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Small Business Spotlight: What NYC’s New Normal Will Look Like this Fall
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The post-pandemic future could be a win-win for workers.
Many businesses are preparing to welcome their employees back to the office after Labor Day, but they’ll be returning to a new normal.
“I think this time there’s going to be much more of an interconnected expansion and that that you’ll have more people that might be working in satellite offices or remotely in the suburbs, have a quality of life that’s more affordable, more open space, but then be able to come to the city when they want to be in the city and interconnect with these companies,” said Scott Rechler, chairman and CEO of RXR Realty, which owns large office buildings in New York City and the suburbs.
On the WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by Dime Community Bank, Rechler told Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso he expects both the city and the suburbs to recover “collectively.” He said most of his business tenants anticipate being back in September, but not at full capacity.
“We need to start reimagining a post-pandemic playbook,” he said.
That playbook includes hybrid schedules and a redesign of the city.
“There’s some office buildings and there’s frankly some retail buildings and hotels that just will not be competitive in a post-COVID world,” said Rechler. “The right thing to do in that instance is to convert them to multi-family.”
The Regional Plan Association Chairman told WCBS 880 adding multi-family apartments in place of empty office buildings could improve New York’s affordability and attract people to work and live in the five boroughs.
New apartment leases in Manhattan are at record levels as tenants gobble up rentals at a discount while preparing to return to offices. The number of new leases increased fourfold in May from the year previous to 9,491, according to Miller Samuel Inc. and Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
“(It) gives me confidence that people believe in the future of New York,” said Rechler, adding, “If they’re here, the big companies that want to attract that talent, that bring that talent in to grow their businesses, are going to be here as well. So, it’s a great leading indicator of what’s to come.”
Rechler, who oversaw the redevelopment of the World Trade Center as the vice chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told Connolly and Carousso hybrid work schedules are here to stay, though, because there is a “quality of life” balance that many people have enjoyed while working from home.
He’s advising businesses, telling them, “Don’t be a prisoner of the past, be a pioneer of the future.”
While productivity was high during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, the developer said businesses are finding productivity is slumping now that the U.S. has largely reopened 15 months after the initial shutdown.
“This is about bringing people back so they can build culture, they can have mentorship, collaboration, a sense of community, and create that corporate value set that makes their team members feel part of something bigger,” Rechler said. “You’re not going to get that if everyone’s in different satellite offices.”
See how developers are planning New York City’s post-pandemic future on the Small Business Spotlight video above.
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WCBS 880 Weekly Rewind: Why the Surging Delta Variant Could Impact the Reopening, A Win for Students’ Free Speech at the Supreme Court, and Deepening Divisions Between NYC Pride Organizers and Police
Produced by Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — As the Delta variant of COVID-19 rapidly spreads to 20 percent of new cases in the U.S., causing severe illnesses, especially among unvaccinated children and adults, there are concerns it will slow the reopening.
Also on The 880 Weekly Rewind, WCBS anchor Lynda Lopez looks at what’s in President Joe Biden’s new infrastructure plan agreed upon with a group of centrist senators and the likelihood it passes on Capitol Hill. Lopez also talked to Bloomberg News Supreme Court reporter Greg Stohr about a key free speech case involving a public high school cheerleader who sued after she was suspended from her junior varsity team for a year for cursing in a social media post when she did not make the varsity squad.
The head of the NYPD’s gay officers union is speaking out, telling WCBS reporter Mack Rosenberg the ban on cops at the NYC Pride March is divisive. Hear from both sides on the Rewind and why they feel very differently about police representation at Sunday’s parade.
Subscribe and download The 880 Weekly Rewind podcast for in-depth reporting and deeper analysis of the top stories of the week, produced by Neil A. Carousso for WCBS-AM New York.
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Westchester Bakery Forced to Pivot Online Discovers Promising New Business Model
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The macroeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are measurably impacting local businesses, their workers and their customers.
Rising commodity prices and the labor shortage are two of Liv Hansen’s biggest challenges at The Bakehouse in Ardsley and Tarrytown. It’s now forcing her to rethink her traditional business model at her family-run bakery.
“Some of the foods we buy are up 8 percent,” Hansen told Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by Dime Community Bank.
The Bakehouse is known for its custom homemade cakes. They also sell a variety of baked goods, sandwiches, soups, and even, pot pies. Hansen and her husband took over the Ardsley location at 660 Saw Mill River Rd., known as The Riviera, from her mother about 10 years ago. The Riviera Bakehouse has been a community staple since 1950.
The bakery business in Ardsley had been thriving before the pandemic, attracting customers from Westchester, Rockland and the surrounding areas. In March 2020, Hansen opened a new location inside the former Metro-North station building only to shut down when the coronavirus emerged the same month. They anticipate sales of breakfast goods and treats will spike when more Manhattan commuters pass through.
“We’re hoping as the city opens up that the commuters are up in full force,” Hansen said.
But, The Bakehouse is struggling to find enough skilled workers to make the volume of homemade custom cakes they churned out pre-pandemic. Currently, they employ four full-time workers and three part-time workers. They had been down to two workers at the height of the pandemic.
As a result, Hansen is expanding her website with “semi-custom” homemade cakes to order for occasions from graduations to weddings to birthdays.
“We hope that in the future, that will become our main source of orders,” she said. “It is much more efficient for us because we see what’s coming in really quickly rather than having people place the orders via phone and have a hand-written order.”
Even traditional businesses like bakeries have been disrupted by the pandemic. It’s become essential for The Bakehouse to streamline operations and make more cookie-cutter products with a selection of custom features to grow profit margins.
Hansen has also found cost savings in ingredients. When matzo meal became unavailable, The Bakehouse took one of their popular chocolate cakes of the shelves and developed a cake-like brownie special from a current recipe.
“Really, it’s cake, but it’s a very moist cake and we top it with different things,” she explained. “We have an Oreo one, just a plain fudge one, we have one with sprinkles, one with peanut butter butter cream, and we sell them as brownies.”
Since kitchen staff at The Bakehouse make the chocolate cake daily anyway, it saves time, labor and commodity costs, and increases their margins with an additional tasty dessert on the menu.
“It has made a great efficiency for us,” said Hansen.
See ideas to make yourself sustainable in the post-pandemic economy and grow profit margins on the Small Business Spotlight video above.
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Ken Burns Explores Life and Legacy of Muhammad Ali in New Documentary Series
By Steve Scott, WCBS Newsradio 880
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Muhammad Ali is one of the greatest athletes of all time.
His exuberance and brash personality outside of the boxing ring sparked controversy and conversation unlike any other Black athlete of his generation.
Ali captivated people from all over the world and inspired athletes with his activism during the Civil Rights movement and his refusal to serve in the Vietnam War, which resulted in a draft evasion conviction and a suspension of his boxing license.
Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns – who has told the stories of the first African American heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier – will now explore Ali’s life in a new four-part documentary series that has been in development for six years.
“We focus on a lot of the fights, but also his faith, his conversion to Islam, his joining of a sect called the Nation of Islam, his fight with the United States government, his personal life, the many wives he had, the children, they’re all represented here,” Burns tells WCBS 880 anchor Steve Scott. “This is in every regard a hero’s journey. We just are so drawn to him. In all the biographies I’ve done, I don’t think I’ve ever come across a character that was so powerful and moved me so emotionally as Muhammad Ali.”
American boxer Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) training with a speed bag ahead of his fight against Britain’s Brian London, in London, England, 3rd August 1966. Photo credit R McPhedran/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images In addition to the three-time heavyweight champion’s boxing feats, the documentary also explores Ali’s profound impact during the Civil Rights movement.
“Here’s Muhammad Ali kind of cut from a different mold. Brash and confident and different from the fighters that we’d seen before. He was not Sonny Liston in any way, shape or form and so he struts across his stage and begins to animate a new generation of African Americans, some of them impatient with the slow progress of the non-violent civil rights movement, some of them opposed to Vietnam, not wanting their kids to be the cannon fodder that African Americans were early on in the war. All of these different things he’s in intersection of it and as we begin to in a post-Vietnam era kind of blossom into a media culture in which celebrity becomes everything he becomes in a way bigger than life itself. And then the tragedy is, of course, absorbing all of those millions of blows is going to provoke this terribly restricting disease. It’s going to silence a loud and brash man, and yet, in that journey he finds a kind of inner peace and begins to sort of atone for all the things he’s done. I can’t begin to tell you, it’s so exciting to have worked on this.”
Ali died in 2016 at the age of 74 from Parkinson’s-related complications.
Muhammad Ali in London on May 27, 1963. Photo credit Len Trievnor/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images While largely celebrated today as an icon of American sports and culture, Ali was not always widely embraced.
But Burns notes that at the end of his life, Ali became “the most beloved person on the planet.”
“This is a life that is beset by a terrible disease that sort of encases him and yet at the same time it’s this extraordinary arc and there was not a continent where people did not adore him,” Burns said. “And even Americans, some Americans who had grown to dislike him for his brashness, for his bragging, for whatever it might be and then obviously for his political and religious stances, came around to sort of respecting him and as America realized Vietnam had been a mistake, they began to forgive him, as he lost fights and then worked to come back and reclaim the heavyweight championship it’s one of the great, great stories of all time.”
The documentary titled “Muhammad Ali” premieres on PBS on Sept. 19.
It features interviews with his daughters Hana Ali and Rasheda Ali, his second wife Khalilah Ali, his third wife Veronica Porche, and his brother and confidant Rahaman Ali.
Others appearing in the film include activist and former basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, boxing promoter Bob Arum, former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, boxing promoter Don King and more.
Leading up to the broadcast, Burns will join PBS and The Undefeated to host a series of virtual events this summer called “Conversations on Muhammad Ali” that will examine Ali’s life and career in the context of America and the world today.
People can register for the events at: pbs.org/ali.
Produced by Neil A. Carousso
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Small Business Spotlight: StrongArm Technologies CEO on How to Get Big Clients
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The key to business is often relationships. But, getting a foot in the door, especially with a prominent brand, is challenging.
“You have to start with the end user and you have to never lose sight of the individual at all,” suggests StrongArm Technologies CEO Sean Petterson on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by Dime Community Bank.
StrongArm Tech counts Walmart and Toyota North America among its clients. Walmart recently reported the Brooklyn-based tech company helped the retailer reduce worker injuries in its factories by 64 percent using StrongArm’s wearable safety devices called FUSE that utilize haptic technology to alert laborers to risk on the job by vibrating. FUSE collects real-time data so companies can make safety improvements.
“The goal for us is to not overcomplicate anything, but rather just provide small insights throughout your day so you can avoid getting hurt,” he said.
Petterson told Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso that the key to gaining big clients has been loyalty to their original ally within large corporations.
“They may not have the budget to take you globally with the organization, but they are the champions and they are the best voice of customer,” he explained.
“It’s almost like the old adage ‘treat your new friends like silver and your old like gold.’ That’s really how we try to operate.”StrongArm Tech’s first client eight years ago was a small charity distribution center in Upstate New York, which purchased their exoskeletons that provide ergonomic support to industrial workers lifting heavy materials.
Petterson told WCBS 880 one way they’ve been able to scale is by taking their data “a step further” to help their clients find cost savings.
“By eliminating those injuries, we don’t simply have the dollars fall on the bottom-line,” he said. “If you’re anticipating a workflow improvement, but you can’t really find the operational budget to do so, there’s a very good chance that there’s a safety ROI hidden in those numbers.”
He told Connolly and Carousso their clients have been able to increase profits and productivity by placing value in the labor system.
Petterson tells his clients “if you can measure it, you can manage it.”
New York City tech companies, like StrongArm, are booming largely because they are introducing needed solutions and upending traditional businesses that were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
See ways local tech companies are innovating and growing and get ideas on how to scale a business on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight video above.
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