PITTSBORO — The Plant, home to the Chatham Beverage District on Lorax Lane, is unique enough — housed in an old industrial site down a nondescript gravel road just off of East Street and adorned with all manner of odd signs and decorative statues.
Throw in a pandemic, and The Plant’s businesses, nonprofits, and full schedule of events and festivals throughout the year have been even more challenged than most to adapt.
But adapting and surviving is what Lyle Estill and others are trying to do.
Estill, who owns The Plant and Fair Game Beverage, hosts a tasting room with offerings from Chatham and across the state and produces distilled spirits. Though the company “still has a heartbeat” through ABC store sales, Estill and his team worked to create an e-commerce site with shipping and deliveries of products they feature “about a week into the crisis.”
“It was a big undertaking,” Estill said. “We have 97 North Carolina brands and 250 items.”
Estill purchased baskets from French Connections, another store in Pittsboro, and began marketing the products as crates and gift baskets online. For a time, the distillery was making hand sanitizer from corn liquor to give away to its customers who buy one of the baskets. The company has also been been delivering Hempsmith products, the hemp clothing line owned by his son, Arlo, and asparagus Arlo has been growing in the farm.
“We call it ring and run deliveries,” Estill said. “We leave the basket on the porch and ring the doorbell and leave, keeping a safe distance from our customers. I’m delivering shirts and asparagus. They are buying clothing to-go, but I think it’s because they want the asparagus.”
Fair Game Beverage is also delivering and shipping hard ciders for Chatham Cider Works. According to Jim Crawford, a Chatham County commissioners who works at the business owned by his wife Maureen Ahmad, the business has been working to secure an online vendor which will allow shipping out-of-state. The liquor license Chatham Cider Works holds is only good for North Carolina and some online vendors have licensing that allows distribution outside of the state. Crawford said he was hoping to get that up and running as the cidery remains full of kegs filled and originally destined for restaurants in Chatham and neighboring counties. With restaurants closed to dine-in traffic, those kegs sit unshipped. Bottles of the “small-batch hard cider” made from North Carolina apples are still available in stores such as Oasis in Siler City and Chatham Marketplace in Pittsboro, but those stocks have been dramatically reduced.
Starrlight Mead at The Plant has also changed things up. Its tasting room remains closed, but the company is still doing curbside sales of its meads, fruit-infused choices and herb-infused wines crafted by Ben Starr. Previously, many of the sales had been to restaurants and stores which are on limited service, according to Becky Starr, co-owner of Starrlight Mead. And now Starrlight is focused on using the website VinoShopper for online orders that can sell and ship out-of-state.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Becky Starr said. “We’ve had a huge jump in online orders. We are grateful because it’s keeping us afloat right now.”
Oak City Hemp started as an online store that continues to be a mainstay for its business, according to its co-owner Aaron Puryear — selling hemp flower, hemp-infused topicals, tinctures and concentrates. The store has also begun carrying hand sanitizer created by Mystic Bourbon Liqueur in Durham.
“It’s slow, but considering the times, we can’t complain,” Puryear said. “We’re just trying to weather the storm and pay the bills.”
The store enacted a “one in and one out” policy, something Puryear said his customers had started doing it on their own, given its small space. The store offers curbside service and no longer allows customers to smell, touch or sample products. For each transaction, workers use a new pair of gloves and sanitize the entire store in between.
“We want to protect customers and protect our staff as well,” Puryear said.
Copeland Springs Kitchen, which serves menu items that vary depending on what’s growing in the farm, has remained open but reduced hours to limit exposure. Owner Kristin Bullpit said they quickly moved to online ordering, “learning on the fly,” for pre-ordering, with curbside pick-up and limited free delivery. While she said she has not yet been forced to lay anyone off, she says she faces an ethical struggle.
“We are so new (and) don’t have the ability to support families in need the way some of the other restaurants in town are,” Bullpit said. “We do have a list of people who are food-insecure, and so far I’ve been able to keep everyone employed.”
Estill said each of the businesses are “focusing on what we can do.” In the meantime, they have built a park in the corner of the property when they have “nothing else to do.”
“If nothing else, it will be a pleasant place for someone to come sit once all this is over,” Estill said. “I think the crowds will come back.”
Reporter Casey Mann can be reached at caseymann@chathamnr.com.