Hawaiians offer a bittersweet sweet to an ever-loved bakery.
Love’s Bakery will close in late March, after the COVID-19 pandemic put the knee operation on hold, SFGate reports.
The bakery spread love since 1851 and lit its ovens more than a century before Hawaii became the 50th state.
The mainstay of Honolulu employs 231 people, who will lose their jobs, and typically distributes approximately 400,000 loaves of bread to 1,800 customers each week, the website reports.
The demand for bread decreases greatly during the pandemic, with hotels and restaurants closed. According to reports, the increase in local competition would also have meant a major cut in Love’s mass.
Loves said he was “seriously delinquent” in rent payments and spent the $ 2.8 million he received on federal COVID-19 relief loans to maintain payroll, according to the site.
“We have worked diligently to reduce costs, to maintain our market share and to solve our operational difficulties, although in today’s business environment we can no longer continue operations,” the company said in a statement to the media. of communication, according to the medium. .
Hawaii’s geographic isolation also contributed to the bakery’s pandemic problems.
“COVID-19 has also affected many of our continental suppliers causing delays in ingredients and spare parts for our aged bakery equipment,” said its letter of notification of federal workers ’adjustment and recycling (WARN) and the notice of the Displaced Workers Act of Hawaii. “With declining revenues and rising expenses to keep a bakery running, we have made the difficult decision to stop operating as a hesitant business.”
When Love’s Bakery kneaded its first loaf of bread 170 years ago, King Kamehameha III was on the Hawaiian throne.
Love’s own production operations expanded rapidly during the world wars, and in 1943 the company was baking bread all day in a 144-foot-long oven that brewed 8,000 loaves per hour, SF Gate said.
In 1945, it appears, he was flying bread to the neighboring islands by charter plane as the population of Hawaii grew rapidly.
Companies across the nation and around the world have been struggling to make bread since the pandemic closed the trade. According to a study, more than half of U.S. companies forced to close will never open again.