Businesses see decline during swine flu scare

Businesses see decline during swine flu scare - News

This is my second story that I got published at college's newspaper. Enjoy!

The swine flu outbreak affected not only Newark residents, but also the businesses surrounding the university.

From April 26 to May 2, many restaurants near campus experienced a decline in customers.

Bill Galbraith, general manager of The Stone Balloon Winehouse, said the restaurant experienced some decline, presumably due to swine flu.

"We had a 20 percent decrease in customers during that weekend," Galbraith said.

Iron Hill Brewery closed for the afternoon on April 30 and re-opened May 1 in the afternoon because of the illness, General Manager Christina Matarese said.

Matarese said the decision to close was made between the general managers, regional managers and owners of the restaurant. The restaurant received positive responses regarding closing down from the e-mail sent out to customers of the brewery. As a result of closing, the establishment experienced some loss of profit that week, she said.

"We really wanted to make sure everyone was safe, including the employees and customers," Matarese said.

Unlike Iron Hill Brewery, The Stone Balloon Winehouse stayed open the whole week, Galbraith said. He said the incident seemed more as though the media were looking for news. However, The Stone Balloon Winehouse employees made sure to increase their cleaning procedures such as washing their hands more than usual.

"We didn't really see the point of closing down during that week because none of the employees or anyone they knew was sick at the time," Galbraith said.

Unlike the restaurants on Main Street, gyms near the university, such as Fusion Fitness Center and 1614, profited from the incident.

Fusion Fitness Center owner Nic DeCaire said because the Carpenter Sports Building closed down for the possible swine flu victims, Fusion Fitness Center gained more customers.

"This event gave us more possible customers and gained us new customers who signed up," Decaire said.

At the Fusion Fitness Center, there was a change in the crowd because of the incident, he said. The gym dropped in attendance, but would still make a profit because of the monthly payments for membership at the gym.

"We usually get between 200 to 250 people coming to the gym every day, but about 50 people were absent that week," Decaire said.

Fusion Fitness Center stayed open because its managers knew people would be concerned with their health and their thorough cleaning habits would attract new customers, he said.

He said its employees' main response method to the incident was to increase their cleaning habits.

At 1614, the gym didn't experience any changes, owner Mike Womer said.

He said the week seemed to be a normal week and approximately had 15 to 20 less visits because of the swine flu. On average, the gym has 150 visits per day.

"The first day was actually pretty light, but the next day was like any other regular day for us," Womer said.

Just like Fusion Fitness Center, 1614 gained two new members to the gym, which is average for a week, Womer said. He said employees made sure to be extra clean to ensure to their customers that there could be no possibility that they could catch the swine flu at the gym.

"It was a positive in business sense, but I really can't see it as a positive since I can't wish someone getting sick," Womer said.

All the general managers believed the swine flu epidemic was blown out of proportion.

Even though the general managers didn't agree with the way the media covered the outbreak, they did agree with the university's response to the swine flu epidemic.

"I believe the university did a great job to make sure the virus couldn't spread and took the correct precautionary methods to use in order to face the problem," Matarese said.