The last year and a half has been hard on everyone. It’s been a year of isolation, change, grief and so much more. While we’ve all taken on various hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses have certainly seen their fair share of hurdles.

While we all emerge from our own versions of pandemic quarantine at our own comfort levels, there’s a big push to remember to support small, local businesses because they need customers now more than ever. While you support local growers at the farmers’ market, and visit local restaurants for your celebratory dinners out, don’t forget to schedule your regular dental visit to support your local dentists’ office.

When we shut down initially during the pandemic, we laid off nearly all of our employees. It was really scary! We’re fortunate to be open again with most employees back with us, but we’re still not at pre-COVID capacity.

And just like in so many other industries, dental offices are also struggling to find enough people to fill our positions. At the beginning of COVID-19 many dental hygienists left the dental field. We have three open positions at Schumacher & Bauer right now! While restaurants get a lot of attention for their labor shortage, the truth is that a lot of small businesses are having a hard time finding enough people to fill their roles, and dental offices are very much included in that struggle.

While some people are still nervous to return to the dentist, we assure you that we’re being as safe as we possibly can be at Schumacher & Bauer. We continue to use N95 masks and face shields in the office. We alternate appointment times so that fewer people are together in group spaces. We utilize dividers to help with distancing, we check temperatures before appointments and we screen all patients before they come to our office. And you wouldn’t believe the extra cleaning and infection control we have in place on top of our always rigorous cleaning procedures.

So if you’re ready to visit the dentist, we’re ready to see you! We appreciate our patients so much, and we’ve especially appreciated the extra support as we’ve re-emerged from the pandemic. We’re a small business just like so many others, and our whole staff is ready to see your smiling faces again.

We’re featuring stories and suggestions from the team members at Schumacher & Bauer, DDS in our new monthly blog series. You can view all posts in this series here.