GREEN BAY, Wis. — There was brisk business at Voyageurs Bakehouse in Green Bay.
It was a little before 11 a.m. and Ben Cadman was handling the front counter, helping customers and ringing up sales.
He opened the bakery with his wife, Celeste Parins, on March 10, 2020.
About a week later, the state and world were shutting down as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.
“We call it our closing party now, instead of an opening party,” he said. “The first week prior to the closing and the stay-at-home order, it was pandemonium in here. We were so busy, and we had no clue how to run a bakery or a food business. In hindsight, looking back on it now, it was almost helpful for us for our front door to be closed a few weeks.”
Voyageurs launched in 2018, producing and delivering breads to customers and restaurants.
The business fell back on what it knew to survive the months of COVID and safer-at-home orders.
“Previous to moving into this space, we were already doing home delivery for bread, so we could continue doing that while we had to shut the doors. We could still get bread out the backdoors,” Cadman said. “Bakeries were an essential business, so it didn’t really affect us in a terrible way that we had to stop production. We actually did pretty well in those months.”
A 2022 report from the Federal Reserve said it’s hard to say just how many businesses closed during the pandemic. It said about 1.2 million jobs were lost for good early in the pandemic.
It also points out there was a surge in new business applications in the second half of 2020.
Tony Wiltgen and his wife, Nicole, bought White Dog Local Eatery in Green Bay in Jan. 2020.
By March, revenue went to almost zero.
“We still tried to be open for curbside, but that can only support so much salary. That was very difficult,” he said. “We had some success on Friday nights with fish fry, but then there’s the concern that food quality goes down because it’s in a styrofoam container in a car.”
A combination of government loans and grants not only helped the business survive — it helped it thrive.
Wiltgen said that money was used for staff retention and expansion and the creation of additional outside space.
“I think we did a very good job of using the programs that were available to us in order to sustain and actually grow our business,” he said. “Now we’re positioned very well to handle — as the recovery continues to creep up on us — more and more people as they show up and we’re able to delight them with our space here.”
As the pandemic waned, Voyageurs opened a second location in Appleton in 2021.
Cadman said it was largely basics that got the business through a unique time in history.
“Perseverance and persistence,” he said. “I don’t think those things change if there’s a pandemic, for example, those are just elements of what you need to have in a small business or any business. In times like that, you kind of tap into that energy a little bit more and figure out, ‘right, how can we make the best of the situation we’ve been dealt?’”