B6| Saturday/Sunday, March 21 - 22, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
EXCHANGE
The Staff
The Lyonses called their own em-
ployees to the restaurant on Mon-
day, normally a day off, to tell all but
two to file for unemployment so
they were guaranteed some income.
“The thought of coming into
work and not seeing them is so
hard,” said Ms. Lyons, who cried
as she made the announcement. “I
told them, if they can find some-
thing, take it. If they come back,
we will be so happy. If they don’t,
we understand.”
The couple, who have a 5-year-old
daughter, reduced their pay by 45%
for this pay period, leaving enough
money to cover their mortgage.
They plan to put bills they can’t
defer “on credit cards and deal
with the interest hit,” said Ms. Ly-
ons. The couple recently received
another medical bill for their
daughter’s tonsillectomy this fall;
Ms. Lyons says if they can’t defer
payment, she is willing to let it go
into collections.
Tiffany Herron, among those
laid off, was working as a server
earning about $500 a week to sup-
plement her income as a real-es-
tate agent. Now, home sellers
don’t want anyone to visit and
buyers aren’t looking.
“Everything has stopped,” said
Ms. Herron, 37. “I have nothing
coming in.” She applied for unem-
ployment insurance on Tuesday.
Ashten McBride, 23, the sole re-
maining server, receives a base pay
of $2.13 an hour, in addition to
tips. “I make just enough to get
by,” said Ms. McBride. “When
something like this happens, it’s
very frightening.”
Ms. McBride lives in a ranch
house with her aunt, uncle and
seven other relatives. She’s focusing,
for now, on paying for food and rent.
“Every dollar counts,” she said.
“If there is something I can get
away with not paying, I will take
the late fee.”
Casey Brazell, 21, another laid-
off employee, currently lives with
her fiancé and two roommates,
one of whom, Christian Farrar, isthe last remaining cook at Table- If Mr. Farrar loses his job, that
leaves just two people with in-
comes to put toward the $1,400-a-
month mortgage payment.
“I need mortgage relief,” said Ms.
Brazell, who cut back her phone
plan and is putting off plans to buy
a nicer home.
The Suppliers
Table 20, which had won local
awards for Mr. Lyons’s inventive
dishes, has cut back its menu.
Gone are the chorizo garlic burger
and pork-belly gnocchi that ap-
pealed to the local professionals
and members of the business com-
munity. The Lyonses tried briefly
to add a breakfast service before
closing the dining room. Now, the
bistro is selling dinners that can
feed a family of four for about
$45, such as meatloaf and mash or
shrimp and grits.
The new, slimmed-down menu
means less revenue for Mama J’s
Produce, a small hydroponic and
field-grown vegetable farm in
Cartersville. John Jerauld, who
has run the farm with his mother
for a decade, typically makes de-
liveries to 20 restaurants once or
twice a week.
This week, he had no deliveries
on Tuesday and just one on Thurs-
day. “Everyone else is really shut
down or doing takeout,” said Mr.
Jerauld, noting that the greens he
sells in March are easy to pull
from the menu.
Mama J’s had a busy Saturday
at a local farmers market last
weekend as residents scooped up
bags of lettuce, arugula and baby
turnips. But the outdoor weekend
market is now closed for at least
two weeks.
Mr. Jerauld plans, in the next
few days, to unveil a new website
that will allow for online ordering.
Liquor sales, the most profit-
able part of the restaurant busi-
ness and 15% of Table 20’s reve-
nue, are another casualty. The
Lyonses halted liquor purchases al-
together this week.Beyond Georgia
Total U.S. restaurant sales were
projected to reach nearly $900
billion this year before the mag-
nitude of the crisis became clear,
according to data from the
National Restaurant Association.
Early economic forecasts suggest
the industry’s losses could
total at least $225 billion, the
group said.
To save about $500 a month,
Table 20 has paused its contract
with online-reservation service
OpenTable Inc. In response to the
coronavirus, OpenTable is waiving
gift-card listing fees for all partici-
pating restaurants and subscrip-
tion fees for restaurants that tem-
porarily close.
Business is also down at Mi-
Camp Solutions, a Scottsdale,
Ariz., provider of credit-card pro-
cessing services and software that
works with Table 20 and roughly
16,000 other merchants. Table 20
typically spent about $2,000 a
month on processing fees.
“A lot of our bars and restau-
rants are down more than 50%; a
lot of that is because they are not
able to serve alcohol,” and people
aren’t able to dine in, said Micah
Kinsler, chief executive of the 60-
person company.
MiCamp has temporarily sus-
pended minimum monthly fees of
$35 or more for the roughly 3,500
restaurants, bars, casinos and ho-
tels that have told MiCamp they
have temporarily closed.
MiCamp has stopped hiring and
put a hold on several planned ac-
quisitions.
On Wednesday, Mr. Farrar, Table
20’s cook, was checking out De-
pression-era recipes when he came
across Water Pie, a custard made
of flour, water, sugar and a little
butter. Because the restaurant was
out of vanilla extract, he substi-
tuted vanilla whiskey.
The staff of the restaurant ate
the pie, but Table 20 is likely to
add the dish to the menu, said Ms.
Lyons, who hopes it will draw at-
tention on social media.ersville’s historic downtown in
2016, they spent about $225,000
to turn what had been a Quiznos
sandwich shop into an upscale
restaurant. The couple built tables
in their garage, with the help of
Ms. Lyons’s father and wood from
his old tobacco barn. Chris, 35
years old, is the chef. Allie, 26, is
the manager.
Before the pandemic, the 70-
seat restaurant pulled in about
$17,500 in revenue in a typical
week, sometimes more, serving
lunch, dinner and craft cocktails,
such as a Limoncello Basil Martini
with organic vodka and locally
grown basil.
On a typical weekend, there was
an hour to hour-and-a-half wait
for a table. The restaurant was
turning a profit, not including de-
preciation, before the virus hit.
On Tuesday, as calls for self-iso-
lation grew, just eight people were
seated. The following day, the cou-
ple closed the dining room. Now,
they are trying to survive by sell-
ing family-style takeout meals.
“Our industry is collapsing,”
said Ms. Lyons. “We are trying to
find the sweet spot.”
The Lyonses have reached out to
their landlord, a retiree who has
moved out of town, about their
$2,500 a month rent payment. Ms.
Lyons isn’t optimistic, noting that
their relationship with the landlord,
who didn’t respond to requests for
comment, had already deteriorated
because of a dispute over repairs.
As of noon Friday, there were 40
confirmed coronavirus cases in Bar-
tow County, where the restaurant is
located, according to the Georgia
Department of Public Health.
The Lenders
As the economic impact of the pan-
demic became more apparent last
week, Table 20’s lenders, a local
bank and credit union, both began
looking through their portfolios to
identify the borrowers most at risk.
Cartersville-based Century Bank
of Georgia, which has $210 million
in assets, is modifying the couple’s
$113,000 Small Business Adminis-
tration loan to allow for interest-
only payments, a move that should
cut monthly loan payments to
about $500 from roughly $1,800.
Jay Slaughter, vice president of
commercial lending, says he is
reaching out to the 25 hotels and
restaurants that have loans with
the community bank. It has a total
loan portfolio of $116 million. Most
borrowers are small businesses
with revenue well below $5 mil-
lion; Table 20’s loan is one of 31
made through the SBA.
During its regular Tuesday
meeting, the bank’s seven-member
board reviewed the bank’s loan
portfolio and its loan-loss re-
serves. As of Friday, the bank was
keeping its three branches open to
foot traffic. The bank said it would
continue to pay its 35-person staff
their full wages even if it decides
to reduce hours or limit access.
The bank is helping customers af-
fected by the pandemic by defer-
ring principal payments and waiv-
ing late fees and charges for
insufficient funds.
“We are taking steps proactively
so that we don’t allow a temporary
problem for our clients to turn
into a permanent one,” said Cen-
tury Bank’s Chief Executive Rich-
ard Drews. “There are going to be
ripple effects across the board.”
Century Bank is well positioned
to assist its customers, with
roughly $50 million in cash, short-
term investments and other liquid-
ity, said Mr. Drews. “If this thing
were to go on for two years, the
answer might be different.” The
Federal Reserve’s decision to lower
interest rates near zero will
squeeze the small bank’s profits
since its assets reprice at lower
rates but deposit rates have little
room to fall, he said.
Coosa Valley Credit Union, which
holds a $15,600 loan on a food truck
the Lyonses purchased last year,
called the restaurant last week. It
offered to defer the $314 loan pay-
ment for a month, maybe more.
Saunders Jones, the credit union’s
chief lending officer, said it is work-
ing on a hardship-assistance plan
that will be presented to board
members next week. It includes the
ability to offer a 50% reduction in
loan payments for up to six months
in addition to standard options, such
as payment deferral. The credit
union has $355 million in assets,
nearly 44,000 members, 103 em-
ployees and 257 business loans to-
taling nearly $26 million.
“We are having team huddles
and conference calls multiple
times a day,” said Mr. Jones, who
said he is receiving more than a
dozen calls and text messages a
day from borrowers hit hard by
the pandemic and is also reaching
out himself to borrowers.
Continued from page B1
Virus Ripples
Hit Small
Businesses
Century Bank is deferring principal payments to
help, says CEO Richard Drews, above. John Jerauld
at Mama J’s, the farm that provides produce to
Table 20, now has almost no deliveries.Chris and Allie
Lyons, far left,
are now only
doing takeout
orders at their
restaurant, Table
20, in the historic
downtown of
Cartersville, Ga.,
above. The
restaurant has
canceled many
orders, including
from its linen
supplier, Jackson
Mat & Towel
Service, at left.DUSTIN CHAMBERS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL(5)Krista Duncan, a wine and spirits
specialist with Eagle Rock Distribut-
ing Co., is one of eight sales repre-
sentatives who work with Table 20.
Business is strong at groceries and
package stores, but bars and restau-
rants are “bleeding out;” most of her
customers have closed their doors
because they can’t afford to keep the
lights on, she said.
“They don’t know what to do,”
said Ms. Duncan, who earns com-
mission but no base salary. “It’s all
doom and gloom.”
Eagle Rock, based in Norcross,
Ga., about 50 miles from Carters-
ville, has shifted Ms. Duncan to
servicing grocery stores, which are
seeing a boom in sales. On Friday,
she visited four of them, rolling in
beer and rearranging displays.With the new responsibilities,
Ms. Duncan said, “I’m not stewing
about this situation we’re in.”
Officials at the beer, wine and
liquor distributor didn’t respond
to requests for comment.
The Lyonses have canceled their
$500-a-month order with Jackson
Mat & Towel Service Inc., a family-
run business that provided the ta-
blecloths and napkins.
The linen-supply company nearly
30 miles away in Calhoun, Ga., has
about 300 customers, mostly restau-
rants. About 25% have put orders on
hold and another 50%, have shifted
to drive-through and cut orders by
50%, said owner Alan Jackson, who
is, in turn, putting off ordering new
mats and towels.
Mr. Jackson said he would do
whatever he can to keep paying
his seven employees. One worker
is pregnant; another takes online
classes at night. “We are treating
them as our kids,” he said.‘Everything has
stopped,’ says a laid-off
Table 20 waitress. ‘I
have nothing coming in.’