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April 3, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
05:24
Dennis Interviews a Business Owner About the Shutdown
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Dennis Prager here.
That call from the man who works for the airlines got to me.
Okay, my friends.
I'm going to give you some words of encouragement, too.
I have to give you both.
I have to tell you what's going on.
And then we have to deal with it.
Never again.
In your life, take normal for granted.
I don't.
That's been my message my whole life.
And unfortunately, now people realize it's validity.
All right, I have on the line Steve Fazio, and he's in Southern California, and he is the owner of a chain of...
Highly regarded dry cleaning, cleaning stores, Fazio Cleaners.
Steve, I know we've met and it's not the best time that we're meeting, but it's good to talk to you.
Nice to speak with you as well.
Can you hear me okay?
I hear you perfectly.
Thank you.
Yeah, I think having a little perspective from someone sort of in the battle currently.
That has a chain business I thought might be an interesting perspective and I truly appreciate your allowing for that to be aired.
Thank you.
It is amazing.
I mean, I don't know because I don't watch, but on the reports that I get, the Steve Fazios of America don't get much attention on CNN. No.
Only those suffering and dying from the disease.
But I don't know why they don't.
Oh, I'm not sure I don't know why.
Maybe I do know why.
But anyway, you need to be noted.
How many cleaning stores do you own?
We have nine.
We have three in Nevada and six in Los Angeles, greater Los Angeles area, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Sherman Oaks, Westlake, Calabasas.
And it's just been super tough.
The fear of the unknown is a part of it.
But then the laws and the financial relief programs that are being promulgated are helpful, but only to a degree.
And I thought it would be interesting, perhaps, for your viewers to understand kind of how this is all operationalizing in the real-world setting.
Are your stores open?
Yes, we are considered an industry that is necessary.
So we have limited hours, but you may know that dry cleaning kills bacteria and viruses.
And, you know, we do have people out there working in society that need to process their garments.
We're doing a lot of police officers, firefighters, people in the medical industry that don't just wear scrubs and, you know, others that are out, you know, out doing things and they want to make sure that they're not carrying the virus on their fabric.
So most cleaners are open modified hours and modified production.
We're open from 10 to 3 Monday through Saturday with our stores.
We used to be open from 6 in the morning till 9 at night, 7 days a week.
So we've certainly curtailed the hours because there's about a 95% drop off in revenue.
95%?
Yeah.
But we feel as though it's our duty and responsibility to at least be open for those who require our service.
Okay, so the bottom line question is, how long can you withstand a 95% revenue loss?
Yeah, well, we can't even withstand it now, so we've applied to every program that the government is producing, and those have some extreme limitations to them, whether or not there will be a secondary, you know, kind of...
Relief package forthcoming is hopeful.
And, you know, I'm a conservative, so I don't like relief packages.
But when the government basically closes down society, I mean, it's not something that we've done that caused this issue, obviously, and we want to, you know, and we want to be there for society.
But we can't withstand paying our employees and our landlords and property taxes and taxes and vendors and, you know, all the things that are on a profit loss statement.
I mean, when they're zero.
And you think about the cascading effect of all the little small businesses that we also rely on to do our business, you know, our vendors and suppliers and a myriad of people that we have to deal with and leasing companies and, you know, our property owners have been, frankly, relentless.
I mean, I called because I wanted to get ahead of the dialogue right when this started breaking, asking my property owners for some sort of relief until this subsided and all of them to a person said, no, we want our rent.
On April 1st.
I said, well, we have no revenue, so we're going to have to work together here.
We're all in this boat together, and we're going to have to come up with some sort of accommodation in order for us to work through it.
All right, that's what I want to know about.
The rent issue is huge.
All right, I'll continue with the owner of, what did he say, seven or nine?
I think nine, yeah.
Nine dry cleaning stores and has a very high reputation.
Steve Fazio.
He mentioned relief.
Here's a relief, relief factor.
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