Jennifer Spurling (right) and Tonie Dominguez, two recent hires at J Slocum Marine, fold clothes after the farmers’ market rush on Saturday in Anacortes.

A beef chuck roll is pulled from a cooler on Saturday at Laura’s Carniceria in Sedro-Woolley.

Maegan Holland, a pharmacy assistant at Schaffner Pharmacy, stocks the shelves on Friday in Sedro-Woolley.

Anisa Hiser, a chocolate artisan at Forte Chocolates, packages several boxes of chocolates on Friday at the downtown Mount Vernon storefront location.

Maegan Holland, a pharmacy assistant at Schaffner Pharmacy, checks out a customer on Friday in Sedro-Woolley.

Delaney Fitze, a barista at Schaffner Pharmacy and Apothecary Coffee, picks out a brownie for a customer on Friday in Sedro-Woolley.

Jennifer Spurling (right) and Tonie Dominguez, two recent hires at J Slocum Marine, fold clothes after the farmers’ market rush on Saturday in Anacortes.

A beef chuck roll is pulled from a cooler on Saturday at Laura’s Carniceria in Sedro-Woolley.

Maegan Holland, a pharmacy assistant at Schaffner Pharmacy, stocks the shelves on Friday in Sedro-Woolley.

Anisa Hiser, a chocolate artisan at Forte Chocolates, packages several boxes of chocolates on Friday at the downtown Mount Vernon storefront location.

Maegan Holland, a pharmacy assistant at Schaffner Pharmacy, checks out a customer on Friday in Sedro-Woolley.

Delaney Fitze, a barista at Schaffner Pharmacy and Apothecary Coffee, picks out a brownie for a customer on Friday in Sedro-Woolley.

Small businesses that endured the slowdown caused by the isolation of the pandemic are now dealing with historic inflation, which hit a record high in June.

Inflation rose 1.3 percent and is up over 9% since last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This is all on top of staffing shortages and supply chain issues that started early in the pandemic and continue today. Some locally owned businesses that survived continue to struggle, while others are actually growing.

The Skagit Valley Herald talked with a sampling of them to report on how they are making it through.

Business owners like Laura Velasco are trying to find the products they need to serve their customers at the same time they’re struggling to find the workers they need.

Velasco, owner of Laura’s Carniceria in Sedro-Woolley, said this past year has been the most difficult of her 19 years in business. Each delivery of products comes with a higher price, and she’s had shortages in both supply and staff. It’s been hard to keep up, she said.

“You cannot change the prices every week or every month,” Velasco said. “We have very good prices; we don’t want to go higher.”

However, she worries that could be impossible to avoid. She has taken on additional hours herself and has had trouble finding cooks when she needed them.

“I don’t know what happened to the people from before the pandemic,” Velasco said of the workforce.

Supply shortages have made it tough to find what she needs in stock for the food on her menu. Reducing the menu may be next, she said.

“I’m trying to do my best. This is a family-owned business. I might be ready to retire, but I want to have the business be successful for my kids,” Velasco said. “We will see what happens. The people have been supporting us throughout the pandemic.”

Jessica Slocum and her family sailed into Anacortes in February 2020, spending the shutdown on their boat. By October, Slocum quit her day job and decided to open a clothing shop that would fit her family’s needs and the community’s. J Slocum Marine opened last summer in a 550-square-foot storefront property on Commercial Avenue.

“We ran out of space about seven months into running our business,” she said.

Slocum eventually found space in the Majestic Inn and Spa, which converted part of its lounge area into store space. The new location brings the possibility of new foot traffic from hotel guests and restaurants around the block, she said.

“We have about three times the space,” she said. “I feel like I have some cushion being in the hotel.”

Filling that space is another issue. Slocum has seen a 5% increase from her vendors, which led her to raise prices. It also means she orders less to keep on hand.

“We’re not ordering $500 jackets. If I have two jackets and one is comparable, I’m taking the one that costs less,” Slocum said.

She also has had trouble finding quality workers she can afford and keep. She has gone through 10 employees in her small store since opening.

So far, this summer has been slower than she anticipated. She isn’t sure whether that’s because summer weather was late to arrive or if inflation has people spending less on travel and shopping because of higher gas and food costs.

As the pandemic’s effects drag on, Slocum sees small businesses surviving the next few years by supporting each other and sourcing locally wherever possible.

Skagit’s Best Salsa Co.

Kirt Rohrs and his wife and business partner Jill have been making salsa much longer than the almost 13 years they have been running Skagit’s Best Salsa Co. The business started in their own kitchen when Kirt took Jill’s recipe and refined the spices.

Unlike many businesses, Skagit’s Best Salsa Co. went through a boom during the lockdown and has been adding stores regularly.

“People were buying toilet paper, water and salsa,” he said.

They had started selling their salsa in small independent stores and managed to get shelf space at the Burlington Fred Meyer. Stores soon were calling them for their salsa.

“It was easy for me to go into the independent grocery store managers,” Rohrs said, mentioning he had a grocery background. Then, “the big guys called us, and you just don’t see that in the grocery industry.”

They grew so much that seven months ago, the company moved from a 650-square-foot space in La Conner to a 4,000-square-foot facility in Anacortes — a far cry from the company’s origins in their home kitchen . Now, the couple looks to automate part of the process to make production faster even as they grow.

While they are still adding stores to their routes and moving further south to stores in Bonney Lake, Tacoma and Olympia, Kirt said he has noticed business slowing down a little since the lockdown.

They credit their sturdy six-person staff in helping them get through staffing shortages so far, but inflation recently has had an impact.

The Rohrs use about 700 pounds of onions a week. The 50-pound bags they buy were coming from Eastern Washington at a cost of $15 per bag. Now, they are having to source them through California for $32 dollars per bag.

There have been supply chain and cost issues with the salsa containers, as well. Kirt Rohrs believes the inflation stems from one thing: fuel costs.

But despite the company’s growth, he said that even it’s tough to compete with much bigger companies when price is a factor. He calls it a “game of cents.”

They avoided raising prices as long as they could.

“We were forced into it,” Rohrs said.

Schaffner Pharmacy and Apothecary Coffee

Chris Schaffner, owner of Schaffner Pharmacy and Apothecary Coffee in Sedro-Woolley, has been through a whirlwind since he opened the business four years ago. Two months later, he was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“I thought: ‘Am I going to survive this? Is my business going to survive this?’” Schaffner said.

After a six-month battle, he came out on top. Barely a year later, COVID-19 struck.

Now, though life and business are pressing forward, he is facing the next hurdle: inflation.

It could be “the straw that broke the camel’s back” for his industry, he said. Costs of medications cannot be absorbed by the customer, as it is the insurance companies that decide what they will pay for prescriptions filled.

“Inflation is a lot more dangerous in health care,” he said.

As a business owner, he has employees to look out for and prides himself on paying them top dollar, citing it as one of many reasons his employee retention is high. However, rising food and gas prices affect them, as well, and it weighs heavily on Schaffner.

Meanwhile, he added a coffee shop to the pharmacy. The goal is for the coffee shop and pharmacy to be symbiotic. To protect against a staffing shortage, all of Shaffner’s staff, including his baristas, are also licensed to work in the pharmacy.

Since raising pharmacy prices is not viable, his hope is the pharmacy will provide customers to the coffee shop. This would then allow for a cash influx that could help the pharmacy, should it come to that.

All of the consumables are locally sourced; the roaster is Fidalgo Bay, the milk comes from Happy Cows in Lynden and the pastries come from Anacortes.

Keeping everything local to the small business is important, but it does cost more. Since the shop is new, its prices are market-based, but prices may have to rise with inflation.

“We need to do a more in-depth analysis when we get further along,” Schaffner said.

Elizabeth Thornlow has been a vegetarian for 32 years. She loves to spend time experimenting with different items and flavors and found that people were interested in her recipes and having her make them. That was how Cosmic Veggies was born.

She started in farmers markets and opened a small store in Anacortes a few years ago. The lockdown meant to-go orders only. Even then, the store outgrew its small space within a year.

Now with a new place farther up Commercial Avenue, she is busier than ever, but facing new battles with inflation and short staffing. Most of Cosmic Veggies’ ingredients are sourced from Washington and Oregon, including some in Anacortes.

The largest issue she faces is inflation of produce. Her regular purchase of limes went up from $30 a year ago to over $100 now. The skyrocketing prices have hurt profitability.

“It’s been a lot — a lot of work to break even,” she said.

Almost two years ago, she raised prices just to cover the cost of the inflating credit card processing fee. That fee was 2.8% then and is now 3.6% for every transaction. With about half of her sales coming online, that cuts deeply into her profit margin and has her looking for other options. Still, she has put off raising prices.

“Change is hard, and we’ve had so much change,” Thornlow said.

Staff shortages have also had an effect. Thornlow is finding people seem to either “want to make a lot of money but don’t want to work,” or apply but then skip the interview. She said she is lucky to have a strong core group of employees, but filling in the gaps usually means longer hours for her.

While she might have to raise prices, Thornlow said she and her business will ride through this rough patch because it is bettering her community. The business is even close to becoming a franchise.

“We’ll keep doing what we’re doing because it’s changing the community,” Thornlow said of her focus on healthy fare. “(Customers) come in every day saying thank you for that meal package, thank you for that cleanse. It’s changing my life. It’s getting me healthier.”

Mount Vernon is home to world-class master chocolatier Karen Neugebauer and her business Forte Chocolates. Not even world-class chocolates are unscathed by inflation and staff shortages.

Neugebauer raised her prices in October, something she does not like to do. She wants customers to be able to come in and know how much a bar of chocolate will cost them from one week to the next.

Even though the cost of her chocolate suppliers has increased up to six times the original amount, there is no plan on increasing prices again. She finds that raising prices too often creates “trustability issues” with customers.

“We anticipated the inflation being pretty bad,” she said.

Instead, she is looking to increase efficiency in the kitchen and is watching operation costs such as payroll. As far as staffing, being known around the world has not brought in any more applicants.

“It’s really difficult to find staff that want to work,” Neugebauer said. “I really don’t know where people went.”

She is thankful her business is still holding strong despite these issues. She attributes this to chocolate, even at somewhat higher prices, remaining “an affordable luxury.”

To many people, pets are like children. But pet groomers were not considered essential workers during the mandatory lockdown.

Germaine Kornegay wasn’t too worried for her business, Animal House Pet Grooming, at the start of COVID-19 pandemic. She thought a short break might be nice. She has been in business almost 30 years, having spent 20 years in Burlington and 10 in Sedro-Woolley.

After a few weeks of lockdown, her opinion changed.

She was getting pictures from regular clients of their ungroomed pets, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Kornegay recalls coming back from the shutdown as “traumatic.”

When the lockdown ended, she had a waiting list of 200 dogs. Staffing shortages haven’t affected her because she works alone, and she has very little overhead. The only inflation she has really noticed and accounted for is blades for clippers.

The one issue she’s had is supply shortage, which means waiting longer for products or having to change products because her usual choices aren’t available.

“My business has been really good here,” Kornegay said.

Last Tuesday, she groomed 13 dogs. She said she gets 25-30 calls a day for people wanting appointments, but she’s booked and sending people to other groomers.

Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.

Your comment has been submitted.

There was a problem reporting this.

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK. Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated. Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything. Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person. Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts. Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.

Your account has been registered, and you are now logged in.

Check your email for details.

Invalid password or account does not exist

Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password.

An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the e-mail address listed on your account.

Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in.

A receipt was sent to your email.