COVID-19 revealed grit and creativity of emerging businesses

Jason Denton wanted to move with his family from New York City to Hudson one day, and seeing the former Fish and Game restaurant for sale at 13 South 3rd St., in Hudson fast-forwarded his plans.

“I always loved the bones of this space,” the New York City restaurateur said, pointing to the wood-burning grill, ovens and fire places in his flower shop-restaurant fusion, Feast and Floret.

Denton co-owns the business with Lavinia and Patrick Milling-Smith. Feast and Floret opened in October.

Denton appreciated the quiet-dining scene when the restaurant opened, he said, calling the opportunity for a soft opening a luxury. “It gave us an opportunity to kind of open under the radar and gradually build,” he said.

Fish and Game was “iconic,” so the new owners wanted to recreate the space, making it lighter and more feminine, Denton said.

A large table covered with flowers was placed between dining tables to create social distancing between patrons, but Denton loves the layout and wants to keep it beyond COVID-19 times, he said. The flowers began as “eye candy,” but have gradually became a regular source of business, “slowly and surely,” Denton said.

Taylor Bagley, known at Feast and Floret as the “flower wrangler,” picks flowers with Lavinia Milling-Smith and arranges them for customers. One of Bagley’s regulars was waiting outside as she hand-picked a bouquet for him, paying attention to the angle of each petal.

Like Denton, Bagley was a Hudson regular and fantasized about making the move. She moved from New York City with her dog shortly before the pandemic begun.

Bagley has known the Milling-Smiths for 13 years, but it wasn’t until Feast and Floret opened that Bagley became a flower gathering apprentice. Lavinia Milling-Smith, who owns a flower farm, took Bagley under her floral wing and taught her all about flowers. Bagley has also learned from Rebecca O’Donnell, who owns the Quiet Botanist at 445 Warren St., in Hudson. O’Donnell’s dried flowers can be seen hanging around the bar at Feast and Floret, as well as for sale.

Bagley described her first night arranging flowers for the restaurant as refreshing.

“I’ll never forget the first night when I started in October and it was a friends and family thing to get our feet wet,” she said. “Then I started arranging (flowers) and my heart was beating out of my chest. I was so nervous in such an unexpected and refreshing way.”

Denton wants Feast and Floret to be a comfortable spot locals can come to a few times a week for a snack and drink and also the place they host friends visiting town, he said.

Denton is appreciative of both the restaurant’s consistent clientele and its staff.

“We’ve got a great crew here that works here,” he said. “The crew here makes people feel really welcome and that is probably the most important thing.”

Katie Shaw had plans to open her own hair salon with coworker Tina Harp starting in January 2020. Shaw thought she would open her new Valatie salon in May, but the two stylists left Mane Street, their former salon at 532 Warren St., in Hudson, earlier than expected, leading to a March opening.

Little did they know they would be closing their newly opened doors after two days. KT Hair Studio, 3039 Main St., Valatie, opened March 19, 2020. Two days later, hair salons were instructed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to close. The salon was shut until June 3, 2020.

Shaw and Harp took advantage of the extra time to prepare the salon, which needed finishing touches anyway, like a reception desk and decorations. They had the supplies to style hair by opening day, and that’s about it, Shaw said.

“We were ready enough, literally, just to do hair in there,” she said.

Regular clients followed them from Hudson to Valatie and the new storefront brought new customers, too. Less than a year after opening, the two stylists were booked months out.

Shaw was at Mane Street for 10 years and Harp was there for 30 years.

“It’s really crazy, it’s like one of those things where the pandemic has been terrible but it brought out a positive for us, because we got to go out on our own, we were able to adjust things and do things the way we want to and I think that has made adjusting a lot easier for us,” Shaw said.

The stylists prepared COVID-19 precautions. Shaw purchased vinyl sheets to separate hair stations and a sneeze guard for the desk. Brushing hair off the chair has turned to spraying it down, and they spend more time between clients cleaning everything.

“We already took such sanitation precautions before the pandemic, now it’s just to another level,” Shaw said.

At this point, the precautions feel normal, she said.

The Columbia Economic Development Corporation helped Shaw start her business with a financial planner, business loan and grant, she said. “I can’t give them enough praise because I definitely would have probably not been able to do this if it wasn’t for them,” Shaw said.

Stacy Newkirk noticed a need for a more inclusive local gym and started preparing Stacy’s New Day Fitness at 2532 Route 9H in Kinderhook in August.

Newkirk grew up in Kinderhook and lived here most of her life, she said. She lived in Greene County and worked as a hair dresser for a couple of years before moving back to Kinderhook.

“I’m a lifer,” she said.

Newkirk was uncertain when she would be able to open because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We just took our time working in here until we thought things would get better,” she said.

She opened Jan. 13, 2021, but Newkirk expected COVID-19 would be more under control than it was.

The uncertainty of a business during the pandemic has been scary.

“It has definitely been a scary undertaking because one day I feel like the business is doing well and the next week I feel like we start to struggle a little bit, so it has been up and down,” she said.

Newkirk felt the gym options in the area were limited, and the options focused more on younger people.

“I wanted to focus on older folks who were recovering from surgeries, hip replacements, joint replacements, things like that,” she said. “I wanted to open a gym that was friendly to everyone.”

The gym counts about 80 members with different backgrounds and abilities. Regulars range in age from 4 years old to around 80.

The gym has children’s workout videos, so kids work out at the same time as their parents.

“They’re getting a workout and they just don’t realize it,” she said. “It makes it fun.” The gym also has dirt bike racers and soccer players, and 11- and 15-year-olds learning to power-lift. Visitors like the one-on-one attention they get at the gym.

“We try to make it so it’s a nice, happy place and we can address issues they might be having, so we basically go out of our way so people feel welcome here so they want to be here,” she said.

The gym community is small, so people know each other and help each other, she added.

Gymgoers have been good about following COVID-19 precautions from cleaning down machines to wearing masks, she said.

“Everyone has been considerate of one another,” she said. “It’s very good the way the community treats one another. ... I’m very lucky at this point.”

Newkirk is looking forward to hosting more outdoor classes to be more visible in the town and have more community members come in, she said.

Tim Graham, Anna Rosencranz and Dave Snyder opened Left Bank Ciders, 150 Water St., in Catskill, in July 2020.

Graham’s friend Ben Fain bought the building in 2018 to restore it. Graham, his wife Rosencranz and friend Snyder anticipated opening in March 2020 but were delayed by the pandemic. The owners planned to prepare the building’s patio for outdoor seating a year after opening, but the pandemic changed their priorities, and the patio was ready for summer 2020.

The trio makes and serves the cider in the same building, with a cellar in the back and tap room in front. Customers sat outside on the patio into winter, until the business closed for a few months as a response to COVID-19 spikes in the county and to do more work on the building.

Graham is thankful for the community supporting the new cidery during a pandemic, he said.

“We feel extremely fortunate to have such a great community and so much support even in the middle of this pandemic and to have been able to open and have customers and sales and to survive and actually thrive because the people of the town were so willing to support us,” he said.

Snyder has followed Graham’s “early experiments with cider making” over the years. He has since learned all he knows about cider-making from Graham, he said.

Snyder echoed Graham’s gratitude for the local community.

“I think it was such a scary time to open a business but I think we’ve been incredibly lucky and we’ve gotten so much support from the community,” Snyder said. “I think people in not just Catskill but the whole region are just excited to see new businesses doing something a little bit different.”

Left Bank Ciders is the cidery and bar debut for the three owners. “We all learned basically on opening night how to bartend,” Graham said.

As well as serving from its tap room, the business sells cider at local merchants in Columbia and Greene counties, including Kitty’s, 60 South Front St., in Hudson; Grapefruit Wines, 127 Warren St., in Hudson; Hudson Wine Merchants, 341 Warren St., in Hudson; and Solo Vino, 354 Main St., in Catskill, Graham said.

Wayne and Kerry Flach, both from Coxsackie, started experimenting with espresso in 2012 with hopes of having better coffee, and after finding a knack for roasting, the couple started selling at the Coxsackie Farmers Market in 2018. Wayne Flach completed a coffee roasting certification program under coffee expert and Vermont Artisan Coffee founder Mané Alves in 2019.

The couple is this year preparing for their fourth consecutive farmers market and also running their new coffee shop, Greater Things Roasters, at 10 Hope Plaza in Coxsackie.

The coffee shop opened Feb. 24, 2021, adding a hip coffee spot to Hope Plaza.

The couple roasts their coffee about five miles up the road from their shop in Ravena and are planning on moving the roastery to the Coxsackie waterfront in the fall. Eventually, they plan to open a brunch spot at the roastery.

The couple is eying more for their former hobby-turned-sidegig than the two locations in Coxsackie. They plan to ultimately open three to five locations throughout the Hudson Valley, Wayne Flach said.

The couple, parents to four children, renovated the space, which they say housed a former sign shop.

Wayne Flach has a background in construction and while Kerry Flach does not have a background in design, she knew exactly how she wanted the coffee shop to look.

She wanted to soften and embrace the industrial space, using greenery and rustic elements from the region, like metal farm signs, she said.

“It was a lot of fun to design,” she said. “I think everybody can appreciate it. It’s not too heavy in one area where a certain demographic would maybe feel excluded, I think. It’s great that everyone feels comfortable there.”

The new coffee spot has been a meeting place for locals and new residents alike, she said. “I really want it to feel like home to everyone,” she said.

The coffee shop sells local pastries too, with gluten-free and vegan options, she said.

The majority of the shop’s food and drink is locally sourced, including the baked goods, grab and go items and the milk for the coffee, Wayne Flach said. “Our goal is to have a really high product quality and experience for when you’re in our shop, just from the food or beverage that you order, the atmosphere and the interior of the shop itself,” Wayne Flach said.