CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (WHDH) - Gov. Charlie Baker said coronavirus numbers will have to keep dropping if some state businesses are going to reopen May 18. And when the process finally gets underway, things will not be business as usual for a while, he assured.
Recently, florists were given the green light to reopen just in time for Mother’s Day, though customers are not allowed inside and business owners must limit the number of employees working at one time.
In Cambridge, Central Square Florist is back in business after six long weeks of being shut down due to the pandemic.
“The phones are ringing… the web orders are flying in. The demand for flowers is absolutely huge, right now,” Manager Jackie Levine said.
Those six weeks were tough on Levine and the business that her family has kept alive for more than 91 years.
“Lots of frustration, sleepless nights, you know, confusion, you know, when you suddenly feel like you’ve lost control of your business,” she explained.
Levine said that under the state’s reopening guidelines, she is only allowed to have three employees in her floral shop, they are only allowed to take phone and online orders and the arrangements must be delivered. No curbside pick up is allowed.
“People can’t really be with their mothers, their grandmothers, their aunts, their sisters right now,” she said. “So it’s even more of a demand to send flowers.”
Levine said she believes that the shut down was necessary but she admits that she became frustrated watching big, national companies based in other states, sell their products online.
“We were like, we think we could do this safely as well if we were given the chance to do so.”
The Mass. Retailer’s Associaton went to bat for thousands of these small retailers and were able to convince Gov. Baker’s Reopening Advisory Board to allow them to reopen before Mother’s Day.
“We were an outlier. They were open in every other state,” Jon Hurst, the president of the association said. “You think about what we buy for mom… it could be flowers, jewelry it could be candy. Don’t we want the dollars, our consumer dollars to stay on Main Street, right here in the Commonwealth?”
With the assistance of the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, Levine said she was able to keep all 20 of her employees on the payroll.
As of right now, the state is due to begin a phased reopening May 18.
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