The Wall Street Journal - 16.03.2020

A10B| Monday, March 16, 2020 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

so abundant. We’re fighting

each other for the next fare.”

Bhairavi Desai, executive di-

rector of the New York Taxi

Workers Alliance, said she is

“I think one of the big

things to be concerned about

in this crisis and a balance

that we have to strike is keep-

ing small businesses alive, so

we don’t lose them,” he said in

a radio interview on WNYC.

“Keeping people employed so

they have money for the rent,

for food, for medicine, every-

thing people still need.”

Taxi driver Augustine Tang

said he drove around New

York City for eight hours

Thursday and took home

about $120 compared with his

usual $200 or $250.

“I don’t see as many people

willing to street hail,” he said.

“It’s hard when competition is

supplies like alcohol. But Mr.

Ginsberg also said he is

swamped filling prescription

orders during the coronavirus

outbreak, leaving him little

time to think about much else.

Still, Ms. Yoffe isn’t entirely

alone. On Etsy, a global e-com-

merce platform, several sellers

are offering their versions of

sanitizer. And in Warwick, R.I.,

JB Pharmacy & Compounding,

a local independent pharma-

cist, started making sanitizer

when it ran out of the com-

mercial product.

“My door hasn’t stopped

opening,” Paul Capuano, a

pharmacist and partner with

the business, said of the re-

sponse.

Mr. Capuano added that he,

too, is facing shortages of al-

cohol and aloe vera, so he is

coming up with a reformulated

version of the sanitizer with-

out those ingredients. He is

also running out of plastic

bottles, so he may put the san-

itizer in a tube.

New York City’s lowest-paid
workers already are feeling
the squeeze as concerns about
coronavirus exposure keep
customers away from restau-
rants, taxis and other busi-
nesses.
Araceli Torres, a manicurist
who earns $12 an hour at a
nail salon in the Bronx, said
business is so slow that the
owner is closing a couple of
hours early each day and cut-
ting workers’ hours. Ms. Tor-
res has been taking home $
to $15 a day in tips, compared
with $40 before the pandemic.
Ms. Torres, 33 years old
and a single mother, said she
is stressed about paying rent
and other expenses. She is
also worried about catching
the virus on the public bus.
“My children depend exclu-
sively on me,” she said
through an interpreter. “If I
were to get sick, I wouldn’t
know what to do.”
New York elected officials
and public-health authorities
have urged residents to avoid
crowded areas and work from
home if possible, but low-wage
workers often are employed in
the service industry and don’t
have that option.
Many hourly and freelance
workers don’t get paid when
they don’t work, but busi-
nesses have been reducing
hours or closing as customers
opt to stay home.
New York City is offering
interest-free loans and cash
grants to small businesses
hurt by the slowdown in an at-
tempt to keep them afloat.
On Friday, Mayor Bill de
Blasio said the city can some-
times provide financial assis-
tance to low-income residents
who are struggling to pay
rent. He recommended that
people call the city’s nonemer-
gency hotline at 311 if they are
threatened with eviction.

BYKATEKING

made by machine so the consis-

tency is much better,” she said.

Ms. Yoffe’s stores are in the

minority when it comes to go-

ing into the hand-sanitizer

business. Several independent

pharmacies throughout the

city said they aren’t making

the product. CVS, a major

pharmacy chain with stores

throughout the city, said it has

no plans to produce sanitizer.

One reason for not going

into production, said Alec

Ginsberg, part of the family

that owns C.O. Bigelow, a

Greenwich Village pharmacy

established in 1838, is the dif-

ficulty right now in securing

The problem is that

basic ingredients

are now getting

harder to find.

MIKE LAWRIE/GETTY IMAGES

As many people opt to stay

home, taxi drivers say they are

having trouble finding fares.

Workers disinfected seats last

week at Barclays Center in

Brooklyn, right. With sporting

events and many other

gatherings canceled, many low-

wage workers say they are

concerned about how they will

pay rent and meet other bills.

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GREATER NEW YORK

ing through what feels like a

ghost town. They are really

worried about paying for their

groceries—and that’s not an

exaggeration.”

Julie Garrison, president of

staffing firm Tapuz Inc., said

hospitality jobs are in scarce

supply for the servers, bar-

tenders, cooks and customer-

service workers her company

supplies to clients. Hundreds

of events have been canceled,

including trade shows, con-

certs, corporate events, bar

mitzvahs and catering gigs,

and organizers are unable to

reschedule because no one

knows exactly how long the

pandemic will last.

“It’s really a standstill at

this point,” she said.

The only work that hasn’t

dried up is from a small num-

ber of affluent clients who are

booking cooks and servers to

come to their residences.

“I assume it’s because these

people don’t want to leave

their homes,” Ms. Garrison

said.

Radka Horackova, a Queens

resident who books bartending

jobs through Tapuz, said an

event she was supposed to

work this weekend was can-

celed. As of Friday, she was

still scheduled to work two

other jobs this weekend, one

for a catering company in Wil-

liamsburg, Brooklyn, and the

other as a sous chef at Sur La

Table, where she has noticed

lower attendance recently at

cooking classes. Her Monday

shift at Sur La Table was can-

celed, however, leaving Ms.

Horackova out about $100.

Ms. Horackova, 36, said she

is worried about contracting

coronavirus and would like to

stay home. But she needs to

work so she can pay a doctor’s

bill that has been sitting on

her desk for a while, as well as

next semester’s tuition at Bar-

uch College, where she is

studying journalism.

“It would be better for us to

not go to work for two weeks,

but can we afford it? That’s

another question,” she said.

“The nature of our business is

if you don’t go to work, you

don’t get paid.”

coronavirus.

“They are on the front lines

of the economic collapse as

well as at-risk from the virus,”

Ms. Desai said. “They’re driv-

doubly concerned because

many yellow-cab drivers are in

their 60s. Public-health offi-

cials have said older people

are more susceptible to the

As residents of the New

York metropolitan area search

high and low for commercial

hand sanitizer during the cor-

onavirus pandemic, at least a

couple of Manhattan pharma-

cies are offering an alterna-

tive: They are making and sell-

ing their own version.

Tisane Pharmacy & Café, lo-

cated on the Upper East Side,

and City Drug & Surgical, in

the Washington Heights neigh-

borhood, started production of

the sanitizer a few days ago as

supplies of commercially made

products dwindled. Both

stores are owned in part by

Yelena Yoffe, a veteran phar-

macist.

“It’s pretty easy to make,”

said Ms. Yoffe, who estimates

she has sold hundreds of bot-

tles since she started produc-

tion at the stores.

The product is priced at

$4.99 for a 2-ounce bottle,

which is far less than what

some retailers in the city have

been charging for commercial

versions in recent days. New

York state Attorney General Le-

titia James has warned about

price gouging on sanitizer and

other in-demand products dur-

ing the coronavirus situation.

Ms. Yoffe said she is mak-

ing a profit of less than $2 a

bottle, which doesn’t factor in

the time and effort it takes to

produce the sanitizer. She said

she wasn’t driven by the fi-

nancial opportunity, but rather

a desire to help her customers

during a difficult time.

Consumers can, of course,

opt to make their own sani-

tizer at home using the most

basic ingredients, such as al-

cohol and aloe vera.

The problem is that those

ingredients are now getting

hard to find. Even Ms. Yoffe

isn’t sure how long she can

maintain production given the

shortages.

While Ms. Yoffe has been

glad to offer her customers

store-made sanitizer, she ad-

mitted it doesn’t quite mea-

sure up to, say, the ever-popu-

lar Purell brand.

“The commercial version is

BYCHARLESPASSY

Cleared Out of Hand Sanitizer,

Some Stores Make Their Own

Bottles of hand sanitizer made by Tisane Pharmacy & Café on

Manhattan’s Upper East Side. A 2-ounce bottle is priced at $4.99.

JAMES SPRANKLE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Workers Struggle as City Shuts Down

Low-wage employees

lose income; some

want to stay home

but can’t afford it

CORINE SCIBOZ/ZUMA PRESS

NY