Weekly COVID-19 Round-up - 1/29/21
River City Data No. 15
We’ve made it to the end of January, and to my fifteenth “River City Data” issue. Tonight, I have my usual rundown of our numbers followed by an extensive interview with The Civi Life Brewing Company’s owner, Jake Hafner. I’ve edited Jake’s answers lightly but, even though this is the longest interview I’ve run, I’ve decided to roll with it. I think his perspective is really important, and I hope you enjoy it! - Chris
COVID-19 by the Numbers
Total cases in MO: 489,451 (+10,934 from last Friday)
7-day average of new cases per day in MO: 1,884.14 (-56.71 from last Friday)
Counties with the highest per capita rates of new cases per day this past week:
Harrison (66.8 per 100,000), Carroll (58.16), Macon (54.32), Jefferson (52.65), Gentry (51.44), Christian (49.5), Warren (48.03), and St. Clair (45.68)
Total deaths in MO: 7,141 (+209 from last Friday)
7-day average of new deaths per day in MO: 33.14 (-11.57 from last Friday)
These numbers are current as of Thursday, January 28th. Additional statistics, maps, and plots are available on my COVID-19 tracking site.
Summary for the Week Ending January 29th
For the first time since I’ve started sending out these newsletters, I don’t have much to say this week on our trends. The decline we’ve been experiencing in Missouri continues to be pretty durable - the drop has slowed, but we have not seen a big upswing in cases.
Numbers outstate are back to the level they were in early September, which is an incredible change from November when this wide swath of Missouri made up half of the state’s daily volume of new cases. These declines are a bit of good news for stressed, exhausted health care providers, contact tracers, and public health officials.
Geographically, the focus now is really on Northern Missouri. Most counties seeing (relatively) high rates of new cases can be found there. Two other counties, Christian (near Springfield) and Jefferson (near St. Louis) also stand out as well for persistently high rates both regionally and relative to other counties in Missouri. In every case, though, these high rates are only high in a relative sense. Compared to November, even the worst counties in Missouri right now are well below their all-time highs.
In other places, like Mid-Missouri, in the Ozark Mountains, and in a few other counties in Northern Missouri, rates of new cases are now below 13 new cases per 100,000 residents per day and still falling. As rates of new cases approach zero, it is critical to remember that the actual number of cases in the community is likely higher. These data may also reflect reporting and testing delays, and should be treated with great caution. Don’t let up your guard!
These declines also should not detract from the pressure hospitals remain under. As I said above, the rate of new cases declining is no doubt reliving for health care providers. However, the reality is that hospitalization rates remain high and in some hospitals, things may not feel much different in ICUs. In the St. Louis area, we have only just seen our 7-day average of in-patient numbers fall below the spring peak. In other words, things are improving, but we still have a long, long way to go.
Into the Weeds
A year ago today, the New England Journal of Medicine published a research article describing what was known about a newly emergent coronavirus that had been first detected in December, 2019. It’s strange reading it now, knowing what would come. For me, it underscores the amount we already knew - the virus was affecting older individuals, more men than women, and was seen in few children (none under 15 in this paper). The mean incubation period (just over five days) and the exponential growth we experienced in the initial wave of infections were all there. As I write this, I’m left with a pit in my stomach. The information about what was coming was right there, in January, in the pages of one of the most watched medical journals in the world. We could have acted bodly, but we didn’t.
Weekly Interview
Jake Hafner is the self-proclaimed “Captain of the Barley Ship,” is the owner of The Civil Life Brewing Co., located in the Tower Grove South neighborhood of St. Louis. He’s been in the food and beverage industry for years, and started Civil Life with brewer Dylan Mosley and jack of all trades Mike Bianco in 2011. You can order brews for curbside pickup on their website, and follow them on Twitter.
CP: Before we get to COVID, can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
JH: Hello, I'm your local friendly micro-brewery owner of the Civil Life Brewing Company in Tower Grove South (Chippewa and Gravois closest major intersection). I started in the beverage industry in NYC in 1996 when I worked at Windows on the World (in the World Trade Center) and then Astor Wines & Spirits in NYC. But the magnet of St. Louis was pretty strong so in August of 2000, I returned to my roots having grown up here and also to fewer boundaries for the young entrepreneur I wanted to be. I opened 33 Wine Shop & Tasting bar in Lafayette Square in 2001 (sold in 2009 - it's still in business today under the current owner and my friend James' guidance.)
After selling 33, I went on a "drinkabout" through all the major beer producing countries in Europe (wine country too) and then returned home to open the Civil Life in 2011 with Dylan Mosely and Mike Bianco (who worked with me at 33). When people ask me what I do at the Civil Life, I often say, "I own all the debt." What makes the Civil Life a wonderful place is the employees who choose to work here. Dylan used to have a saying when talking about us three that he and I were bricks and Mike was the mortar. I'd say these days all three of us are bricks and the other talented employees are the mortar. It's a team effort here (smaller now) and I consider myself very fortunate to have forged this path with them and the other employees we had prior to the shutdown. Currently we are down to four employees plus me but are hoping to bring more back in the coming months as soon as our patio expansion and new kitchen are complete and we can re-open super safely outside. Our inside pub will remain closed until community spread is over.
CP: I want to start by drawing on your experience in the food+beverage service industry generally - can you talk about what you’ve seen over the past ten months in St. Louis - what challenges are folks facing right now?
JH: COVID is simply unprecedented and the nuances of how it's affected the food and beverage industry would take volumes of pages to truly explain. Though I was fully aware that COVID was going to be a hurdle, it was when Italy began shuttering pubs and restaurants, I realized that too would be our fate here in the St. Louis. Unlike other recessions that for the most part happened over time, the COVID recession was like turning off a faucet. It was such an unprecedented (there is that word again) disruptive shock that everyone had to immediately navigate territory without any roadmap and certainly no historical guidance.
It feels like we were all taking a boat down a pretty wide river and suddenly the boat was gone. Then when the government tried to throw you a life vest (initial PPP loan and disaster loans), it hit you in the face or was too small or didn't fit right (ex. concert and live music venues) but many people still had to grab onto it, then when you finally made it to shore and caught your breath, lightening hit you, then after waiting a few hours the ambulance arrives (vaccine), they load you up but then realize they have a flat tire (one big wave), you get on the road and run out of gas (new variants). That's pretty much the way a majority of restaurant and pub owners feel or at least I do.
We are exhausted but yet small business owners find a way. Many of us have our life's savings and years of work tied up in our business so more will make it through this battered and bruised than you might suspect. The industry seems to be looking now to get past the tumbleweed January and February months with a hope that the spring and summer bring lower numbers, more opportunity to be safe outside, and hopefully deliver some relief in the form of sales.
There is a wide variety of stories of how restaurant and beverage places are doing depending on where they are located and what mandates or lack of mandates are in place. I can tell from the hit to our draft sales that beer consumption on premise (bars and restaurants and live music venues) is down drastically throughout St. Louis but grocery and retail are up substantially (Thank you). I also feel that a majority of restaurants in St. Louis strongly believe in the community of our city and are doing their best to not add to the problem by running their business in an unsafe manner. When you do venture back out if you haven't already (like me), these are places you want to support. Also, I know several that are open entirely because they financially have few options left. January has been brutal for the industry. My biggest concern is the many small, family-owned restaurants out there holding on through these slow months and once again, live music venues have no real pivot through this, they need government support. So many of these business models were built on volume and, until that returns, so many of us are going to continue to struggle.
Please, get takeout. Get takeout. Get takeout. Then after you get takeout, get takeout. These restaurant owners are good people and very often the ones that provide support to many of our charitable causes supporting this city.
CP: I’m also interested in what is happening to the beer industry specifically. In 2019, craft breweries like yours were experiencing growing production volume and growing sales figures. What has happened in 2020?
JH: Heading into the initial shutdown, the Craft Beer industry had seen many years of overall growth as more and more breweries continued to open but during this time the market had also become increasingly saturated. Breweries open prior to 2015 on average were not seeing much growth. The Civil Life fits in that category as well. When COVID hit, the industry was still growing but in my opinion not fast enough for all the breweries to remain financially healthy. Many small breweries like ours depended on our pub sales to make our business models work. To put it simply, we lost all of our low volume higher margin business (in house pub sales and draft accounts) and we were left with our high-volume low margin business (canning and to-go business).
Though we have not re-opened our pub and are still only doing online sales we are also pumping out a fair amount of cans to local grocery, small retailers, and bars that are still open. Many small breweries have re-opened but I think it is fairly safe to say that all of these breweries’ business models were built on volume. Current sales levels may provide some much-needed cash flow but operating a brewery and pub comes with more risk than normal. No matter what path we took to navigate through this, all of us are in survival mode.
In May, the Craft Brewers Association will issue its Annual 2020 report and I suspect we will see a fair amount of closures and a large amount of barrelage production decreases from the severe damage done to draft beer from the onset through the end of the year. But I also suspect we will see some micro-breweries in the regional to national range that faired okay in 2020 as sales shifted to grocery.
CP: Can you talk a little bit about what things have been like at Civil Life specifically? I would love to give folks a sense of what the last ten months has been like for you personally.
JH: When COVID hit, I immediately couldn't see the upside in our pub business nor had faith in the initial round of PPP loan and it's original structure. We went from 13 employees to 3 rather quickly as the loss cash flow from our draft business and our pub was impossible to overcome. It was really hard to lay off our staff, but the writing on the wall was clear to me that in order to save Civil Life it had to downsize quickly and regroup. Had the PPP loan been structured differently when it was first released it might have worked for our little company. Thankfully the extra federal $600 per week helped our staff through the summer too.
We did our best for those we let go with a few weeks pay, additional month of health insurance and paying their earned vacation time. I wish I could have done more but uncertainty was and still is a dominating force. But none of that was enough, and honestly it's hard knowing that due to my decision to keep the pub and patios closed, I wasn't able to continue employment with some really good people. But first and foremost, fortunately due to where we were in our business cycle when this happened, I have been able to focus on not adding to the spread in any way. There isn't truly enough business to go around so us staying closed likely has helped some others. We are all in a community after all.
On top of all of this, in April my wife and I had our second child. As this pandemic has been a unique situation for each business (with many industries unscathed and stock market at all-time highs (oops this week) it also has been unique to each individual. So my family's struggle with small children during this has been shared by so many parents and my staff. It's no doubt been the hardest 10 months of my life, as my confidence has been shaken while trying to find the right path. In March, the Civil Life went to unlimited paid sick days and mostly flexible work schedules for our staff. Our guiding principle has been family first and business second during this time, but what else would you expect from a brewery called the Civil Life.
The upside of all this is I have spent more time with my family than I have been able to before. I truly hope I can maintain a better work life balance when this is through but juggling a small business with a family is a uniquely interesting challenge leaving me accepting that I will never fully achieve utopia in this struggle and that it is also okay.
CP: How do you think these types of business slow-downs are affecting Missouri?
JH: I have heard stories over the past ten months that in some places of Missouri bars and restaurants are operating as normal or as close to normal. The virus likes this, and it is frustrating because the longer the virus circulates the longer it is before I feel I can safely open.
I suspect some day in the far future, someone in accounting will run the impact numbers this has had on our state and stumble upon the lost revenue in Bars and Restaurants. The Civil Life alone on average is collecting for the state and city $4000 to $5000 less in sales tax every month. Multiply that by thousands of pubs and restaurants in Missouri, and you have severe budget cuts.
But sadly, and I think this is the hardest part for me to understand as a business owner with a social conscience, we put economic growth over the foundational societal building blocks of education, day care, grade schoolers and high-schoolers and along the way failed to protect our most vulnerable the elderly. Throw in the in-equity of how COVID has more severely impacted communities of color and the economically disadvantaged. I'll need to borrow from Amanda Gorman on this one and repeat, "Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken but simply unfinished." How many wake-up calls do we need?
Well over a thousand Americans are dying every day and we are going to overtake and power through 500,000 lives lost because we didn’t work together. It's frightfully American to not deal with the emotional toll and magnitude of all the lives lost and rather just accept it. That's hard for me to comprehend, which is why the sweet taste of genuine Civil Life beer has been getting me through this. Lest you forget, this interview is with someone who depends on beer sales!
CP: Finally, what is giving you hope right now in terms of where are with COVID?
JH: I still harbor a good deal of worry going forward. Each time they have reported a new variant in another part of the world, I say to myself, "It's already here." Then later we find out it's already here. I remember when the country mourned the first COVID death in late February, only to have found out later that it was spreading before that and a few had died before. It's a serious mess and finding hope when they keep moving the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be a challenge for me. I want nothing more than every school and daycare to be fully open with full days and in person classes. Then follow that with every bar and restaurant to be packed with people again. My livelihood, my company's future and many of my restaurant friends depends on it. But the public isn't collectively up for the difficult challenge to make it happen faster so we will continue to meander through this shedding tears only when someone we know dies. At this point, It is easier for me to accept that it will happen when it happens rather than tie my string to the hope kite.
All is not lost though. I have hope in that my four year-old understands the virus better than most adults. We had a real chance to collectively summon the courage and determination to beat back this virus and come out of it stronger as a nation. By every statistical measure we failed. Someday these kids will grow up and realize what they were robbed of because the adults couldn't get their act together. The collective understanding of the years of life some of them missed with their grandparents and parents will hopefully allow them to forge a new path the next time the country is confronted with a challenge as great as this. I do feel that the new President and administration will turn the corner on COVID, but people will get frustrated because in our immediate gratification society we feel things should happen faster. Ships this large and problems this big don't turn on a dime.
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