Johnson made the decision to defy Newsom's shutdown order and keep her business open. I wasn't going to lay off the majority of my staff again. "It was also three weeks before Christmas. "I knew that I would not be able to survive," she says. For Johnson, who'd spent the past nine months navigating ever-shifting public health orders that had brought her business to the brink of ruin, this was the last straw. It also meant that Brunch would have to close its doors right before the busy holiday season. In practice, it meant that places like San Luis Obispo County, where spare ICU capacity hovered around 30 percent during the worst of the pandemic, were lumped in with much harder-hit Los Angeles some 200 miles to the south. The idea was to preserve hospital capacity across a wider area so that the hardest hit counties could send patients to get medical care farther out of town. That included a ban on all on-site dining, indoor or outdoor. The governor's order divided up California's counties into five regions, and imposed a raft of new restrictions in any region where intensive care unit (ICU) capacity fell below 15 percent. That's when Newsom surprised the state with his regional stay-at-home order. Things were looking up again for Johnson until early December. Customers proved eager to return, giving Brunch some of its busiest days in months. Late September brought nicer weather and the return of limited indoor dining. A loan provided to her through the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) helped keep her afloat as she was raking in about 60 percent of her usual sales. In late May, Johnson was able to open up for outdoor dining, although the summer heat and haze from wildfires limited its appeal. The following months proved to be tough but survivable. She was forced to cut her staff of 12 people down to just two. " the month of April I looked back and I made $4,000 when I typically make anywhere from $36,000 to $40,000 a month," she says. Johnson went from predicting record growth for her business to just barely hanging on. Restaurants in California had to close except for takeout and delivery service.
Gavin Newsom followed up with his own statewide order a day later. On March 18, San Luis Obispo County, which contains Paso Robles, issued its first shelter-in-place order, requiring people to stay in their homes unless engaged in a few essential activities, like getting food or going to the doctor. That trajectory changed in March, when COVID-19 became the only thing in the world that mattered. "We were getting excited to go into spring and summer in the new, larger location and really kind of have this be our year and just explode," Johnson recalls. The slow winter months would soon be giving way to warmer weather and waves of out-of-town customers. Spring 2020 was supposed to be a good season for Brooke Johnson, a longtime resident and upstart business owner in the wine country town of Paso Robles, California.īrunch, her 2-year-old restaurant, had grown steadily throughout the latter half of 2019 at its new downtown location alongside the city's collection of other trendy restaurants, bars, and hotels.
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