(Des Moines/Harlan) Ellen Walsh-Rosmann, owner Milk & Honey, a farm-to-table restaurant in Harlan, and a recipient of the Small Business Relief Grant from the state, was invited to Governor Kim Reynolds press conference this morning to share her story about how COVID-19 changed how she does business, what she’s learned from the process and how she plans to come back.
Ellen said in addition to owning the restaurant, she is also a farmer and she owns and manages one of the largest remaining food hubs in the state, so she is definitely seeing the impacts of COVID-19 on the food system from all different sorts of angles.
“Just a little bit about our business, so our FarmTable Procurement and Delivery; we work with about 40 different growers across the state of Iowa and distribute and market and aggregate their goods to restaurants, grocery stores, food service institutions like schools, and now more than ever food hubs and local foods seems to be relevant and be at the center stage and we’re responding to that. We’ve had to increase our staff to respond to those demands, which the small business recovery grant helped us do,” explained Ellen Walsh-Rosmann.
She said the small business grant also allows them to continue to pay their local farmers to help them with their livelihood.
Ellen said Milk and Honey has a small staff of about six employees and it was very scary at first when they closed.
“We still don’t have a clear picture on what that would look like, but we pivoted pretty quickly offering online ordering, contactless payments; our sales are significantly down which the small business recovery grant is helping make up for and our employees have had to make big sacrifices for their families. But, getting this great will help us pivot and alleviate some of the risk that we’re taking to keep our doors open and keep serving the public and doing it safely,” said Ellen Walsh-Rosmann.
She said they haven’t completely opened their restaurant because they only seat about 49 people and they couldn’t find a way to make that work, especially with their small staff.
Ellen Walsh-Rosmann encourages everyone to continue to support small businesses and spend their money locally.
