
Altered Procedures, Online Giving Options
The Lamb Center, a homeless shelter in Fairfax, VA has altered their procedures to be able to continue to serve the homeless population. By allowing no more than five guests at a time to come in for 30 minutes to grab a meal and a snack, take a shower and drop off or pick up laundry. Their robust online giving platform allows them to continue receiving donations online via credit card or ACH payments, one time or recurring.
Non-profits are working to increase online giving options, see 9 Things You Can Do to Increase Online Giving.
A special thanks to Carey Baker, Joli Taryla, Robert Simmons, my Friday mastermind group, local businesses and our clients who provided inspiration for this article.
We focus on beautiful web design that delivers results for your organization. Our specialty is creating customized WordPress websites.
About Us
Johnny Flash Productions
Johnny Flash Productions is a creative agency based outside of Washington D.C. that focuses on digital strategy, web design and development, graphic design and event production that helps businesses get better results from their marketing.
John has been managing my website SEO and Google Ads for only a few months now and his services have already generated profitable leads. I can’t say enough about his company’s professionalism, promptness and results oriented approach. Hiring his company has been an excellent business decision!!
The experience of building home remodeling company’s website was nothing short of excellent! John and his team are extremely professional, responsive, and efficient at what they do. Their process is clear and they stick to it every step of the way. The weekly production meetings were very helpful and kept the project moving forward at record speed!
My favorite part about working with Johny Flash Productions is that John and his team truly care about their work and they were unwilling to settle on anything less than perfect. We have already had a significant influx of home remodeling leads and they are far more qualified! We highly recommend Johny Flash Productions!
Johnny Flash Productions is a company that truly cares about their clients, this is obvious by not only their work ethic but they also the way they put their heart into every project they complete.
Johnny Flash Productions was a pleasure to work with, we look forward to working with them again in the future.
I was looking for a web designer who was not only talented, but could deliver - and keep delivering what I needed month after month. The team at Johnny Flash Productions brought ideas to the table that complemented what I wanted to do with my website and their design exceeded my expectations.
I was willing to pay more for their continuing monthly service than I had paid previously because they laid out what I could expect from their team. So far, they have under promised and over delivered.
We were so grateful to have found Johnny Flash Productions to help us with our marketing needs. Their work was above and beyond what we expected. The staff are very competent and great to work with. Excellent results!
Johnny Flash Productions, is an Internet Marketing Industry Expert. I've had the pleasure of interacting with him in a Marketing Mastermind group, and as an industry person, I can say with confidence that John knows his stuff. He's an Expert's expert. His processes are solid, and he knows how to solve problems, and drive leads to your business. He's the real deal.
In a matter of weeks, the Johnny Flash team was able to help Care With Love immensely with ideas as well as practical implementations regarding our website and marketing plans. Their team is professional, responsive, and exemplify great customer service. Well done Johnny Flash Team!
Exceeded all expectations in their abilities to professionally evaluate and customize our company WordPress website. Above all else, their customer service is the best I've dealt with in a long time with any company I've worked with in the past. I definitely recommend Johnny Flash Productions to anyone looking for exceptional service, professional detail and customer support.
I would like to thank Johnny Flash Productions for there great service my company has been able to get to get to the top of Google searches in half the time most companies take. I am now receiving 3 to 5 viable leads a day that all lead to service work for my company. And I can not thank them enough for all of there support with my site and maintaining it for me.
We've worked with John and his team for several years on multiple projects. They deliver great work on time, on budget and with solid ongoing support. We highly recommend Johnny Flash Productions!
Their knowledge of SEO and integration of social media channels improved our church's online impact.
Our organization couldn't be happier with the beautiful website Johnny Flash Productions created for us. They helped streamline thousands of components from our previous site into a site that portrays the mission of our organization and tells the story of our purpose while bringing in and engaging new and returning visitors.
We wouldn't hesitate to use them again and have already recommended them to several people who have seen the quality of our new site.
We have also seen a remarkable uptick in response in those who have gone to the site just in the first few weeks since launch in signing up for future communications. That is the sort of prolonged engagement we have been looking for, and Johnny Flash Productions delivered beyond our hopes.
I cannot begin to speak highly enough of Johnny Flash Productions. I was first alerted to their company by doing a Google search & found only one company around with so many 5-star reviews, so was curious if they could all be real. I found through working with John & Eowyn & the Johnny Flash team that we were able to collaborate to create the perfect website for our organization.
As a team of designers, it was important for us to differentiate ourselves & express the nature of our organization & ourselves through this most valuable medium of the modern age. The team @ Jonny Flash absolutely nailed it & we could not be more pleased.
Thank you Johnny for facilitating such an first class experience & thank you Eowyn for being our guiding light & all of the hard work that you put into helping our company shine!
John has been managing my website SEO and Google Ads for only a few months now and his services have already generated profitable leads. I can’t say enough about his company’s professionalism, promptness and results oriented approach. Hiring his company has been an excellent business decision!!
We are truly grateful for our time working with John and his team. They were able to manage a full redesign within a relatively tight timeline and delivered an impressive site that also worked well through mobile devices as well.
They kept us on schedule as well and were a pleasure to work with. The team continues to be incredibly responsive following the initial launch.
The experience of building home remodeling company’s website was nothing short of excellent! John and his team are extremely professional, responsive, and efficient at what they do. Their process is clear and they stick to it every step of the way. The weekly production meetings were very helpful and kept the project moving forward at record speed!
My favorite part about working with Johny Flash Productions is that John and his team truly care about their work and they were unwilling to settle on anything less than perfect. We have already had a significant influx of home remodeling leads and they are far more qualified! We highly recommend Johny Flash Productions!
Johnny Flash redesigned both our church website and our preschool website to align with our new branding, helped us switch web hosts and met some tight timelines as well. John and his team are always professional, have fresh ideas and are quick to respond to questions.
They also worked us to revamp both websites within our set budget while still providing a quality web design and custom look. If I could give them ten stars, I would!
Efficient, effective and professional - Johnny Flash Productions did an awesome job of rebranding and migrating our WordPress website. We launched last week and there is positive feedback all around for the sleek, new, mobile friendly look.
I must admit that I was not crazy about revamping our website, primarily due to the time commitment and cost. However, in looking through the updated content this morning, the new website looks terrific and was well worth the time and expense.
Thanks to you and your team for all of your hard work.
Johnny Flash Productions gets results building stand-out websites that are optimized for success! Their team of professionals worked quickly to get to know my business and developed a plan of action. Their designers developed an amazing design that exceeded our expectations. If your organization or business is looking to build or improve your presence online.
I highly recommend Johnny Flash Productions!
We chose Johnny Flash Productions because I knew the person, John Falke. Relationships are important. Knowing character is important and relevant to business decisions. Knowing whether a person/business will stick by their word is important along with can they perform.
A company that can perform is good, but if they do not stick by their word, skill means nothing. You produced a great product, worked with us, gave a fair price and kept us on task.
John and his team at Johnny Flash Productions did an amazing job on our new company website! John was very patient and professional throughout the entire process and always responsive to any request we had.
I would definitely recommend their services to anyone looking to create a website!
I recommend Johnny Flash Productions because they respond promptly and with honesty when requesting their services, they are very professional and I am a satisfied client!
They fulfilled my expectations with the website and branding project. It has already been a success and helped us reach our goals for our business. Thanks Johnny Flash Productions.
We regularly get rave reviews about our website. Often other non-profits have asked us for a referral. Johnny Flash was easy to work with and has always been responsive to our needs. They provided several built in tools that help keep our website from becoming stale.
Johnny Flash Productions has played an integral role in the growth of our business. From logo redesigns, website design and management, fliers, banners, signs and more, they have done an incredible job of taking our ideas and WOWing us with his visual designs.
John's knowledge base allows them to understand our ideas and concepts and bring it all together in a professional, well thought out deliverable. Their work has always exceeded our expectations in both quality and speed.
We look forward to continuing our long business relationship as he continues to stay on top and ahead of visual marketing trends without losing it’s classic appeal.
Johnny Flash Productions is a company that truly cares about their clients, this is obvious by not only their work ethic but they also the way they put their heart into every project they complete.
Johnny Flash Productions was a pleasure to work with, we look forward to working with them again in the future.
When we all get a little too busy, sometimes we forget to say a heartfelt "Thank You"! I am so grateful that God led us to partner with you. I know good things will come from our hard work done together in His name. The website is terrific. Pure and simple.
Thanks for your expertise, guidance and always friendly attitude.
I was looking for a web designer who was not only talented, but could deliver - and keep delivering what I needed month after month. The team at Johnny Flash Productions brought ideas to the table that complemented what I wanted to do with my website and their design exceeded my expectations.
I was willing to pay more for their continuing monthly service than I had paid previously because they laid out what I could expect from their team. So far, they have under promised and over delivered.
Johnny Flash Productions helped breathe new life into Immanuel’s online presence with their wonderful redesign of our website. Aside from their consummate professionalism, flexibility and keen attention to detail, they were an absolute pleasure to work with.
It had to be a daunting task to be presented with the enormous number of expectations , hopes and ideas generated from our church’s website committee throughout the course of the website re-design, but if anything, Johnny Flash's resulting work exceeded all expectations.
I’m sure I can speak for all of us on the committee when saying that we’d heartily recommend Johnny Flash to any church or organization in need of a skilled, knowledgeable, easy-to-work with design company.
We were so grateful to have found Johnny Flash Productions to help us with our marketing needs. Their work was above and beyond what we expected. The staff are very competent and great to work with. Excellent results!
Exceeded all expectations in their abilities to professionally evaluate and customize our company WordPress website. Above all else, their customer service is the best I've dealt with in a long time with any company I've worked with in the past. I definitely recommend Johnny Flash Productions to anyone looking for exceptional service, professional detail and customer support.
John, Joli and Team provided the path forward for us on how to take our desire to have a brand new website to getting it launched and live. We started at a high level of who we were and what we wanted to accomplish with our website.
John provided an up front schedule of what tasks would be completed by when from their team.
There were tweaks along the way that we would make and feedback given, and it was always well received with the changes being made in a timely manner. Thanks John and Joli.
We used Johnny Flash Productions to help us recreate our website and to make it more visually appealing and more current. Working with them was very pleasant and easy. They really listened to what we were looking for and worked within that framework.
I would highly recommend them. I am happy to provide a reference or answer any questions that you may have.
Professional, knowledgeable, friendly! Everything you could ask for in a website development firm/SEO company. Johnny Flash Productions is the best website development firm and SEO firm in Northern Virginia!
I would like to thank Johnny Flash Productions for there great service my company has been able to get to get to the top of Google searches in half the time most companies take. I am now receiving 3 to 5 viable leads a day that all lead to service work for my company. And I can not thank them enough for all of there support with my site and maintaining it for me.
We found Johnny Flash Productions to be professional and a pleasure to work with. Their industry knowledge and creative approaches were incredibly helpful.
Our new website exceeds our expectations and we look forward to continuing our relationship with Johnny Flash Productions with their responsive and ongoing website upkeep, maintenance and SEO.
John and his team do top quality design work, website work, and just about anything you would need to have a dynamic presentation in both print and digital media. Incredibly talented and innovative, you can call him with a "thought" that comes back to you better than you ever imagined. Truly professional and talented, I could not recommend more highly.
John and his team are great to work with. We have worked with them on a broad range of projects including logo development, campaign materials and website design. They are a great partner!
Johnny Flash and team approached the project with as much passion as we had (we're a very passionate team) for the site and logo refresh. We worked through the logo and website designs and within a couple of weeks, it felt as if we were all one company.
The team was super responsive, understood our vision for the logo/website and communicated clearly every step of the way.
They did excellent design work, were professional and responsive. They were an absolute pleasure to work with, and I plan on using them for future projects.
We've worked with John and his team for several years on multiple projects. They deliver great work on time, on budget and with solid ongoing support. We highly recommend Johnny Flash Productions!
John Falke and Johnny Flash were incredible to work with and produced a very professional and progressive website for Covenant Park Consulting and were completely responsive to our vision and goals.
This process was so much easier than I expected. John listened carefully to what I was expecting to accomplish with our website and kept me focused on our objectives.
We are now able to register preschool students online (especially important during COVID). Parents are very happy that now they have the option to pay by credit card. I would highly recommend this company!
Such an amazing service. A beautiful website that has already gotten the practice new business. John kept us on track so that our website was up and running in the time allotted. Thanks so much. Highly recommend.
Johnny Flash Productions and their team were aces to work with. Their process was simple, and project schedule was on target.
More importantly, their Storybrand mindset opened us up to a whole new world for our website presence, business development and even our own client communication.
Johnny Flash did a great job on our new Wellesley Hills Congregational Church website. Delivered on time and on budget. They helped us shape good content as well.
We were so satisfied we had them redo our Wellesley Nursery School in the Hills website also.
I have worked with Johnny Flash Productions on 3 of my own websites and recommended Johnny Flash productions to two other family members who were also in need of new websites. We have all had an exceptional experience during the process.
The staff are very responsive, organized, on time and they follow through until the work is complete. We valued them so much that we use them for our monthly maintenance and they help with our advertising online.
Working with John and his team has been such a wonderful experience! They consistently go above and beyond to quickly complete our requests, and it's great working with a team of true experts.
I highly recommend them for anyone looking for WordPress developers.
The Johnny Flash team is incredibly skilled, attentive and patient. We are very happy with our new WordPress website!
Excellent WordPress Web Designer, we are so lucky to have them design our website we were very satisfied with the results!
It has been such a pleasure working with John and Nicole to develop our WordPress website. The team is very professional and worked closely with us during the entire process. We couldn't be happier with the result, we love our new website.
I definitely recommend Johnny Flash Productions!
Was a pleasure to work with Johnny Flash Productions to walk through the full life cycle of a complete redesign of several of our ministries websites. Working with people who are experts caused us to think outside the box in how we really tell our story through our website.
The entire team was great to work with and the value has been incredible! God is good!
We have a fabulous website thanks to their excellent process.
We have been very pleased with our website design experience with Johnny Flash. We appreciated how their structured process enabled our website team to prioritize our goals for the project and develop a final product customized to meet our individual needs.
We had a great experience working with Joli and the team at Johnny Flash. Their whole process was very helpful to shaping and sharing our website message.
Johnny Flash Productions was a joy to work with! They helped our church completely re-do our website. They also helped us refresh our look and logo. We have had many people comment on how much they love our new website and how much easier it is to navigate.
