Justin Williams, co-owner, Advantage Tent & Party Rental, Latonia, Ky., clearly remembers the day the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic first impacted his rental business.
“It was St. Patrick’s Day. We had jobs loaded, permits pulled and everything ready to go out that day. Then everything shut down. It was scary. I was thinking about the responsibility I have to all my full-time employees and their livelihoods,” Williams says.
That night, Williams and his wife, Morgan, were talking about a game plan to keep the business going as event after event was being canceled or postponed.
“She does the Kroger click and shop. She thought that if they would close their store, there would still be people who do the click and shop who would need to drive up and pick up their food. She thought they might need tents to accomplish that. Well, the next morning I went to the store at 5 a.m. and started researching every Kroger email address I could find online or through previous work we had done with them. I emailed them a little bulletin of services we could offer such as COVID testing tents, drive-thru tents and storage tents,” Williams says.
It just so happened that one of his emails landed in the inbox of a person in Kroger’s marketing department who had just been put in charge of testing. “At the beginning of the pandemic, Kentucky put Kroger in charge of dispensing the testing. We did the first test site in Frankfort. The head of Kentucky Emergency Management was at that site. We talked and this gentleman loved what we could do,” Williams says.
When the Kentucky Emergency Management staff took over the testing site, guess who was called to assist with all their tenting needs? Williams and his team.
“That led to us doing jobs for all of the needs of Kentucky Emergency Management, including floods, etc. My contact knows that he can call me at 2 a.m. and say he needs a tent at 8 a.m. and I will be there. Once the state saw what we could do, they continued to call us. That kept us really busy during COVID. We ended up with a lot of work during this time,” Williams says.
Connie Lannan
Connie Lannan is special projects editor for Rental Management. She helps plan, coordinate, write and edit ARA’s quarterly regional newsletters, In Your Region. She also researches, writes and edits news and feature articles for Rental Management, Rental Pulse, supplements, special reports and other special projects. Outside of work, she loves to bake for others, go for walks with her husband and volunteer for her church and causes she believes in.
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