Summer slowdown: Local businesses brace for less traffic in upcoming months

It was Tuesday afternoon of finals week at IU, and business was bustling at Baked! of Bloomington.

In fact, the local bakery, which opened in 2006, was busier than usual since Little 500 weekend, selling 2,500 or more cookies per day.

In one swift motion, co-owner Jeremy Ness scooped dough of various flavors onto cookie sheets, hustled into another room, put the dough in the oven, accepted a new order and served guests a plate of hot cookies.

But during the next three months, beginning graduation day at IU, Ness said the number of cookie-hungry consumers will plummet.

With thousands of IU students graduating, pursuing summer internships or returning home, Ness said business at Baked! is expected to decrease by 60 to 70 percent. Ness’ T-shirt, which read “I get baked before class,” highlighted the influence the University has on his small business.

“Of course we couldn’t exist without the University and its students,” Ness said. “It definitely puts a damper on the cash flow and future plans when 60 or 70 percent of your business leaves for the summer.”

Baked! is not alone. During the school year, Pizza X General Manager Jesse Bloom said the local pizzeria brings in between $20,000 and $30,000 per week. But with business decreasing approximately 75 percent during the summer, those figures decrease to between $7,000 and $9,000 per week.

“It impacts business in a lot of ways,” Bloom said. “We lose a lot of our staff, it’s hard for people to get hours in the summer and we just try to do as much business as we can. We make enough profit throughout the school year to offset what we lose over the summer.”

To counter smaller figures during the warm months, staff members are cut at both Pizza X and Baked! Pizza X, Bloom said, gives several of its employees a leave of absence during the summer months, something employees were told would happen when hired.

Among the 15 employees working for Baked!, Ness said several will be laid off during the summer with hopes to hire them again in the fall. When employees are hired, Ness said they are informed they will be let go in May, but he said most employees are understanding.

Generally those laid off are university students, Ness said, and would have been leaving for the summer anyway.

“This year, we’re trying really hard to keep all of our full-timers on staff,” Ness said. “They have no problem with being here, it’s just the problem of being able to afford them.”

With plans to add a soft-serve ice cream machine in the next few weeks, Ness said he is looking forward to Welcome Week at IU, one of the busiest weeks of the year for Baked! Following Little 500 Week, Bloom said Welcome Week is the second busiest week of the year for Pizza X.

“We’re certainly a growing business, which is exciting,” Ness said. “When summer comes around next year, hopefully we won’t be in the position to need to lay people off. Hopefully, we’ll be busy enough to where we’ll be hiring again.”