April 22, 2020 — Andi Conte has always kickstarted her workday between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m.
She told Business Insider that the first items on her to-do list when she arrives at her company Water2Table’s facilities in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf include unpacking fish orders and quality checks. Typically, her workdays were already long, about 10 hours.
But now they’re extending well into the evening as her and husband’s only customers, dine-in restaurants in the Bay Area, have been directed by public health officials in the region to close during a shelter-in-place order enforced during a viral outbreak.
Since their sole clientele isn’t operating, they’ve started selling seafood to new customers: home chefs and residents of the San Francisco Bay Area. And it’s working — they’ve been able to hire everyone back that was laid off as a result of the city shut down and the subsequent economic fallout. Business is sustainable at the moment, but it’s also unpredictable as the coronavirus pandemic lengthens on.