(Classical Piano music)
- We have a Korean grocery store in Ann Arbor.
We're kind of in an interesting position just because
Corona hit Korea pretty hard.
And when we first heard that it came to America,
my Mom and I were looking for ways to just kinda
close up shop.
And try to keep ourselves safe. Cause,
ya know it's one thing to be in business.
But it's also another to kind of survive.
So it was kind of a drastic measure
but we decided to just close the doors
and not anybody from the outside into our store.
But at least, I could still service the community
and have it be safe.
The entire industry is now in a balloon.
And, yeah almost everyone else is like really
happy until I think this week when some of the
vendors that I talked to today were telling me that
they were slowing down.
And so our ramen prices went up a little bit,
our rice prices went up a little bit, but
we just kept it as it was and it was sold out
um, within two days.
You go to Costco the first thing you do is you grab
whatever the heck they're buying in multiples of.
But, I was shutting down anyone trying to buy two
bags of rice at 40 lbs.
Um, unless they had like a compelling reason.
It's a neighborhood 'ish grocery store and
it's for the community.
I've been told by a number of people that I would
go bankrupt. Because, I try to be more honest than not.
But I feel like if there's a business where you shouldn't
be messing around with anything, it is food.
'cause people need to eat food
and if you start messing with it,
then what kind of monster are you?
As of right now, if I could build an app
that would be the best.
But, it's kind of like killing two birds with one stone
if we were to setup an app.
We're going to need pictures and
figure it would be a good idea
to put pictures together.
So now we have this policy of email us your order.
And in an effort to minimize more personal contact
Venmo and Paypal are our choice.
And we just set it up on the table and
when I go back in, they would come out and get it
keep like at least a two to three meter buffer.
And that's just kind of how it goes.
This pandemic is a huge game changer
and question is, are you willing to sacrifice
what you've known to adjust to this new reality?
And that's really tough and a lot of times
Big boys could handle it a lot better.
But I feel like there's always going to be opportunities.
You get to have the cake and eat it to
Like, I get to protect my family and I get to protect
my customers family to a degree.
One of the reasons why I wanted to do this
was, in hopes that maybe somebody else
could replicate what we're doing.
The fact that we're doing it this way.
Hey, other stores can choose to
especially as a smaller business.
You need to be ready for anything that comes your way
and be flexible enough to change.
And I'm very glad for the fact that we were flexible enough.
A lot of architects are trying to design buildings
like, like skyscrapers, like a bamboo.
And I couldn't fathom that concept
like how could these concrete masses
just be flexible in the wind?
But, if they aren't flexible they would just
snap in half.
I feel like right now is that time where you need
to be flexible and kind of see how you could
manage in the interim, and also have enough manpower
to get back, or take over once the storms gone.
(Melodic Piano music)