Black Crow Coffee Owner's Journey During Coronavirus Pandemic

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Small businesses have been changed by the coronavirus pandemic. For Deana Hawk, the owner of Black Crow Coffee's two St. Petersburg locations, it has been a year of fast lessons, growth and community love.

"Both locations were rolling hard core, like busy, and never in my wildest dreams thought that it would come to a screeching halt," Hawk told a Patch reporter. "You just don't ever think that you and everyone else's business will come to a screeching halt so it was really weird."

In the past year Hawk has made tough calls like temporarily closing both businesses to keep everyone safe, giving profits from T-shirt sales to laid-off staff, and stocking items from alcohol to hygiene products that employees could grab as needed from the shops.

Black Crow Coffee Old Northeast, 722 Second St. North, was founded in 2015, and was an instant hit with the community. It was the place where college students worked on group projects, artists hung out to collaborate with others, neighbors gathered for morning coffee and where the occasional loner would go to get a tiny taste of socialization.

It wasn't long after the coffee shop's initial opening that Hawk had to increase the space and expand into the vacant spot next to Black Crow that was once a yoga studio. Musicians and improv groups performed frequently in the expanded area. It was a safe space for so many.

Fast forward five years to March 2020 with a pandemic and an added Black Crow location in Grand Central District, 2161 First Ave. South, and Hawk had to quickly learn to adapt to unforeseen changes while maintaining her sanity.

"I realized that because both businesses stopped so abruptly that each business has different needs," Hawk said. "The location at Old Northeast doesn't have outdoor seating, and the Grand Central location does. Old Northeast has a neighborhood that is vulnerable more so to covid because the age demographic is different there."

A challenge Hawk faced was figuring out how to safely serve both locations' customers during the third week of March when restaurants and bars were forced to close under Gov. Ron DeSantis's orders. Hawk saw the coronavirus numbers rising in Florida and knew the disease was nothing to take lightly.

She changed her Old NE location to strictly takeout by putting a vintage cart against the entrance door for a safe barrier that would keep her customers outside and prevent close mingling inside. Customers could only order online and look at the menu through a QR code.

As customers continued to support the new way of ordering, the business owner grew concerned about everyone's health and the chances of staff and customers catching coronavirus.

Hawk decided to close the doors completely to both locations because she didn't want to be responsible for policing people to stand 6 feet apart. Sales were not hurt. Seeing her customers wait in the hot sun and not being able to offer them a nice place to sit with air conditioning was also a difficult adjustment.

"Just the way the dynamics were working, it wasn't safe for the staff or the customers," Hawk said. "And once we decided to close that one, we decided to close both. It was just better. We closed for two months, and it was scary, honestly."

Hawk said that every day she was scared for her 16-plus employees. The lines of communication were always open between her and staff members to help navigate unemployment benefits.

Staff members were able to earn about $150 a week when they came up with the idea to design T-shirts collectively and sell them through Black Crow. The business gave 100 percent of the T-shirt sales, sticker sales and retail coffee sales to its employees.

"Inside of the shop, I created employee pantries, so if an employee needed something like toilet paper or laundry soap or feminine products, I had them all at both locations," Hawk said. "My mom gave her puzzles, and I put alcohol in there. Just so that if they needed to get something, they didn't have to try to get to a grocery store, which was crazy. And I was just worried about them being able to afford stuff."

Both locations received a total of $10,000 in grant money from the city of St. Petersburg, which Hawk used that money to help her employees pay their rent because she and her boyfriend and business partner, Greg Bauman, had saved money through the years.

Even though Florida got the green light to reopen at full capacity in September, Hawk is sticking to outdoor socially distanced seating at both locations until there is a coronavirus vaccine that is known to work.

Customers who are used to the old days of close community engagement at Black Crow are adjusting to the roomier feel at the coffee shops as they sit outside at tables and keep their distance from others.

"Greg and I cultivate open engagement at our coffee shops, they're driven by conversation about what's going on in the community, local independent people, music flowing and book reading," Hawk said. "I realize since we've been open that right now we're just a coffee shop. And I'm not saying that in a bad way, I'm just saying that right now, you come and you get your coffee and you can hang out for a few minutes and stuff, but Black Crow has always been so much more than that. And until we can be that, I don't want to (fully) reopen. It's too much of a risk to the community and our employees."

Hawk is willing to sit back, wait and be patient.

In the meantime, Black Crow is bringing its socially distanced Sunday open mic poetry back to the Grand Central District.

Both locations are open Monday through Sunday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., according to its website.

For more information about Black Crow Coffee, visit here.