2021 Vol 15, Issue 2 April Gem Lake News

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Gem Lake News Page 3 of 6 Surviving and Thriving Through the Pandemic: Gem Lake Businesses Learn to Adapt This includes extensive remodeling and redecorating of the club house. The project has involved new floors, a new countertop in the bar area, redecorating bathrooms, and much more. Extensive tree work will be done in the next few weeks to take down dead or dying trees. “We will be ready for a great season,” said Greer. There were about 500 junior league golfers involved at the course in 2020 and Greer says they expect the same or better this year. White Bear Floral also had a banner year in 2020, not despite the pandemic, but partly because of it. There were two main reasons for this. First, people felt trapped inside for a long time. When the planting season started last year, White Bear Floral sold out of their home-grown inventory quickly. People wanted to get outside and plant their gardens. The second reason for the upsurge in sales was also related to people being shut in. You couldn’t go visit grandparents, friends, family, etc. But, you could send them flowers. And people did just that. During the first shut down, White Bear Floral operated with a reduced staff. Owner John Birkeland went out of his way to make sure his staff was taken care of in any way he could. After a few months, they were able to come back to full staffing capacity. The greenhouse did well and employees were very grateful. The White Bear Meadery, located on County Road E in Gem Lake, was less than a year old when the pandemic hit. They have had to build their business model around adaption and being nimble. So far it has worked. “We offered free delivery service to our customers within a 30-mile radius, in order to adapt to COVID early last year,” said owner Joshua Eckton. “In the Fall of 2020, we added website ordering and mailings of our products within Minnesota.” White Bear Meadery is fast approaching its two- year anniversary this June. “Our plans are to release a 2021 Anniversary Reserve, a chocolate/cherry mead, aged in an American Oak rye whiskey barrel.” In terms of how the past 12 months have impacted them, Joshua added “We appreciate all the support of our customers. Without it, we would have gone out of business.” Gem Lake Hills Golf Course had one of their best years ever in 2020. Outdoor activity, with social distancing built in, made golf the ‘recreation of choice’ last year. “During the height of the shut-downs, people had limited things they could do for recreation that were safe and acceptable,’ said Matt Greer, General Manager of Gem Lake Hills. “People felt safe playing golf. In a weird way, it was a great year for golf courses across the United States. Courses everywhere saw record setting round counts.” The course was busy all season and the business did pretty well, considering all the small modifications that had to be made, such as limited seating in the club house, sanitizing routines for frequently touched surfaces, and strict rules about golf cart usage. For instance, there could be only one person per cart, unless it was two people from the same household. With only 40 golf carts total, this was sometimes challenging for Gem Lake Hills Golf course to accommodate. “Everyone knew we were doing our best to serve our golfers.” Course owners decided to re-invest some of the 2020 revenues into improvements at Gem Lake Hills Golf Course.