Support small business retail through COVID19. But what if we dont?

by Preeti Viswanathan

The onus of supporting small businesses through COVID19 rests with us, individuals. Small businesses don’t have a lobbying voice, heck most don’t know what that means. The quality and ease of your future life, the value of your home and other properties, hinges on access to experiences only these businesses can provide. The joy of a birthday meal with family and friends at a restaurant, or the joy of a beer after a workout with friends is not one that groceries, pharmacies, Amazon/Walmart/Target can replicate. If we don't act now, this Press Release from 2025 will probably turn true. 

March 22, 2025

With the fast demise small retail businesses in America after the 2020 COVID19 pandemic, large Airline companies have successfully entered the restaurant & salon/spa sectors with big wins for the customer. The federal bailout program undertaken to infuse liquidity into the markets based on lessons learnt from the 2008, put money beyond expectations into the pockets of Airline companies. As people learnt their ways to drive virtual hyper productivity through mandated social distancing, total air trips dropped 30% in years to come with no declines in business productivity. Reduced customer trips + federal bailout money + smaller workforces = profits for large multinationals not needing to make investments in the face of a changed demand/supply ecosystem.

Airline A CEO, a big fan of Pho, couldn’t stand the lack of choices in his plush California suburb so decided to make a push for Airline A entering the restaurant business. Airline B CEO, couldn’t stand having to do her hair and nails herself as her favorite salon had now shut down and none others existed within a 10 mile radius.

“Airline A Pho” has brought a level of standardization and reliability to Pho that Pho didn’t know it deserved. The flavor subtleties of individual family recipes, the secret ingredients every unique store prided itself on, the local supply chains that enabled a different kind of freshness, have all now successfully been replaced with centralized, vertically integrated supply chains delivering 0.00001% defect rate, machine manufactured bone broth to be frozen and delivered at more than 300 national locations. Independent business owners & restaurant chefs have been employed in these plants, and while it is painful for them to watch these machines churn out gallons of never-been-touched broth, they are thankful for their paychecks. Pho is now available at a national average $8.75/bowl instead of the $9.45/bowl. Scale has put money into the pockets of customers! Proud business owners and talented artists have a new livelihood.

In a recent study undertaken on Instagram, an AI driven algorithm discovered that 12.5% of American women and 43.2% of American men now look more similar to each other than ever before in history. Airline B Hair Salons have now successfully replaced all independent hair salons. Hairstyles are categorized and defined to ensure a 0.00001% defect rate so there is no fear of litigation, and employees are trained and mandated to follow a technical specification guide which lays out process and outcome KPIs for each style. Any deviation from the guide is considered a performance failure with immediate grounds for termination. Systems to record customer expectations including signed electronic approvals prior to start of hairstyling are installed at all 700 locations. The ‘we are not bots’ FB campaign started by a few was quickly squashed when mohawks for men and longish bobs for women were brought back. It turns out that Americans have begun to feel oneness and cohesion by looking similar. Airline B Hair Salons have given us the uniform and the feeing of cohesion we’ve sought for decades!