NORTHFIELD — It’s a bit of a cliche, but when life gives you lemons, there’s only one thing you can do.

Business owners from around the region shared their experience of making lemonade out of the pandemic at the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce’s Lemonade Luncheon at Northfield Golf Club on Friday afternoon. Chamber Executive Director Jessye Deane said the event was set up to share stories of the “perseverance and the grit and the unyielding optimism” that is “the fabric of Franklin County,” especially as staffing and housing shortages continue to threaten business’ staff and operations.

“With an economic winter looming in the not-too-distant future, it is going to be critically important that we are able to — and I hate this word — pivot and adapt,” Deane told the audience. “We’re going to need to all strategically adjust our products, services, policies and practices in order to stay relevant in an ever-changing economic landscape.”

Panelists included Mesa Verde owner Amy McMahan, Snow & Sons Landscaping president and Sugarloaf Gardens owner Kyle Snow, Franklin County’s YMCA Director of Youth and Family Programs Dave Garappolo, Ja’Duke Inc.’s Kim Williams and Nick Waynelovich, and Cameron’s Winery owners Leslie and Paul Cameron.

The pandemic presented different challenges and produced different results for everyone. For McMahan, it was a chance to reconnect with her longstanding business, which faced extra challenges as a restaurant with a dining room closed by the governor’s orders.

“A woman came in and she started crying because she said, ‘This quesadilla is the only thing that I can give my 14-year-old that is the same as two weeks ago,’” McMahan recalled of the first month of the pandemic. “It’s not just food, it’s constancy, it’s consistency. … It’s not just quesadillas, it’s not just nachos. I really connected with how it was a privilege and an honor to make food for people.”

Emerging out of the pandemic, McMahan said she’s learning how to digitally market her business and “learning how to be more connected with our purpose and our mission because I do think the principles of purpose and service are some of the sweeteners we can add to the lemons in front of us.”

On the nonprofit side, Garappolo said the pandemic was a difficult time for the YMCA, but it eventually provided the opportunity to renovate its building, restructure programs and retrain its staff to create a better-equipped agency. In 2019, he said the YMCA hired a new CEO and was preparing itself for a bright future, until “one big lemon” fell out of the sky in March 2020.

“We went from a staff of 130 to 13, then 12, then 11. Needless to say it was a mess,” he said. “We took that lemon as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to grow and change.”

In the face of the pandemic, the YMCA purchased new membership software to adjust to virtual classes and registration, reworked its cleaning and sanitation policies, and kept repositioning itself as virus restrictions evolved.

“It wasn’t always pretty, but we stayed our course and continued our path. Our lemonade was a YMCA reborn,” Garappolo said. “An updated facility, ever-increasing membership, new programs, new memories, new horizons and new ways to better serve our community. … The future’s bright and the lemonade tastes sweeter every day.”

To end the lunch, Williams offered businesses in the county a challenge of her own. Like Ja’Duke’s variety of programs, such as its theater, preschool and driving school, she asked business owners to take a second and think about what sort of opportunities may be available to them.

“Find what flavor of lemonade the world is missing or needs more of, and embrace the taste,” Williams said, describing each of Ja’Duke’s branching businesses as lemonade flavors. “The most important part of this story is to say, in your business, have you asked yourself: What does the market need? What type of lemonade are they asking for? And how are you going to bring it to them?”

Each panelist also thanked the chamber and the community at large for supporting them throughout the pandemic. For more information about the Chamber of Commerce, visit its website at franklincc.org.

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.

An earlier version of this article included an incorrect title for Kyle Snow. Snow is president of Snow & Sons Landscaping and owner of Sugarloaf Gardens.

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