It has always been obvious that while our politicians will say positive things about small and entrepreneurial businesses, the big box stores are all they can see. And nothing has culled the field of small business faster than the second wave of the pandemic.
But it was not covid-19 that did the deed. It was government shutting our small business down without compensation that sealed their fate. While we expect a high percentage of start-ups will fail within the year, there seems to be no justification for our politicians to accelerate their demise.
And we are not just thinking restaurants here. Restaurants have been given a chance if they can find profit in pick-up and delivery. People still want good food. Other retailers who can deliver goods and services without traffic through their premises also have an opportunity at survival.
Yet if I ran a clothing store, for example, I would need a strong customer base and a liberal return policy, to survive the erratic lock-downs of this pandemic. Even then, you would have a hard time even making your overhead.
And with the opportunities left for restaurants, they need to make better deals with the various smart-phone apps who can put them in the poor house with their delivery charges. And even then, restauranteurs need to realize that they want to keep the 15 to 25 per cent of their customers who do not have smart phones. Sure, about 80 per cent of the Canadian population are now claimed to be using smart phones. That does not say much for our common sense as many of these users can ill-afford to pay the outrageous rates that Canadian telecoms are charging.
Our politicians are going to lose the advantages they gained by spending so lavishly during the first wave.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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