{"id":1067,"date":"2011-10-24T13:10:09","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T19:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=1067"},"modified":"2011-10-24T15:16:55","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T21:16:55","slug":"business-owners-take-on-recession-vs-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/10\/24\/business-owners-take-on-recession-vs-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Business Owners Take On Recession vs Recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/del>Some Idaho business owners <\/del>say the same thing: recession or recovery, it doesn’t really matter what<\/em> it’s called, business is slow.\u00a0 Last week we talked with Idaho economists<\/a> about this idea.\u00a0 Boise State University economics professor Don Holley says labeling trends “recession” or “recovery” does make a difference.\u00a0 \u201cIf we were still (technically) in a recession, if things were still going down, it\u2019d be much worse\u201d Holley says.\u00a0 Still, he points out, two years after the recession, Idaho isn\u2019t back to economic productivity seen at the peak in\u00a02007.<\/p>\n

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Junkyard Bistro<\/p>

Mary Whalen and her husband have owned Junkyard Bistro for 4 years.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mary Whalen co-owns Junkyard Bistro, a small restaurant in Salmon, Idaho.\u00a0 She feels like the recession is hitting her community now.\u00a0 “Our business is way down compared to what it was in 2009,” Whalen says.\u00a0 She says businesses in Salmon rely on the summer tourism season to make ends meet, and because of a long, wet spring, the season didn’t really start until July.\u00a0 “It (business) usually stays strong until November,” Whalen says, “We’ve already cut back our staff.”\u00a0 The move<\/del> is about six weeks premature.\u00a0 “I almost thought the recession might help us because people weren’t traveling out of the country, but doing local trips,” Whalen says. “You can call it whatever you want to, business is down.”<\/p>\n

A candy store owner in Weiser is convinced the recession and slow recovery have<\/em> helped his business.\u00a0 Weiser Classic Candy<\/a> co-owner Patrick Nauman says people in town are forgoing more expensive luxury items.\u00a0 “They might not have their $5 coffee as often, so instead, they get a really good piece of $0.75 chocolate,” Nauman says.\u00a0 Plus, he finds people are more willing to spend money on a locally made product.<\/p>\n

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Marc Muench \/ Getty Images<\/p>

The Sun Valley Lodge in Sun Valley, Idaho<\/p><\/div>\n

Still, each business I spoke with said it’s taking more work to get the same number of customers.\u00a0 That’s true even at one of the largest ski resorts in Idaho.\u00a0 Jack Sibbach is the director of marketing and public relations at the Sun Valley Resort<\/a>.\u00a0 He says the best business years for the destination ski hill were 2005, 2006 and 2007.\u00a0 In 2008 Sibbach says the resort was hit hard by a bad snow year and the economic collapse.\u00a0 “We\u2019ve been making slow strides back,” Sibbach says. “The last two winters have been good, not great.”\u00a0 I asked Sibbach if it’s safe to say the ski hill is in recovery mode. <\/del>He’s not that optimistic.\u00a0 “We\u2019re making strides, a little bit at a time.\u00a0 We\u2019re optimistic but guardedly so.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some Idaho business owners say the same thing: recession or recovery, it doesn’t really matter what it’s called, business is slow.\u00a0 Last week we talked with Idaho economists about this idea.\u00a0 Boise State University economics professor Don Holley says labeling trends “recession” or “recovery” does make a difference.\u00a0 \u201cIf we were still (technically) in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":1071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[101,46,47,18],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1067"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1093,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions\/1093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}