This is Nik at the Bike Church in Santa Cruz, California. I really enjoyed reading about how and what you all are doing and wanted to give an update on our shop. In the beginning of shelter in place we closed down completely, but we opened up for appointments at the end of May. I coordinated all that via email and phone and used a spreadsheet to keep track (so much work!!). We started opening one day a week and still doing appointments two days a week, and then decided to stop appointments since it was so much work to organize and now are open Saturday and Sunday 12-4pm. It's a far cry from our Monday-Saturday 12-6pm that we had going before but we are still here and doing our thing. We don't get too many annoyed questions about when we'll be "open like normal again" and for the most part people are understanding of the circumstances.
There are a lot of pros and cons to appointments versus open hours. It was first of all, way too much work, there were about 400 appointments that got scheduled from May 24-Oct 18 and we got about 10-30 emails and 5-10 phone messages every day. But, with the appointments it was finally possible to truly prioritize the people we are always striving to prioritize in our shop-- WTF and BIPOC people. And the one on one environment allowed for more complex and in depth projects, and is a better learning environment/more accessible to different kinds of learners. Our normal pre-covid shop environment was very hectic at times and you might have had to be assertive to get the help you needed. However, with appointments we were barely breaking even but maybe not if you include the paid hours for me to coordinate. Also, this system was not very accessible to houseless folks, who are a huge part of who we are trying to be here for.
Open hours are fun and chaotic. When we first started opening Saturdays (June 7) we were selling every bike we had in the first half hour or hour! We decided to only sell bikes that are ready to ride but not as-is because there's not the capacity to buy a bike and fix it for 5 hours anymore. This is definitely the thing that keeps the lights on and I guess we were benefiting from this surge in bike interest as well as the shortage of new stuff. And yes, ordering has been super difficult but we finalyy restocked our 26x1.9-2.125 schrader tubes lol
The way we're doing the shop on open days feels pretty safe but it's not perfect and we're thinking about not letting people inside on rainy days and just fixing bikes for people. Currently, we have three bikes stands in the courtyard and will have at most one person on a stand inside. We have to limit people looking for parts because it takes so long and can end up in people clumping in an area of the shop. The biggest thing that keeps everything smooth and safe is the "gatekeeper" who sits there and lets people in one at a time, sanitize hands, and ask symptom check questions. This allows us to keep the limits we set for number of people, and to not let in potential trouble makers from the start (refuse to wear a mask while waiting in line-- can't come in).
Overall, I'd say we're going strong and have been largely spared here with relatively low spread and extremely tolerable weather. We managed to hire and train three new people since the pandemic, but we also "lost" three people who are not working due to their concerns about the virus.