New normal?: Local breweries offering curbside pick-up, delivery amid coronavirus pandemic

Limiting where you travel and who you interact with is changing how every business operates and it’s turning some start-ups into booming businesses.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” says Dr. Tom Smythe, professor of finance at FGCU.

Out of necessity, businesses have had to broaden their horizons.

“You have to be able to adapt to change,” said John Schroeder with Big Storm Brewing Co.

That includes the Cape Coral brewery, now offering curbside pickup, as well as Fat Point Brewing in Punta Gorda offering delivery.

“They just go online, order it, we’ll bring it out to your car,” Schroeder said.

“We have had a lot of new customers coming out of the woodwork,” said Jessy Abbate, head brewer for Fat Point Brewing.

We talked with two FGCU finance professors about what “business as usual” could look like post-pandemic.

“I had always known that we could place our grocery orders and then come by and pick them up. We’d never done it. My wife has been doing this on a regular basis since this situation started and it works great,” said Dr. Shelton Weeks, chair of the department of economics and finance at FGCU.

With free video chatting, could that wipe out in-person business travel?

“Especially the larger hotel chains that rely a lot on conference revenue and meeting revenue and things like that, the technology we’re just talking about is likely to cut into that,” Smythe said.

As business may have to change and overcome, there are potential positives in this unprecedented time.

“We’re going to come out of this with very long-lasting positive changes to the way we do business,” Smythe said.

Not only has demand for delivery services gone up, Target tells us they’ve had to add parking spots and workers to meet shopper demand at its brick-and-mortar stores.