NEW NORMAL
Over a single week in March 2020, nearly every plan at Topsfield Bakeshop was wiped from the calendar. The 15-year-old store, which operates the wildly popular Whoo(pie) Wagon—a fixture at area festivals, corporate events, and colleges—saw its schedule vanish, including the bakery’s thriving wedding cake business, in an unexpected instant. This, at a time when owners Mary and Chris Bandereck were in the home stretch of building an expanded facility with extensive kitchen space on Route 1 in Topsfield.
“We were in too deep to turn around,” Mary says of the construction project. “We had to figure something out or we’d lose everything.”
They were far
Zoom has also become an important tool at The Castle: A Board Game Café in Beverly, where Monday night trivia has moved online. “We put it off for a while, afraid it wouldn’t be as fun as in person, but it’s actually been really great,” says Ryn Grant, who owns the café with her husband Kevin. The pair serve as quiz masters, and give groups their own virtual breakout rooms to chat and discuss their answers. “It’s just nice to see folks,” she adds. “Plus, since its virtual, we have Castle supporters from all over the country tune in.” In addition to Zoom trivia, the café now offers an online retail site, where people can purchase board games and accessories hand-selected by the Grants. The café is open with very limited seating (one group per room), but Ryn says the majority of patrons prefer take-out these days—accompanied oftentimes by board games they can rent alongside food orders.Takeout is the only option at Nightshade Noodle Bar in Lynn—the pint-sized dining room doesn’t really lend itself to social distancing, notes chef/owner Rachel Miller. It was especially painful, as the restaurant had debuted just a few months before to glowing reviews. To augment that income while serving the community, Miller has been selling breakfast sandwiches as a preview to her new venture, Sin City Superette—a miniature version of a traditional grocery store, with all the same departments, including hot and cold prepared foods, baked goods, and household staples, all at affordable prices
