Small businesses on Eddy Street struggling without students in town

St. Joseph County, Ind. -  With the cancellation of spring sports including Notre Dames Blue-Gold game, businesses that thrive on that influx of fans are struggling.

Pair that with other coronavirus legislation closing restaurants and bars to dine-in customers and that’s a rough mix for any business, especially those on Eddy Street near campus.

Reid Stichter is one of the owners of Purely Pressed on Eddy Street. Just one of two stores in the Michiana area.

With more folks abiding by the governor’s stay-at-home orders, his business is struggling.

“That’s been the biggest thing. The population in the area has decreased and the willingness to go out into the public is decreased as well which has been rough on us,” Stichter said.

Purely Pressed just opened up their second store on Eddy Street at the end of January.

When normally you would see tons of Notre Dame students and parents at Eddy Street Commons, now there’s no one there to order from their store.

It's something many businesses in the area are dealing with.

“It was a complete 180. February was a great month then March was definitely a decrease, we saw about 60% of sales decrease,” he said. “The biggest plan is, we offer meal delivery services which we never have done before, obviously we’ve done call ahead orders and everything so that’s helped generate business but not too enticing to bring people out of quarantine obviously.”

They’ve had to reduce staff at this point but Stichter said that he has hope in the future that they will be able to make all of this up when fall comes around, that is if the coronavirus spread has slowed down.