Monroe County business owners preparing for ease of Shelter in Place Orders

MONROE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) –  Business owners across the area are doing what they can to keep their doors open as measures are in place to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Although there’s no foot traffic inside The Blue Owl in downtown Aberdeen, owner Shelly Bowen has put anti-bacterial covers on the doorknobs.

The housewares and gifts store reopened this week with curbside only service.

“People have been contacting me through Facebook, or giving me a call, text, people just pull up and I take it out to them and it’s been working great, had a lot of support from that and it’s very much appreciated,” said Bowen.

Bowen opened “The Blue Owl” in October, and had a big Christmas season. But the coronavirus shuttered her store for six weeks and she is glad to be easing back into business.

“We do need to be able to open up, of course, we don’t want to do it too soon. We want to keep everybody as healthy as we can, but for small businesses, it’s been a struggle, and we still have bills to pay and a lot of us haven’t gotten a stimulus yet or any kind of funding. I think the sooner we get opened, the better it will be,” said Bowen.

In Amory, businesses along Main Street have adapted.

“The Coffee Pot’ is open three days a week for curbside service only and business has been steady.

“Since we missed our beloved railroad festival this year I was asked by many of our customers could we do a flair of that someway, so I pulled out as many recipes as I could, for the last three weeks we’ve been doing a different railroad festival special,” said Reeves.

Erin Reeves owns “The Coffee Pot” and across the street, “Amped Nutrition,” which makes healthy shakes and energy teas.

Reeves said the past six weeks have taught her a lot about running businesses during a national crisis.

“We have really boosted our social platform media, that has been a big deal, learning how to market your business. Through marketing our business and changing up our menu a little bit, giving people a different taste of what they wanted and we plan to continue this throughout our business until forever,” said Reeves.

Reeves is making business plans for the future. “The Coffee Pot’ and “Amped Nutrition’ will soon be under one roof, in a vacant building on the other end of Main Street.

Business owners said they look forward to having customers back inside their stores and restaurants when shelter in place orders have eased.