NORWICH – A Little Herbal Shoppe had its struggles as the pandemic continued, but was able to stay open thanks to its loyal customers and the support of its community.

A Little Herbal Shoppe is a mother-daughter run by Priscilla Blydeneurgh and Patience DeMun located at 24 South Broad Street in the City of Norwich.

According to A Little Herbal Shoppe co-owner Blydeneurgh, there were several major challenges that her business and many others like it faced during the pandemic including gathering accurate information, reaching customers, and keeping everyone safe.

She met with City of Norwich Mayor Shawn Sastri to discuss her business’ challenges, and how the area could be better prepared for an emergency like that in the future.

“I remember when that day came and we had to close due to Governor Cuomo’s order, we didn’t want to close our doors because we weren’t sure what was going to happen next,” said Blydeneurgh. “We love what we do, but it was scary not knowing what the future held.”

“We had to make the decision, do we scale back or do we expand, what are we going to do?”

She said A Little Herbal Shoppe went in a somewhat uncommon direction, and decided to take the downtime to expand its facilities. She added that meanwhile there were other businesses that decided to close their doors.

“Not everyone has reopened, and I can understand why because a lot of people aren’t coming out anymore,” said Blydeneurgh. “It’s kind of like a cycle feeding into itself, there’s been an overall feeling of loss of the community.”

“Without any of the events downtown last year there were less people to visit stores, and everyone knows that this time of year is slower for businesses so businesses are really feeling it.”

Blydeneurgh said when they were able to reopen their doors, they were met with additional challenges and questions like, how many people can they have in their store, who do they talk to if they have questions about COVID-19, and is there a way they can help let people know they’ve reopened?

“We need a central place where all of the local businesses can go for more information, and while there were some groups that did a good job with getting as much information out there as they could, it would have helped for everyone to be on the same page,” she said. “We were never told where to find the information, we had to seek it out by talking to other business owners.”

“We still have some questions about how everything should be set up in our store to be fully compliant with all of the recent regulations.”

She said knowing what kind of signage is needed is an example of one of the questions that they have, but hasn’t been made clear. She added that Commerce Chenango and the Norwich Business Improvement District (BID) are two of the groups that tried to help when the pandemic hit.

“We really appreciated the funding that the Norwich BID was able to provide, it allowed us to reopen when we did,” said Blydeneurgh. “Acts like that helped a lot of businesses during a really important time, and it definitely helped us.”

Blydeneurgh said the customers that checked in and supported them throughout the shutdown made a huge difference as well, and that she’s happy to be part of the community.

“We’re nervous about what the future holds, but we’re positive because we know we live in a really caring and supportive community,” she said. “If we’re able to get better organized hopefully when, god forbid, something like this happens again - we’ll be ready.”