Coronavirus impact: Business owners prepare for worst after President Trump extends social distancing guidelines

Sunday, March 29, 2020
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The bombshell that many business owners knew was coming.

"We will be extending our guidelines to April 30th to slow the spread," said President Donald Trump.
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In the last two weeks, Sharky Laguna had to lay off 40 of his employees and now is gearing to slim his businesses even more to survive.

RELATED: Get the latest live updates on coronavirus crisis

"I thought it was ridiculous to say that it will be ending by Easter. I think any reasonable person can look at that and know that it was not a reasonable assessment of the situation," said Bandago's owner, Sharky Laguna.

600 of Laguna's vans are spread out throughout 10 states while more contracts are canceled.



"On one day we had over 1 million dollars in cancelations," said Laguna.
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Laguna is now offering his vans to help transport supplies during the COVID-19 crisis.

RELATED: Officials say expect shelter-in-place order extension until May 1, sources says

Even though California does have an indefinite statewide stay at home order, and no local jurisdictions have changed their specific orders, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce has shifted their conversations with small business owners preparing them for the worst.

"We were talking about a two to three weeks, how do you get your business through a period two to three weeks? Now we're talking about a two to three month period. How do you bring workers back and customers back through the door?" said Jay Cheng with SF Chamber of Commerce.

Cheng says some of the 175,000 small businesses in this city will not survive the pandemic.
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"We're expecting that some of those businesses might not be able to come back again," said Cheng.



We contacted Governor Gavin Newsom's office to ask how California's current shelter in place guidelines will be affected. But have not received a response.



Get the latest news, information and videos about the novel coronavirus pandemic here

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