{"id":115958,"date":"2021-03-09T23:20:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T07:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=115958"},"modified":"2021-03-09T23:20:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T07:20:46","slug":"president-biden-during-tour-of-w-s-jenks-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=115958","title":{"rendered":"President Biden During Tour of W.S. Jenks &#038; Son"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, D.C&#8230;.W.S. Jenks &#038; Son.  MR. SIEGEL:  So this is our \u2014 our main showroom in the store.  You can see a lot of our employees up top there.  THE PRESIDENT:  Hey, everybody.  How are you?  PARTICIPANTS:  Hi!  THE PRESIDENT:  It\u2019s good to see you.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EwSGGg7UFGo\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>MR. SIEGEL:  We are \u2014 we are D.C.\u2019s oldest hardware store.  We\u2019ve been continuously operating in this city since 1866.  We\u2019ve moved around a few times.  We\u2019ve been in this building for seven years now.  Like my father was telling you, this is actually our second presidential visit, but our first one in this building.  So, welcome.  We\u2019re excited to have you here today.<\/p>\n<p>We want to introduce you to Mary Ackley, from Little Wild Things.  She has a separate business in our building.  What they do is microgreens.  And I\u2019ll turn it over to Mary because she can describe her business a lot better than I\u2019ll be able to.<\/p>\n<p>THE PRESIDENT:  Fire away, Mary.<\/p>\n<p>MS. ACKLEY:  Sure.  We moved here a few years ago, and we are an urban vertical farm located right next door.  We grow salad greens, microgreens, and edible flowers.  Beautiful salads.  We deliver them all over the greater Washington, D.C., area, both to homes and we donate locally here in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>THE PRESIDENT:  Now, you\u2019ve been engaged in the neighborhood too.  You sponsor a Little League team, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n<p>MR. SIEGEL:  We do.  We sponsor a Little League team.  We also \u2014 we run job fairs for special needs programs to get their students \u2014 to help them find employment.  We\u2019ve actually hired three people from those \u2014 from that job program.  It\u2019s called \u201cProject SEARCH.\u201d  It\u2019s a partnership between a nonprofit and the D.C. government, and they do a great job training their students, who are special needs, to come and be able to work in an environment like this and be great contributors.<\/p>\n<p>THE PRESIDENT:  Have you hired any of those folks? <\/p>\n<p>MR. SIEGEL:  We\u2019ve hired three.<\/p>\n<p>THE PRESIDENT:  Three?<\/p>\n<p>MR. SIEGEL:  Yes. <\/p>\n<p>THE PRESIDENT:  I\u2019ll be darned.<\/p>\n<p>MR. SIEGEL:  And Mary participated in our first job fair.  We were going to do another one but, obviously, the pandemic has halted our ability to do that.  But when things go back to normal, we\u2019re going to continue to do the job fairs.<\/p>\n<p>THE PRESIDENT:  Tell me, what kind of \u2014 what \u2014 what hit you the hardest when the pandemic hit?<\/p>\n<p>MR. SIEGEL:  Right.  So the biggest challenge is what were we going to do with our staff.  You know, there were so many uncertainties related to what the virus actually did.  The first thing that we did was we took all of our at-risk employees and we sent them home, and we paid them through that entire process. <\/p>\n<p>That first wave of PPP loans was very helpful to allow us to do that.  Obviously, that was not cost effective, but we felt like we had to do that for our employees. <\/p>\n<p>You know, and we\u2019re still \u2014 we\u2019re still struggling because we did \u2014 a lot of retail business has actually increased over the course of the pandemic.  I think people know there\u2019s a little bit of hardware boom. <\/p>\n<p>A big portion of our business is actually government sales and commercial sales.  And, for the first four or five months, I mean, that was completely gone.  And, honestly, usually it\u2019s about 60 percent of our annual revenue.<\/p>\n<p>THE PRESIDENT:  Well, one of the reasons why I changed the rule for \u2014 it was 20 days \u2014 to make sure only employers that had 20 or fewer employees could qualify for PPP.  And the reason for that was: 400,000 small businesses went out of business.  They got in line, but they couldn\u2019t get the help. <\/p>\n<p>And we found out that an awful lot of that went to big \u2014 bigger businesses that, in fact, weren\u2019t supposed to qualify for this.  Because they \u2014 there used be a thing called an \u201cinspector general\u201d to see where the money went.  And the last administration fired the inspector general, so a lot of money went to people who shouldn\u2019t have gotten help, and it didn\u2019t go to folks who \u2014<\/p>\n<p>But, you know, the significance with this new program \u2014 and we\u2019re going to continue this, by the way \u2014 it\u2019s not only \u2014 (inaudible) only businesses with fewer than 20 folks could apply for the last couple weeks.  But now we\u2019re going to keep the focus on it because there\u2019s a lot of minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses are increased significantly by 20, 15 \u2014 20 and 15 percent, as well as getting people who, in fact, weren\u2019t able to get in line before.  And it\u2019s hard to know how to get in line. <\/p>\n<p>And so I hope this is going to continue to increase because we\u2019re also at the point where I think we\u2019re going to begin to gain control of this virus. <\/p>\n<p>MR. SIEGEL:  Yeah, I \u2014 and we appreciate your leadership on that.<\/p>\n<p>One quick point I want to make is that: I said we\u2019re the oldest hardware store in D.C.; I also say we\u2019re the greenest hardware store in America.  We have two urban farms actually in our building.  We have Mary, who is in the garage there, and then we have Cultivate the City, which is an awesome rooftop garden.  They exist on our \u2014 on our rooftop.  But you can\u2019t \u2014 you\u2019re not going to be able to see it from here, but if they want to give a wave. <\/p>\n<p>THE PRESIDENT:  I see them. <\/p>\n<p>MR. SIEGEL:  Yes.<\/p>\n<p>PARTICIPANTS:  Hi!<\/p>\n<p>MR. SIEGEL:  Yes, and then we also have solar panels \u2014<\/p>\n<p>THE PRESIDENT:  Don\u2019t jump; we need you.  (Laughter.) <\/p>\n<p>12:31 P.M. EST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, D.C&#8230;.W.S. Jenks &#038; Son. MR. SIEGEL: So this is our \u2014 our main showroom in the store. You can see a lot of our employees up top there. THE PRESIDENT: Hey, everybody. How are you? PARTICIPANTS: Hi! THE PRESIDENT: It\u2019s good to see you. MR. SIEGEL: We are \u2014 we are D.C.\u2019s oldest hardware [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Fullscreen-capture-392021-110244-PM.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/115959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}