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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m | S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r 2 0 2 0 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 23 CORONAVIRUS Clips, plastic clips that prevent surgical masks' elastic strings from chafing users' ears. By the begin- ning of June, Carbone estimates his company had already sold more than 2 million of those. Since the date of his Facebook post and the end of May, Carbone says Modern Plastics has hired about 100 new employees and pro- duced more than 13 million face- mask shields. In early June the company booked an order for an additional 35 million shields over the next 18 months — 750,000 to 800,000 units a month. Not bad. Of course, every silver living has a cloud, and so did Bing Carbone's: He caught the COVID-19 virus. But following a 14-day quarantine at home, he's all better now. COVID casualty: La Cuisine, Branford It was the ides of March but spring was in the air at La Cuisine, the Branford restaurant/catering business that Brendan Bloom's parents had opened nearly four decades earlier. e future was bright — 2019 had been the business' most successful year ever. e long winter — traditionally the slowest season for ca- terers — was winding down and Bloom was looking forward with anticipation to the busiest period of the business year, booking plenty of weddings and other catering gigs that, along with the restaurant/café on the Post Road, were La Cuisine's lifeblood. April was just days away, and that meant go-time. "e second quarter is when things just go nuts in this busi- ness," he said. "You're preparing, ramping up, making sure your infrastructure is ready." en the COVID crisis hit. Gov. Ned Lamont's shelter-in-place execu- tive order was issued on Monday, March 16. Businesses closed their doors and commerce screeched to a halt. It couldn't have come at a worse time. Seasonal business- es including La Cuisine rely on warm-weather months to com- pensate for the long, slow winter months. But now the world just … stopped. Bloom "thought it was going to be a temporary blip" — maybe a couple of weeks until public offi- cials got a handle on coping with COVID. "Obviously, that wasn't the case." Bloom's wife Christina, who runs the marketing and strategic planning side of the business, warned her husband to prepare for the worst. As soon as it became evident the lockdown wasn't going to end in just a week or two, the business was forced to lay off its 25 full- time employees "in order to pro- tect as much cash as we [could]," Bloom explains. e Blooms applied for and were awarded funding from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which allowed them to rehire a majority of their workers to reopen, which La Cuisine did during the third week of April for online ordering with curbside pickup and delivery only. "We did not have online order- ing at that point, but we were able to flip it on in a very short period of time," Bloom says. But it soon became clear that the restricted revenue stream was "nowhere close" to break-even, Bloom says. e restaurant side of the busi- ness — including 20 tables seating 50 diners on a busy day — was closed indefinitely, with no hint of when it might be allowed to reopen. And the events on which La Cuisine's catering business relies — from weddings to cor- porate functions — were being either postponed indefinitely or cancelled. It soon became evident that the business Ben and Patty Bloom started out of their Guilford home in 1982 could keep going no longer. On June 1, the Blooms announced on Facebook that the end was at hand, and that La Cui- sine's doors would close for good on June 12. "Ultimately we have decided that our two most important assets, who are 5- and 8-years-old, need our utmost care and focus during these challenging times," the Blooms posted. For Brendan Bloom it's a mix- ture of sadness and regret and a little relief, too. Going forward, "I'm going to live a life that is not filled with gut-wrenching stress and anxiety for a little while," he says. Because there will be amaz- ing opportunities [emerging] from this experience." n Caring For Our Community Our entire Ion team has never been more determined and focused to do everything we can to help our customers and the communities we serve to get through the Coronavirus crisis and throughout the process of rebuilding the economy. We're a proud partner of local businesses 150 years running. IonBank.com 203.729.4442 Member FDIC 1 0 5 1870 2020 Brendan Bloom in the last days of La Cuisine. The restaurant industry was first to feel the impact of the shutdown — and perhaps the hardest hit.

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