Special Alert: New COVID-19 Resources Available on the Toolkit

Dear Friends,

It’s easy sometimes to forget the power in a simple gesture of heartfelt kindness.

You may have heard OWB Board Chair Bob Morus drove from Hood River to Woodinville, WA, this past weekend with 42 cases of his Phelps Creek wine to donate to The Herbfarm’s Seattle COVID-19 healthcare worker dinners. “I figured if I was going to drive 250 miles each way, I might as well make it worthwhile,” he said as he unloaded over 500 bottles of Pinot noir, Chardonnay and rosé of Pinot noir.

Broadcast media in Portland picked up on another inspiring story about expressing gratitude through wine offered to local health care workers. This 3:20 news clip stars Annie and Scott Shull, owners of Raptor Ridge winery in Newberg.

While Governor Brown’s Executive Orders are having obvious effects on winery tasting rooms around the state, national sales trends in the broader off-premise segment of the wine market are not as immediately apparent. However, the OWB’s analysis of Nielsen scanner data for the first quarter of 2020 confirms that the tailwinds that propelled Oregon’s volume trends in 2019 continue to blow in our favor.

Chart shows weekly data from Nielsen, which incorporates all tracked retail channels nationally including food, mass, drug, convenience, club, dollar, liquor and many independent fine wine stores.

As illustrated above, Oregon’s growth rates so far this year significantly outpace the wine category’s national averages during both the pre and post-lockdown periods. Visit the new Insights section of the OWB’s COVID-19 Toolkit for additional Nielsen data and other information including consumer sentiment tracking predictive of future travel and tourism.

Thanks to the 110 industry members who connected last Thursday to the OWB’s first webinar with bankers and attorneys explaining important aspects of the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Disaster Injury Loans (EIDL). The recorded webinar and the speakers’ on-screen exhibits are accessible here.

Look first for this worksheet from Scott Bossom, senior vice president at Columbia Bank. The PPP calculator is designed to help business owners determine their loan request amount. Scott also offered several referrals to alternative lenders if your bank is not a PPP participant, and you’ll find them listed in the Financial Assistance & Business Resources section of the toolkit. In case you missed this SBA link from last week, it will still help you search for lenders by zip code.

Also during the webinar, the Oregon Winegrowers Association’s counsel of record, Davis Wright Tremaine (DWT), announced this updated version of its handy, four-page side-by-side contrasting key components of the two emergency financial assistance programs enabled by last month’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The industry’s response to that first CARES Act webinar led us to conclude another one was in order.

So we hope you’ll register and submit questions in advance for the one-hour webinar next Tuesday, April 21 at 10 a.m.

Guest speakers include Jeremy Fields, the SBA’s Pacific Northwest regional administrator, as well as Jeff Clark of Live Oak Bank, Nick Shepherd from Irvine & Co. and Mark Freund from First Republic Bank.

If you have not visited the OWB’s COVID-19 Toolkit recently, you’ll now find new information including responses to FAQs about the loan programs from the OWB’s Finance Committee. If you’ve been wondering how the emergency Paycheck Protection Program dollars have been flowing out so far, over a million loans have been approved nationally through Monday representing $248 billion. 70% are for amounts of $150,000 or less, and Oregon recipients (9,508) have been approved for $2.4 billion.

Thanks to the grape growers who joined an informal roundtable discussion earlier this week co-hosted by Oregon State University and the OWB. It was moderated by Dr. Patty Skinkis with expert opinions and peer-to-peer exchanges on practices for controlling vineyard operating costs during this unusual season. The audio recording of that session and a summary of the discussion from Dr. Skinkis will be posted soon to the toolkit’s new Agricultural Business Resources section.

The toolkit also includes these labor law compliance resources suggested by Christie Totten at DWT:

a Department of Labor summary of the paid and medical leave provisions in the new Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), signed into law on March 18;
more specific direction (see Q. 16) on documentation expected when an employee requests paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave as described in the FFCRA; and
this blog post from Stuart Harris and Sarah Ames at DWT on what’s recommended versus what’s required by the FFCRA.

Two final items:

some new information on federal financial aid is included in this April 10 webinar on CARES Act loans from the National Federation for Independent Business, forwarded by the Oregon Wine Council; and
business owners based in Washington County with no more than 25 employees can visit this site for information on local grants up to $300,000 and loans up to $25,000. As we get information on other county-level programs around the state, we will highlight them.