This is a short first-person interview with Sarah Lieberman, owner of Dandelion Cafe in Houston, Texas. She describes founding the café (opened in 2016), running a small breakfast/lunch/brunch business focused on in-house and local products, and how COVID-19 forced a rapid pivot to takeout. She credits SBA and SCORE support — filing for the EIDL and then the PPP with her local lender — for enabling payroll retention, a kitchen remodel, survival during the first months of the pandemic, and plans to expand with another location in the future.
Questions this video answers
2016
Houston, Texas
Three days (then reopened for to-go service)
EIDL (Economic Injury Disaster Loan) and PPP (Paycheck Protection Program)
Remodeling the kitchen to handle capacity and retaining/avoiding layoffs of employees (payroll)
Chapters
Hi, my name is Sarah Lieberman. I own the Dandelion Cafe. We are a small breakfast and lunch restaurant, brunch place in Houston, Texas, and we opened in 2016. Well, I grew up in a restaurant in the Northeast in a pizza place, and it was just something that I've always known and I worked in a coffee shop in college when I was in Philadelphia, and it was my favorite job that I've ever had. We make everything fresh in house. We really cater to the community, we have local products that we use and we support local vendors as well. Immediately when Covid hit, we weren't prepared to shut down 100%. So we had to close for three days and get ourselves together, get ready to be to go. And then we reopened. And we were very slow initially. For the first month or two, it was very hard to make ends meet and I couldn't have done it without the PPP loan. My response to having to be closed down was to try to take care of my people was the number one thing, because I was scared. But I know that they were scared to lose their jobs as well. I have always been involved with the SBA and SCORE and ever since I had the idea of this business, I was going to SCORE and they helped me the entire way until I opened. I have close contacts here locally with members of the SBA that answer my questions anytime I have issues or concerns or just need information. When we had to shut down, I immediately went into survival mode to protect my people and was closely watching the SBA to see what was going to happen to help small businesses. As soon as the EIDL loan application was put online, I was filling it out. And then as soon as the PPP application was available, I went to my local lender and filled out the application with my local contacts here at the sba. They really kept me up to date on what was happening during COVID and let me know when the applications for the loans became available. I think the main reason that Sarah has been successful has been the fact that the bank supported her and SBA was there for her during the tough times of the first six months she was in business because of the loan. I was able to change the way that we did business with the economic Injury Disaster loan. We were able to remodel our kitchen to be able to handle the capacity that we were at after receiving the PPP loan. It was such a relief. I was able to take care of my people and not have to lay anybody off with the availability of the SBA loans During COVID we were really able to survive and be successful. So the SBA's success has really been my success. The SBA and the Dandelion Cafe will definitely be involved for a long time. Along with that, as we grow and thrive here, we do plan on expanding to open another location in the not too far future.
